Dharma Lab

Sharon Salzberg joins Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl for a conversation about loving-kindness, connection, and the quiet ways our lives are supported by others.
At a time when many people feel lonely, cut off, or pulled into habits of criticism and competition, Sharon offers a simple experiment: pause, notice who makes your life possible, and see what happens when appreciation becomes part of daily life.
Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She has written fifteen books, including Lovingkindness and Real Happiness. Her upcoming workbook, Living Lovingkindness, is available for pre-order and will be released in January 2027.
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Episode Companion Flashcards
The full conversation is below, lightly edited for readability.
Chapter List
* (00:00) A true icon, and a first story
* (03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches
* (09:35) What actually trips people up
* (13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”
* (18:30) A guided reflection
* (21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person
* (28:10) Attention, and what the science shows
* (36:26) The obstacles, and where to start
* (46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice
* (52:00) Parting thoughts
Try this 2-minute Micro-Practice from Sharon Now
(00:00) A true icon, and a first story
Cort Dahl
Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m very honored and excited to be here with our two guests. Of course, I’m here with Richie Davidson, who many of you already know, one of the most well-known neuroscientists on the planet. And we’re here with a true icon of the world’s meditative tradition, Sharon Salzberg, who’s also a dear friend, and truly one of those people who, when the history books are written about the manifestation of these meditative traditions in the modern world, played an incredibly important role.
Just before this started, we were all chatting, and Sharon, you were mentioning that this is the 50th anniversary of the Insight Meditation Society. IMS, as it’s commonly referred to, is certainly one of the first and one of the most important centers for Buddhist practice and meditation in the modern world. Sharon is one of the co-founders of IMS, back in the 1970s. It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years.
She has written some of the most well-known books in the meditation world. Loving-Kindness — she literally wrote the book on loving-kindness, and has been the main proponent of it as one of the main forms of meditation coming out of the Buddhist tradition, traditionally known as metta. She also has a podcast, Metta Hour, which both Richie and I have been on. And she’s written many other books, including her first children’s book, Kind Carl.
Richie Davidson
I read it to my six-year-old granddaughter, who loved it, absolutely loved it, and wanted more copies to give to all her friends.
Cort Dahl
And many, many other books — Real Life, Real Love, Real Happiness, a whole series. Loving-Kindness, the book I mentioned first, is really a modern classic. It was one of the first books I read back in the nineties when I was starting to meditate. So, Sharon, you’ve been an inspiration to so many of us — through your writing, through co-founding IMS, through your endless teaching all over the world. It’s an honor to have you.
I thought we could start with a story I’ve heard a few times and always found moving: His Holiness the Dalai Lama visiting the United States for the first time, and your interactions with him. Let’s start there, and see where the conversation goes.
(03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches
Sharon Salzberg
Sure. And I’m so happy and honored to be with the two of you, truly. We co-founded the retreat center — Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and I — in 1976. It’s in Barre, Massachusetts, about 40 minutes from Amherst. In 1979 we heard the Dalai Lama was coming to Amherst, so, being young and bold, we wrote a letter to his private office and said, maybe you’d like to visit us too. And to our amazement, we got a letter back saying, yes, he’ll come.
It was an incredibly zooey day. We had sheriffs and people patrolling the roof with guns, the street blockaded. A very intense day. And I’d been in a car accident a few weeks before — I had a broken bone in my foot and was using crutches, which I was not very skilled with. So I was standing way at the back of about a hundred people. His car pulled up, he got out, and he did something I’ve seen him do many times since, but it was the first time. It’s almost like he has a kind of radar for who in a crowd is suffering the most, and that was me. He cut through a hundred people, took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, what happened?
Standing there in the back, I’d been thinking, I’m so stuck back here, this is terrible — I helped start this place, and here I am at the back. But if I go up front I’ll fall on my face, because I’m so bad with the crutches, so I’d better stay in the back. And he just dissolved that with that one gesture. It sort of redefined compassion for me, because he certainly couldn’t have made the injury not happen, or made me any better with the crutches. But that horrible feeling of being so alone, so unseen, so stuck in the back — it just dissolved.
There’s another story from that visit, and there are many. We had a retreat going, about two weeks in, and the Dalai Lama asked to go into the meditation hall and give a talk. Then he asked for questions. A young man raised his hand and said, I’ve been meditating for about two weeks and I realize it’s not going to work for me. I can’t do it. I don’t have the capacity to grow or learn or get more loving or more mindful. I just can’t do it. And the Dalai Lama looked at him and said, well, you’re wrong. You’re just wrong.
He went on to talk about buddha nature — one’s capacity, which it’s believed is never ever destroyed. A capacity for growth and understanding and change. It may be covered over, it may be hard to find, but it’s never ever destroyed. And the funny thing is, after the talk, all these people came up to me and said, the Dalai Lama shouldn’t have said that. That’s bad pedagogy. You should never tell anyone they’re wrong. But you know who got a huge amount out of it? The young man, for whom it was such an important message. You should have a little more faith in yourself, and in the possibility of change.
Cort Dahl
That’s so beautiful. The image of the Dalai Lama cutting through all those people — at a moment where most of us would be on autopilot, this is what you do in this situation, you shake hands and wave. And he didn’t. He was just utterly human, and could see beyond the dynamics. I’ve always found that story so beautiful.
Richie Davidson
I love that story too. I have this image of our detectors, our antenna, for suffering, that can actually be developed. And the Dalai Lama is such an extraordinary exemplar of that. Wherever suffering is occurring, he makes a beeline for it.
Cort Dahl
And the human element is something I really think about with you as a teacher. I was just having lunch with my wife, Kasumi. We’ve been together thirteen, fourteen years now. When we first met, she was about to go on a retreat with you — you were visiting Madison — one of her first retreats. You’ve been a huge influence in her life. Over lunch I said, I’m going to be talking to Sharon, what would you ask? And she said something that’s so true, something I’ve heard from many people and know from my own experience: you talk so candidly about your own experience, and the human experience, in a way that’s quite uncommon. Just being fully human and sharing your experience. Because it’s so easy to see someone at the front of the room teaching meditation and imagine, wow, they’ve got it all figured out, this perfect life — and here I am, a distracted, anxious mess.
I think that’s one of the reasons your teachings resonate so deeply. With all these decades of working directly with people, hearing from thousands of them, what are the things that either trip us up — the common stumbling blocks early on — or the things that inspire and unlock us when we hear the right thing at the right time?
(09:35) What actually trips people up
Sharon Salzberg
Well, I think we — including myself — bring some of our greatest patterns into the meditative process. Especially a kind of harsh self-criticism, which I’ve seen over and over. Even people in really difficult situations, really hard diagnoses, something hard to bear. Sometimes I listen and think, give yourself a break — this is hard, look what you’re going through. That’s one of the reasons I found loving-kindness practice, and the understanding that we can grow in other ways rather than punishing ourselves for our mistakes. We can move on. We can learn to begin again. There’s resilience there. I’ve found that a huge help for a lot of people.
Somebody asked me the other day whether I wanted to teach Buddhism or better mental health. And I said, mental health is not that high right now. So many people feel broken and lonely and estranged and confused. Of course we always do to some degree, but it feels so exaggerated now, so emphasized. For people to have a sense of not being so alone, and caring about themselves and about one another, having a greater sense of community — that seems to be what we can offer these days.
Cort Dahl
That’s so helpful. Richie, any thoughts from you, having explored the same territory yourself, both personally and in your work?
Richie Davidson
In terms of the situation today, it really is true. I often say we’re all part of a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. It’s a challenging time, and a lot of it is simply outside of our control. The one thing we have at least the possibility of exerting a little more control over is our own mind. So that’s a great place to start.
One of the things I love about your work, Sharon, and would love to hear more about, is that — at least I’ve found, being with different kinds of public audiences — giving them a simple taste of very ordinary but really nourishing connection, like a little hit of appreciation. Bring someone into your mind and your heart who’s been helpful to you, and just observe what happens. Being able to taste that little hit is really an elixir for the soul. And it’s very accessible. We don’t have to go to any special place or be in any special posture. We can do it anywhere, anytime — a phrase Mingyur Rinpoche uses for one of his programs. I’ve renamed it, everywhere, all the time, why not. I’d love to hear your reflections.
(13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”
Sharon Salzberg
There are many layers I want to respond to. One is that I’ve so appreciated your work and your use of the word connection. I’ve been struggling to translate metta, the Pali word for loving-kindness, because loving-kindness is such an odd term. You wouldn’t necessarily be in a coffee shop and hear the people at the next table talking about loving-kindness, except maybe in a hyper-religious context. My concern is that it makes the quality seem somewhat arcane and removed from day-to-day life, precious in the negative sense.
Translators and scholars have said to me, stop being so cutesy, just say love — that’s what you mean. And that of course is a complicated term. What do we mean when we say love? How often is it a medium of exchange, or, I’ll love myself as long as I never make a mistake — something so fragile and breakable. My favorite translation is connection. There’s a classical translation as friendship, but my concern with friendship is that the development of qualities like loving-kindness or compassion doesn’t mandate a certain kind of action. When I think of friendship, I think, let’s go to the movies, let’s spend time together. And it may be that your heart is genuinely full of loving-kindness or compassion for someone, and discernment, wisdom, understanding is saying, don’t go there — it’s not safe, or it’s not appropriate. There’s such a great fear that if I develop more metta, more loving-kindness, I’ll have to say yes, I have to smile, I have to give in. And we don’t have to do anything. So I really prefer the word connection to any other word.
I love the idea of appreciation, just for a moment. It’s part of what I like to teach if I’m going into a company or an organization. There are two reflections. One is, can you express appreciation to somebody, anybody? Because we’re also culturally tuned to feel we’ll feel better about ourselves if we can put other people down — a kind of culture of degradation.
Richie Davidson
And that’s particularly true in the university, by the way.
Sharon Salzberg
That’s scary and sad. People get into that, and there’s a lot of loneliness right there — hyper-competitive, constantly putting other people down. So I see all of Dharma practice as an experiment. Are you willing to step out of those familiar ruts — go into work and express some appreciation for somebody? The other reflection is interconnection. My favorite question in a group of people who work together: how many other people have to do their job well for you to do your job well? Sometimes that doesn’t resonate, so I say, do you commute? Do you ever think about the bus driver, the engineer, the car mechanic? And if you don’t commute, there’s certainly some technology involved. And if that doesn’t resonate — have you eaten today? You don’t grow all your own food. Just think about that: our lives, truly, realistically, are part of a network. We can feel so alone and cut off, but the truth is we’re connected. So let’s make an experiment, do these reflections, and see what happens.
Cort Dahl
I realize I skipped a step that Richie and I do every single time. Usually before we hit record, we do a little practice to set our motivation — to be of benefit, wanting whatever comes of the work to help people. Richie talked about having a little taste. Sharon, would you be willing to lead a little practice, just to give us an experiential taste of what we’re talking about, and then we can keep going?
(18:30) A guided reflection
Sharon Salzberg
Sure. I’ll do a reflection based on what I just said. You can sit comfortably, close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. We’re just going to spend a few moments bringing to mind anyone who has somehow had a role in your being here right now. Somebody told you about their meditation practice, or the science, or this podcast. Somebody read you a poem or played you a piece of music. There was some opening somewhere. Maybe you’ve never met these people who come to mind. Maybe you were inspired from afar. Just see who comes up.
Every time I do this reflection, I think about the Board of Regents of the State of New York, which gave me a scholarship, which was how I was able to go to college, which is how I ended up in India as an independent study project, which is a big reason I’m here now.
Sometimes I do this reflection and think about those people whose actions have really hurt me — not the ones I just found annoying, but the times I felt I was at an edge and had to find a different way to live or think. Because they’re part of why I’m here right now too.
Just who comes to mind.
And you can extend a sense of recognition to all of these different beings, because this moment in time is a confluence of connection, relationship, influence, interaction. However alone we sometimes feel or cut off, this is the truth of our experience.
And you can open your eyes, or lift your gaze, and we can end that reflection.
(21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person
Cort Dahl
So beautiful. Thank you, Sharon. When I first started these practices, I’d been doing mindfulness for probably seven or eight years. Then I encountered some teachers, and for me the first practice more in this heart-connection space was sending and taking, often referred to as tonglen, very much in the space of loving-kindness and compassion. It was very interesting what it did. One of the first things I noticed was that it brought up an intense feeling of vulnerability. The way it manifested was, I’d be having a conversation with somebody, and out of the blue I’d start blushing. And I come from a long line of Olympic-level blushers — Scandinavian complexion, maybe. It’s very visible, there’s no hiding. This went on for months. Almost every interaction, for no reason at all, I’d feel this naked vulnerability. And it was just connecting with people, actually. I didn’t see it at all until that moment. But when I started these practices, I started to see how guarded I was a lot of the time — a weird protective mechanism I hadn’t even been aware of. That feeling of vulnerability, which weirdly manifested as blushing, was just genuine connection with people, but in a raw way I wasn’t used to. It was actually hard. Not easy for me. Inspiring, and I was seeing things about myself I hadn’t seen before, but challenging territory, and totally unexpected. So I’m wondering if you could talk about vulnerability, and the power of working with it in practice despite the discomfort.
Sharon Salzberg
It’s a really fascinating thing to explore — the components. I don’t know that this was your experience at all, but it’s common for people to feel somehow responsible for fixing a situation if someone else is expressing pain. Not only do we feel it with the kind of sensitivity you’re describing, but it enters us in some strange way, things get distorted, and we get this hyper-sense of responsibility — I’ve got to fix it. We’d call that a real imbalance. Maybe there’s a lot more compassion for someone else than there is for us, or maybe there’s not enough wisdom for correct boundaries or discernment. The combination of the sensitivity with the wisdom, we’d call equanimity. It’s a kind of balance.
We are conditioned, by and large, to look the other way in terms of other people’s situations. And my favorite part of loving-kindness practice, actually, is loving-kindness for a neutral person — someone we don’t especially like or dislike, someone we feel kind of neutral toward. Usually people pick somebody like the checkout person at the grocery store, someone they see but have no real sense of connection to. I love it, because over time, here’s someone we usually objectify, overlook, look through instead of look at — and as we do the practice, offering them attention, may you be happy, may you be peaceful, something actually grows inside us. People come back with incredible stories. Like, I fell in love with my dry cleaner. I said to this woman — well, I didn’t say it, she could see it on my face — I thought they were dating. And she said, no, no, not romantically. He’s my neutral person in my practice. Every day I call him to mind and wish him well. And now I go into the store and it’s like we’re on the same team. So you’re also confronting all that conditioning of, look the other way, they’re not really people, they’re just utilities — not to mention bias or prejudice, which fits in there too, the other who doesn’t count. The more we tune into people and realize they do count, that we’re part of this whole, we’ll have the effect of that. But that effect needs to be balanced.
Richie Davidson
The piece about neutral people is so powerful. One of the greatest teachings for me has been being with the Dalai Lama at major formal events, where there are, quote, lots of important people around. And then he’ll go out through a side entrance, and he’ll stop and greet all the custodians, all the kitchen people, the security people, and he treats them exactly the same as the important people. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. When you see that in practice — when you see him stopping and holding them and asking how they’re doing — it’s such a powerful reminder that this really is accessible, and it can totally change our life. Our everyday life becomes all of these really nourishing moments of connection.
(28:10) Attention, and what the science shows
Sharon Salzberg
You’re reminding me that so many times we can understand connection, or loving-kindness, or compassion, as an emergent property of paying attention. If we’re more present and listening, that’s where the connection is born — which is a nicer way of realizing it, rather than thinking I’ve got to drum up some feeling I don’t really have, and manufacture it.
Cort Dahl
That’s what stands out to me about the story of you on the crutches — it wasn’t as though he’d memorized some rulebook of elevated compassion. He was totally tuned in to what was going on in the moment, and who was in front of him. And conversely, the vulnerability I felt was seeing how many of my interactions are governed by a script — this is what I say or do in this situation — rather than being fully there, authentic and spontaneous. There was something in that Dalai Lama story that felt like that spontaneity of really being there and seeing what’s actually happening. You don’t have to have some feeling or thought or impulse; it’s just a natural response, because you’re fully tuned in. It’s so beautiful. But getting there, from where a lot of us live, is kind of awkward, honestly. We’re relearning how to be human and connected without that rawness where we feel threatened or awkward.
Sharon Salzberg
That’s another reason it’s reassuring to have a sense of community. You’re not the only one making this experiment. And I’m curious — do you still blush, or is that over?
Cort Dahl
Occasionally I do. One of the few times I blush these days is actually when I tell that story. But it was a great practice, because it went on for months and was so inescapable. It was very clear: I could either go lock myself in my room and isolate, which clearly wasn’t healthy, or I was going to have to apply the practice I was learning. It was two things. One was to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, and, as you said, go easy on myself — I’d had a lot of social anxiety and thought I was past it, and then here it was again. So, not beating myself up, and really just feeling it fully. And then staying in that space of connection where the vulnerability was almost a practice of staying in the rawness of it — being human, being my messy self, and not having to fix anything. That was the practice, rather than, I will transcend this and no longer feel it. It was, no, okay, maybe this is the rest of my life, I’m just going to have this. So it was less about whether I blush anymore and more a comfort with the whole cascade — okay, I can let this play out, and it’s fine. But that took practice. The universe gave me a lot of opportunities.
I wonder if we could shift gears a little. You wrote Loving-Kindness and started teaching this back in the nineties, when mindfulness wasn’t even a thing yet — it became the big thing decades later. This was a pretty new practice coming into the more secular meditation world, and even in Buddhist circles it wasn’t nearly as well known as it is now. For a lot of traditions, it feels like there’s a sequence — you start with awareness or mindfulness practices, then move on to these. Richie, maybe you could tee this up, since it’s also a scientific question.
Richie Davidson
Sure, and thank you for teeing it up, Cort. Some of this emerged in the context of the book Danny Goleman and I wrote, Altered Traits, published in 2017. When we wrote it, we reviewed the scientific literature on meditation. There were, and still are, many more studies on mindfulness-type practices than on loving-kindness and compassion practices, but a scientific literature was beginning — and Sharon, I know you yourself have contributed to that, in work you’ve done with various scientists. One of the things we observed was that there was evidence of benefits measured with very short periods of practice. And it seemed then, and I believe it’s still the case, that on a variety of standardized measures — some of which you might think of as objective measures, meaning they don’t depend on a person’s own self-report — benefits emerge with loving-kindness and compassion practices pretty quickly. At least there’s some evidence for that.
In the work Cort and I have been doing, in developing our Healthy Minds Program, which includes practices of awareness as well as connection and others, one of the things we notice is that some people prefer to start with connection. In the standard sequence, as Cort mentioned, we typically invite people to do awareness or mindfulness practices first. And the last piece — then I’ll stop and love to hear your thoughts — is just to acknowledge that one size does not fit all. There are many different paths, and it’s probably a bit of hubris to think there’s a single path that’s best for everyone. So I wonder what your thoughts are, given the range of your teaching experience — if there are essential insights you can share.
(36:26) The obstacles, and where to start
Sharon Salzberg
I often think one of the greatest obstacles to practicing loving-kindness — and I teach it in a pretty classical way, repeating phrases, making that offering to yourself and to others — is even believing it’s not stupid. Having some sense that it’s a powerful way of being, rather than the doormat endlessly smiling at nothing. That’s a particularly Western problem, I’ve found — people think it’s a gift: you’ve either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t, you’re out of luck. Whereas in the East it certainly can be trained, because it’s an emergent property of how we pay attention, and we know attention can be trained. That’s exactly what meditation practice does. If people don’t get stuck on those issues, many find it an easier practice to begin with. It’s meaningful, it’s opening, and it’s often easier to concentrate — the breath can be a bit of a soporific and then you’re asleep, but here you’re making an offering, there’s imagery, something very alive about that sense of connection. People may come from a faith tradition that has the principles, if not the practices, embedded in it, so it feels like coming home to something precious. And they say the Buddha taught it as the antidote to fear. As a remedy for anxiety, it’s the exact parallel for our time, which is a pretty anxious time. So I’ve found many people do find it easier, if they can only trust it.
Cort Dahl
Do you have a sense of the easiest entry point? These days there’s a lot of talk about self-compassion, and it’s even, I wouldn’t say controversial, but in more traditional formulations sometimes it’s not a thing at all. In the Tibetan tradition you go to a loved one, a neutral person, difficult people, all beings — and you sort of bypass the self. And these days so many of us have so much self-hatred or fear toward ourselves. In all your years teaching, what have you found to be the easiest entry point for people just getting going, if this is new territory?
Sharon Salzberg
Funny that you say that about neutral people. I’ve always wondered about the social etiquette of telling somebody after a retreat, you were my neutral person — I found you totally neutral, really kind of indifferent to you. Anyway. Some of it is a sense of — which is hard if you’re teaching via an app, reaching a large number of people — sensing the person, and also receiving feedback. I was once doing a program with Barbara Fredrickson, who had done research into loving-kindness meditation. We were on stage, and she said she felt it was very important for people within a couple of weeks to have some sense of the effect of the practice, or they’d get too discouraged and stop. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself — which, in the Burmese or Theravada tradition, you do; you start with the offering of loving-kindness to yourself, then move on to someone who’s helped you. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself, and that’s so hard for so many people. So I said, why don’t you change the order? Just change the order. And she said she felt at the time — though I know she’s changed her mind since — that she couldn’t, because of scientific research needs for things to be in the same sequence. I realized at that point we had two different goals. I’d change the order in ten seconds if someone was in front of me and it was too much of a struggle. You do start classically with yourself, offering loving-kindness to yourself, but you don’t have to.
I find there are problems all along the way, truly. It takes a sense of investigation and experimentation, and not feeling so alone in your practice. People have said to me, I don’t have any benefactors — that’s the classical term for those who’ve helped us — I don’t have anybody. Somebody said, I had an unprotected childhood, I’ve never had people on my side. And you think, well, that’s a problem too. Even though we say, just move to the benefactor, it’ll be all shiny and you’ll feel there’s love in the universe — not always. So it’s a process of figuring out where that entry point is. As a growth experiment, it takes time and repetition. And the openings, which are genuine and real and liberating, may not be evidenced in your formal meditation practice. They’re shown in your life, which is where it counts — because that’s where we actually need it, but we don’t always think to look there. People think, I still don’t have these great waves of loving feeling. And it really doesn’t matter, because when we’re interacting with a stranger, or we’ve made a mistake and see how we speak to ourselves, we start to see the shadings of difference. That takes great patience too. How do you know if it’s working? It depends on where you look to see the effect.
It’s a practice that isn’t formulaic, even though you’re repeating phrases. It’s very creative. The principle I was taught when I did it intensively in Burma was that it needs to be done in the easiest way possible. And that’s hard. If it’s too hard to offer loving-kindness to yourself, move on to someone else. There’s another category in the sequence, over time — a difficult person. And it’s said to best be a mildly difficult person, not the person at first, not the one who’s harmed us horrifically or behaved so terribly on the world stage — that’s nearly impossible. Start with someone who’s just a little bit of unease, and over time move on. But I’ve found this is often a place — it certainly was in me — where people don’t like it. They say, don’t you think I can do the real thing? Why, do you think I’m a coward? What about this horrible person? That tendency to do something in the hardest way possible doesn’t really fit this approach. So that’s a whole concept of learning as well.
Cort Dahl
I love the playful experimentation. That’s the challenge — you read a book or hear a teaching, it’s presented in some way, and there’s a sense of, I should fit myself into that progression. What you’re saying, which I can see — not necessarily in the way the Tibetan approach is presented, but you can intuit how it evolved — is that they found something that worked for them culturally. In Tibet, the way it’s often presented, they start with a loved one, and specifically your mother. In Tibet, mothers are like deities, revered like no other culture I’ve seen. So it makes perfect sense to start there — there’s a natural sense of gratitude and connection and nurturing. And of course, whatever you want to say about other cultures, certainly here in the US we have some complexity in our experiences with our parents. I think that’s the first thing the Tibetans learned — that people aren’t responding in that intuitive way. But what you’re saying is, you look for the in, the connection point. Where is it easy? Where is it natural? And you nurture that. Where can you get the spark? If it’s not happening, you don’t just keep doing something that’s clearly not working. Once you have the spark, you keep it alive and extend it to something gradually more challenging. Most of us hear a teaching and think, that’s the right way, now I need to do it that way, and if it’s not working, somehow it’s my fault. It’s not easy. Richie, do you remember your early experiences with these practices, and what resonated with you?
(46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice
Richie Davidson
First, I think this last bit of conversation is so important — this theme of not fighting with your mind, approaching it with curiosity and openness, and exploring what might be the natural opening, the natural door you can go through. It’s not going to be the same for each person, and that’s fine. That’s the nature of being human. We’re different. I really love that, and it resonates deeply with the approach we often take.
For me, when I first discovered these practices of loving-kindness and compassion — I’m just naturally a touchy-feely guy, and I needed this. I needed my heart to be nourished.
Cort Dahl
For the record, that is an understatement. In the best possible way.
Richie Davidson
So it was really important to me. One of the things that’s been such a blessing is developing little rituals I bring to my everyday life, where these practices are so much a part of what I do every day. From making tea in the morning for my wife, to — when we had cats; our kitty recently passed away, so it’s no longer a ritual — but I used to scoop the cat litter every night and do it as a practice. It’s just a little shift of mindset, and what might ordinarily be a yucky chore became something I actually looked forward to. It was beautiful — done as an offering, an appreciation.
You alluded to this earlier, Sharon. One of the things we humans do pretty much every day is eat. And it doesn’t take much reflection to recognize how unbelievably interdependent we are. To get food on our plate requires this extraordinary village. That sense of appreciation for interdependence — we talk about this in our book; there’s a chapter on developing daily habits by piggybacking them onto activities of daily living, like eating. To use a bit of psychological jargon that conveys something important — the term is affordance. Eating is an affordance for the expression of appreciation and the recognition of interdependence. The very moment you’re sitting down to eat, it automatically arises. And being able to do this in your everyday life, a few times a day, every day — it changes you. It’s why we’ve come to the view, and we actually have evidence now to support this, that it’s easier than you think. It doesn’t take much to get these circuits of the mind going, or circuits of the heart, because this is who we are. This is our nature. We’re just recognizing it.
Sharon Salzberg
It’s beautiful. One of my students, to my eternal amusement, coined the phrase micro-dosing loving-kindness — for exactly that. You sit down to a meal and spend a few moments. Or I have a friend who looks at all the little faces in the boxes of a Zoom meeting and thinks, may you be happy. You have to be silent in a lot of those circumstances, but you make that offering, and then you start the meeting.
(52:00) Parting thoughts
Cort Dahl
I can’t believe we’re already at the end of our time. It feels like we could go for a few more hours. Maybe to end — if you have any parting thoughts. To state the obvious, we’re in an era pervaded by a feeling of division and a lack of connection. We might have connection with our close circle, but so much division outside of that. Any parting thoughts, individually or collectively, on how we can bring more of this into our lives, wherever we are on the path?
Sharon Salzberg
I love what Richie was just saying. We can do it, and we don’t have to think of it as this monumental task. It’s just, okay, this meal, this moment. It really makes a difference.
Cort Dahl
On that note, we’ll end with a note of gratitude to you, Sharon, for all the incredible work, the tireless effort to share these practices and ideas with so many people. I know it’s made a huge impact on our lives, even our scientific work, and on so many others. It’s been an honor to have you on for this conversation. I’m truly grateful for everything you’ve done and continue to do.
Sharon Salzberg
Well, thank you so much.
Richie Davidson
Deep bows, deep bows. One of the things we didn’t mention is that Sharon taught the very first meditation retreat for scientists at IMS, sponsored by Mind and Life. That was a pivotal moment for sharing these practices with the scientific community. I’m just so grateful for your dedication, and your indefatigable effort to bring the Dharma to the West. So thank you.
Sharon Salzberg
Thank you. Thank you both.
Cortland Dahl
To be continued. We hope to have you on again sometime. Thank you, Sharon.


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Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore how stable differences in brain activity may shape personality and the ways we engage with the world. They discuss introversion, anxiety, approach and withdrawal styles, what meditation can change without erasing our natural dispositions, and how meta-awareness can help us find the strengths in our own brain style.
This is the third part in a series on Brain Asymmetry:
Part 1: Your Brain Is A Storyteller
Part 2: The Left Brain / Right Brain Myth
Part 3: The Superpowers in Your Brain's Wiring


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dharmalab.co/subscribe

We now live in a world where boredom is almost optional. The moment there is a gap in the day, we can reach for a device and instantly distract ourselves.
In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore boredom and restlessness from both a scientific and contemplative perspective. Richie explains why boredom often brings us face to face with the “default mode” of the brain, the self-referential narrative we carry around about who we are. Cort reflects on the physical, restless energy of boredom, and how meditation can turn that discomfort into an object of curiosity. They also offer a simple and powerful tool to bring more awareness into our day: the next time we feel the urge to escape boredom, we can pause, notice the urge, and let that moment become a practice.
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Episode Companion Flashcards!

In this episode
00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?00:00:58 – Why boredom matters00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind00:04:19 – The default mode network00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle00:11:12 – Why kids need to move00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice
Written transcript for those who prefer to read
00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?
Cortland Dahl:We’re now living in a world where we just have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored.
Richie Davidson:Our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind. One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind.
00:00:58 – Why boredom matters
Cortland:Hello everyone. Welcome to Dharma Lab. I’m here with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Richard Davidson, one of the world’s eminent neuroscientists, and I’m Cortland Dahl.
Today we’re going to talk about something I think probably everybody experiences, and maybe experiences a lot, which is boredom and restlessness.
00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”
Cortland:I have such vivid memories of this. If we had a normal distribution of where people fall and how easily bored they are, I’m pretty sure I would have been an outlier. I was so easily bored as a kid. I was one of those kids who just could not sit still.
I have vivid memories, especially of summer afternoons, sitting at home and desperately trying to call my friends to see if anybody wanted to hang out. There was nothing on TV. This was back in the days before you could get everything on demand, just boring daytime TV shows.
And I remember this feeling of crawling out of my skin. I literally could not sit there. We had no mobile phones. This was long before the iPhone and smartphones. But I would have done anything to have had something like that.
Now it’s kind of amazing. After years of meditation, I would say if one thing has changed in my life, it’s my relationship to boredom. I kind of feel like I’m immune to boredom now. There’s a whole long practice history with that.
But I thought we could start by talking about boredom because we’re now living in a world where we have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored, to just sit with that.
So maybe we could talk about it from a scientific perspective. We can both share our personal experiences. But let me kick it over to you, Richie, and see if you have any opening thoughts. Then we can dive into it more deeply.
00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind
Richie:I think boredom is an interesting topic.
Cortland:It is. That’s the weird thing. It’s strangely interesting. Boredom is not boring.
Richie:Yeah, it is strangely interesting.
I think it’s a phenomenon that has been deeply impacted by changes in the fabric of our society, by the development of technology and so forth.
And I think boredom, our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind.
One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind. That is the one thing we can’t get rid of.
People try, with drugs and other ways to dull the mind, but under most circumstances we have our minds.
00:04:19 – The default mode network
Richie:From a neuroscientific perspective, we know that when a person is not engaged in a demanding activity that really requires their mental resources, what is active is a mode of brain function that we call the default mode.
The default mode is mostly associated with self-referential thought. By self-referential thought, we mean the narrative we tell ourselves about who we are and all the things associated with that.
And for a lot of people, that’s uncomfortable.
00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first
Richie:We have data from work we’ve done using our Healthy Minds program with beginning meditators who’ve never meditated before. We often see that after the first week or so of cultivating awareness, they actually become more anxious. They report more anxiety.
We think it’s not that they’re actually experiencing more anxiety, but that they’re noticing what’s going on in their mind. And what’s going on in their mind is often quite chaotic.
Simply becoming more aware of it makes them more anxious, or they perceive their anxiety more accurately for the first time. And so they report higher scores more accurately.
So I think one of the reasons people try to find strategies to get rid of boredom is because the chaotic nature of their own mind is uncomfortable.
I actually think this is why people engage in certain kinds of leisure activities that are cognitively demanding, but that don’t serve any other function other than being interesting leisure activities. For example, doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku.
There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time doing those things, and people report that they enjoy it. I think they enjoy it because it temporarily blocks the default mode. It temporarily engages other parts of their mind, so they’re not aware of the self-referential activity. They’re not aware of the narrative going on in the background.
00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness
Cortland:I’m curious about one thing I’d love to unpack from a scientific point of view: the relationship between these brain networks, specifically the default mode network that you talked about, and the rest of the nervous system.
If I think back to my teenage self sitting on the couch, which to me is the most intensely bored I can remember feeling in my life, I think at that time I was completely oblivious to what was going on in my mind.
When I remember that, I don’t remember the thought activity. Now, having meditated, I’m sure it was going on, but I just didn’t know how to attend to what was going on in my mind.
But what I do remember is the physicality. There was almost this charge of restless energy. I needed to release the energy, and it just had nowhere to go. You’re kind of just this ball of energy, and yet it’s like you’re trying to constrain a ball of energy that’s trying to get out, but there’s no release for it.
I’m imagining there are all sorts of things going on in the brain and the nervous system. It points to the relationship between thought activity, which can be completely subterranean at times. We’re not even really aware of all the thought activity, and yet it can have this bidirectional relationship with emotional experiences and physical experiences.
I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit too, because I think the felt experience of boredom is often a very physical experience.
00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle
Richie:Yeah, that’s so interesting.
When I think back to my childhood, during those periods I got on my bicycle.
Cortland:That’s what I should have done, probably.
Richie:I developed a lifelong habit, which I still have, of riding my bicycle.
I grew up in New York City, in Brooklyn, and for me my bicycle was liberating. I rode all over Brooklyn. I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan all the time. This was before I had permission to go on the subway by myself, but I could go on my bicycle. My parents didn’t really know where I was, and I just went. I explored all over.
That was important for me. I also felt a kind of somatic restlessness, but I was able to deal with it through physical activity.
00:09:38 – Restlessness, the body, and the brain
Richie:Getting back to the essence of your question, I think it is certainly the case, and we’re learning more and more about this now, that there is bidirectional communication between the brain and the body.
We know there are certain networks in the brain that communicate with the body. Activity in the brain will be expressed in part through the body, through changes in both the autonomic nervous system and the skeletal muscular system, through muscle tension and things of that sort.
One of the signs of anxiety is increased muscle tension, and you can measure that with electromyography. It’s a way to measure the electrical activity of muscles noninvasively, in the same way we measure the electrical activity of the brain. We can put sensors on muscles in different parts of the body, and there is indeed activation in these muscles associated with anxiety.
When we’re bored, I think we notice this muscle activity more because there is no competing demand for our mind. Our awareness might be pulled to the places where the signal is strongest. And there may be a lot of signal in the body.
00:11:12 – Why kids need to move
Richie:I think particularly for boys growing up, it never made sense to me that kids were expected to sit at desks for the majority of the day in school. It just seems so inconsistent.
Cortland:Yeah. It’s like a recipe. It’s like a boredom inducement, as though you were designing a system to make kids restless.
Richie:Right. Designing a system that seems inconsistent with their developmental stage. They need to move.
Cortland:It certainly was for me. It was like torture having to sit for hours on end and not move.
Richie:So I think that also plays into this.
When we begin to notice our body, it’s kind of the somatic parallel to noticing the chaotic nature of our mind. You were saying that you didn’t really notice a lot of anxious thoughts, but you did feel a lot of pent-up activity in your body.
I think for young kids, the somatic representation is particularly important.
00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom
Cortland:Yeah, and it’s a great entry point too, because from a practice point of view, what do you do with that? What would be the inner skill set to shift that dynamic and work with it in a more healthy way?
A lot of it, I think, is the physicality and the somatic aspect of it. So maybe we could talk about how each of us has practiced with this.
One of the gifts of meditation practice is that I think it’s almost impossible to have a meditation practice in which you don’t have to really grapple with boredom. You’re literally sitting doing nothing for long periods of time. That is basically what you’re doing.
Sleepiness and lethargy are strangely painful when you really can’t escape them. Anybody who experiences jet lag knows that well. It’s almost physically painful when you’re exhausted, and yet there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do with it.
Boredom is similar when there’s no escape hatch, so to speak.
00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort
Cortland:I noticed there’s a Gen Z meme going around. Younger generations these days have grown up with devices in their hands and have very little experience sitting with the discomfort of boredom. Equally, we could have a whole other topic on social discomfort. The fact that you can look at your phone is also an escape hatch for social discomfort.
In a way, it makes us less resilient because you don’t have to deal with that discomfort. Therefore, when it happens, you’re almost unprepared. You haven’t developed the muscle memory to do that.
But with boredom specifically, there’s this meme. I won’t use the term because it’s quite profane, but basically it’s just sitting and doing nothing. Put your phone down and just sit there. There’s discussion about the benefits of doing that as unfamiliar territory.
For us growing up, we had no choice but to sit and do nothing at times. But it’s interesting that there’s a recognition that unplugging and dealing with the discomfort of not being plugged in all the time is actually pretty helpful and important.
Let’s each share our practice experience with this. What have you found helpful, and how have you worked with that?
00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone
Richie:Just riffing off what you said, Cort, there are times, and this happens virtually every day for me, when I might be waiting in line. I could be waiting to get coffee somewhere, or waiting for my wife when we’re going out together. Maybe I go downstairs and I’m just waiting a few minutes.
I’ll notice that I have a period, maybe as short as two or three minutes, where there’s nothing scheduled. I feel the urge to take out my phone.
And I notice the urge. I just say, “Okay, I’m not going to take out my phone. I’m just going to sit here and be aware. I’ll be aware of the urge. I’ll be aware of my body.”
I might be able to go outside and feel the fresh air and just enjoy this few minutes of awareness.
It’s an intentional choice. I have at least a couple of those every single day where I notice, during an interstitial period where there’s nothing and I’m just waiting for something, that there’s an urge to pull out the phone because that’s what we do during these times in our modern society.
And I make an intentional choice to let it stay in my pocket.
It’s gotten to the point where it’s a little moment of celebration that I still have enough residual self-control to resist this, and then enjoy that moment of awareness.
00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness
Cortland:It’s very similar with me, to the point where it has become clear that you can actually train yourself so that the impulse and the urge spark awareness.
For me, awareness is the go-to practice. It’s the easiest entry point. It’s almost like you rewire yourself so that you feel that urge, and then immediately on the heels of that, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to. That’s not a fulfilling experience. I know what it feels like to always do that, and I’m going to do something else.”
Another thing I do is almost like a preemptive strike on the habit. Knowing there are certain times when that tends to happen, I intentionally leave my phone somewhere else.
When the space opens up, I don’t even have it next to me. I would literally have to go to a different room. The example I’ve given many times is the urge to pick it up first thing in the morning or to look at my phone when I go to bed.
I made a decision to leave my phone in my office. Often, when I finish work before dinner, I put my phone on its stand in my office, which is a room I don’t usually go into after dinner. Then it’s not even in my orbit.
I still notice those urges. It’s kind of like, “Where’s my phone?” And then I remember it’s in the office. I’m certainly not going to get up and go somewhere just for that purpose alone.
00:18:09 – Breathing with restless energy
Cortland:There are two things I’ve found really helpful in terms of what to do in that space.
One is using the breath as a support for awareness. Mindful breathing has always been part of my practice since my early days as a meditator. With that kind of restless energy, sometimes I’ll just take a few deep breaths and it settles the mind. That’s really helpful.
Sometimes I love to pay attention to the restless energy itself, the energy of the urge, the energy of the impulse, and not even try to change it or dampen it.
00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?
Cortland:As we started with, boredom is kind of interesting as an experience. It’s painful when we’re trying to avoid it. The pain is the impulse to escape the discomfort. But when you ask, “What actually is boredom? Where do you feel boredom?” it changes.
I can tell you exactly where I feel boredom. It feels like a buzzing energy. Then I notice it’s almost like a movement impulse. There’s something that feels like my premotor cortex is firing. It’s almost this feeling of, “I need to move in some way.” But it’s like the precursor to movement. It’s the impulse to move.
You can almost feel the body mobilizing. But somehow you’re not in a situation where you’re going to open the door and run down the street. It’s a mismatch between the context and the impulse to move. And that mismatch creates this weird discomfort, at least in my own experience.
When I pay attention to it, it’s weird because it’s the feeling of boredom, but the mind is interested.
Usually you would think those are mutually exclusive. You can’t feel bored and be interested. One is the absence of the other. But I can tell you, you can very much experience them at the same time. Maybe it ceases to be boredom at that time, but some elements are still there. It’s like the residue of boredom is still there, but you’re fascinated by it.
It’s very interesting when you look at it.
00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?
Richie:I think the somatic residue is still there, but you change the mindset. You can also examine: who is it that’s feeling this boredom? That can be very helpful too.
Cortland:Totally. That one I do in retreat every time there’s a hint of boredom. That’s my go-to practice.
Often it’s almost like: what is boredom, and who’s experiencing it?
Then I feel like I don’t find anything. It’s there one moment, and the moment I look, it’s like, “Where did that go?” It has a totally different effect. It seems like it’s there, and then it’s just ethereal. Suddenly it’s like, poof, somehow it changes.
Richie:I experience that when I’m actually sitting meditating. If I have boredom, or something very similar with sleepiness, just really looking at it with curiosity, “Who is actually sleepy?” Then it changes without trying to fix it.
It’s not like I’m trying to get rid of sleepiness. No, I’m really interested in: what is sleepiness? How does it feel?
00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice
Cortland:Okay, that’s it. We need to put a pin in sleepiness. We need to do an episode on sleepiness too, because that is another one that is so painful when you’re trying to avoid it.
As a meditator, it’s really painful to avoid sleepiness. It becomes a subtle spiral where you’re trying to avoid something you’re feeling, and it’s hard to get out of it. But when you turn toward it, it’s fascinating.
Boredom is the same.
I think we talked about awareness, and this last point is more of an insight practice. It’s getting curious and digging into either “What is boredom?” by unpacking the different dimensions of it, or, as you’re saying, Richie, “Who is it that’s experiencing this?”
This gets into a very Buddhist deconstruction of the self, which is incredibly interesting and powerful. It completely turns the table on boredom. Suddenly it’s fascinating.
You can use these little moments when you’re waiting for a cup of coffee, or you’re stuck somewhere, or you’re waiting for your friend or partner to go somewhere. There are just two minutes, and you’re sitting there. Suddenly all those moments become interesting and meaningful, rather than something you need to escape.
It becomes kind of a beautiful thing in life.
Any final thoughts before we sign off on this one?
Richie:I think we covered this in a nice way. Thank you.
Cortland:All right. To everyone watching, if you have not tried this for yourself, this may be less interesting theoretically, but super interesting experientially if you actually try some of these techniques.
I highly recommend a little inner exploration with this one if it’s not already on your inner roadmap.
Thank you again for joining us and tuning in. Hopefully you found something helpful here, and we’ll see you soon in another episode of Dharma Lab.
Thank you.


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In this episode, Richie and Cort continue their conversation on brain asymmetry by revisiting one of the most popular neuroscience ideas of the 1990s: the divide between the “left brain” and the “right brain.” Was the right hemisphere really the creative side of the brain, and the left hemisphere the logical one? Richie explains where that idea came from, what it got right, and why it was taken too far. Along the way, he explores language, visual-spatial processing, the 200 million neurons connecting the hemispheres, and why real creativity may depend less on one side of the brain than on the coordination between both.
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CHECK OUT EPISODE COMPANION FLASHCARDS below!
This is the second part of our conversation on hemispheric specialization with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl. For the first part, see Your Brain Is a Storyteller, where we explore what split-brain research reveals about consciousness and emotion. For more on the popular science misreadings Richie warns about here, see our recent episode on Why dopamine isn't your problem. Dr. Richard Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds and the Healthy Minds App. His new book with Dr. Cortland Dahl, Born to Flourish, was published by Simon & Schuster in March 2026.
Podcast Chapter List
00:00:00 – Intro clip: Creativity requires both hemispheres00:01:30 – Welcome to Dharma Lab00:02:47 – Left brain/right brain ideas in popular culture00:04:00 – Where did these ideas come from?00:05:11 – Language, handedness, and hemisphere differences00:07:36 – The myth of the creative right brain00:08:50 – The 200 million neurons connecting both hemispheres00:10:38 – Split-brain patients and the corpus callosum00:11:57 – What surprised Richie in the early asymmetry research?00:13:10 – The resting brain data they almost threw away00:15:15 – Stable patterns in the resting brain00:16:04 – From “noise” to emotional style00:18:23 – The prefrontal cortex and emotion00:19:58 – Could you choose to use one side of the brain?00:21:52 – A grain of truth, taken too far00:22:55 – Sequential vs. parallel processing00:23:50 – Why real creativity requires both hemispheres00:24:51 – Interhemispheric coordination and creativity00:26:08 – Tibetan mudras and two-handed movement00:27:31 – Visualization, imagination, and creativity00:28:34 – Closing
Earlier Post on Brain Asymmetry (Part 1)
Written transcript for those who prefer to read
Lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro clip: Creativity requires both hemispheres
00:00
Richard Davidson:One of the things that’s true about language, and especially about speech, is that it’s sequential. We can’t say six words at the same time. Just can’t do it.
Cortland Dahl:I’m pretty sure my son could when he was really young, but in any case, it’s usually true.
Richard Davidson:Usually true. But if you have pictures of those six words — let’s say there are six animals and you present a picture — you can see all six at the same time.
That difference is what we call sequential versus parallel processing. There are certain kinds of visual-spatial skills that can be done more in parallel, and other kinds of skills and tasks that require more sequential activity.
And of course, real human creativity, I think, requires both.
This is why we have this massive fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres together so they can work in an integrated way. I think it’s really an oversimplification to think that the right hemisphere is creative and the left is not.
Every human being has the potential to be creative. When humans are the most creative, we’re harnessing the full capabilities of our brain. It’s not just the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. It’s both.
Welcome to Dharma Lab
00:01:30
Cortland Dahl:Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl. I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson, who we all affectionately call Richie, one of the great living neuroscientists on the planet.
Today we’re going to continue a discussion we’ve had previously about some of Richie’s most important early work.
Richie, I’m excited to ask you about this, partly because I myself have always wanted to geek out and hear more about these things. We always have a million things to talk about, but I never get to talk to you about this.
In a previous episode, we talked about your very early research when you were just at Harvard, coming out of grad school, and your early work that showed differences between the different hemispheres of the brain — what is most simply referred to as asymmetry between these different hemispheres.
We talked a lot about that, and we can put a link to that previous discussion.
Left brain/right brain ideas in popular culture
00:02:47
This was back in the late seventies and into the eighties. Then something very interesting happened in the nineties.
I graduated from high school in 1992 and was just starting college. There was a book at that time, and there was all sorts of stuff in the popular media about asymmetry, although that word probably wasn’t used. I remember a lot of things about the left side and right side of the brain.
There was a book that I think was something like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It was pointing, in many ways, to your work, which you were very much at the forefront of and had been for many years at that point.
But I imagine, like many things, there was probably a lot of oversimplification and perhaps even misunderstanding about what the science really says and what’s really going on in the brain.
So maybe we could start there, going back to this discussion about asymmetry and what your research and other researchers were really finding about the different hemispheres of the brain — and how that relates to things like creativity, being more logical, and all the stuff that was at work in our popular conversations about the brain at that time.
Where did these ideas come from?
00:04:00
Richard Davidson:Thank you for that great introduction. There’s so much to say. Just being primed with that brings back intense memories from that period. I was very much living this.
I published more than 100 papers on brain asymmetry in one way or another, and edited two books on brain asymmetry that were published by MIT Press. They were major compendiums at the time, with a scientist in Norway named Kenneth Hugdahl, one of my early collaborators.
So yes, there’s so much to say.
Let’s begin by asking where these ideas may have come from.
In the previous episode of Dharma Lab, where we began to introduce this topic, one of the things we talked about is that the left hemisphere can speak and has language much more so than the right hemisphere — at least in most people.
Language, handedness, and hemisphere differences
00:05:11
I should say that these broad generalizations about the left and right hemisphere are roughly true for right-handed people only. They are not necessarily true for people who write with their left hand.
That itself is a whole topic of really interesting conversation, and we’ll bracket it. We can come back to it today briefly. But for now — and I apologize to all you lefties out there — since the majority of people are right-handed, roughly 85%, we’ll just stick with that for now.
One of the questions scientists posed is this: if the left hemisphere can speak and really is the primary province of language, what is the right hemisphere doing?
It’s presumably not just an appendage. It’s not just there to structurally latch on to the left hemisphere and hold it in place. It has to be doing something.
Does it have some specialized role? If the left hemisphere is specialized more for language, is there some set of functions for which the right hemisphere may be better than the left hemisphere?
Scientists discovered that there are certain kinds of visual and spatial tasks that the right hemisphere seems to be better at.
Now, when we say “better,” what we mean is typically a little bit better. It’s not like there are absolute differences. It’s not like the right hemisphere can do this and the left hemisphere can’t do this.
Similarly for language, although for language, the lateralization seems to be more definitive, particularly for speaking. For right-handed people, it’s pretty much the case that the left hemisphere can speak and the right hemisphere cannot speak. That’s pretty clear, and there are various ways in which that has been demonstrated.
The myth of the creative right brain
00:07:36
Let me get back to the title of this popular book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. There was a lot of hype that the right hemisphere is the creative hemisphere and the left hemisphere is the analytic hemisphere.
When it got overgeneralized, it became something like: the right hemisphere is more interesting and the left hemisphere is boring.
Those kinds of generalizations, in my view, were taken way too far.
The other really important thing to keep in mind is that within a hemisphere, there is a lot of specialization as well. The anterior portions of the cerebral cortex, the prefrontal region, are doing something quite different from the back of the brain.
The visual areas and the parietal area are doing different things. The parietal area is where visual information, auditory information, and kinesthetic information are all integrated. It’s kind of a multi-sensory melting pot.
So these characterizations may apply to certain specific regions within a hemisphere, and not necessarily to the whole hemisphere.
The 200 million neurons connecting both hemispheres
00:08:50
The other thing that is so important to keep in mind is that in most of us who are neurologically “normal,” meaning we have basically intact brains, there are roughly 200 million neurons connecting one side of the brain to the other.
It’s a huge number. It’s the largest white matter fiber bundle in the brain. White matter refers to the axons that connect neurons together.
There are 200 million neurons connecting many different parts of the two hemispheres, virtually from the front to the back of the brain.
If I were to present information to one hemisphere — and you can do this by doing certain tricks — it would be presented initially to one hemisphere. If you are focusing straight ahead and information is presented on the left side of that fixation point, that information will be projected initially to the right side of the brain. The pathways are crossed.
Similarly, if you are focusing straight ahead and information is presented to the right of that fixation point, it goes to the left hemisphere of the brain.
But the moment it gets to one hemisphere, it is automatically transferred to the other hemisphere, so both hemispheres become recipients — unless, for some reason, there is damage to the fiber bundle connecting the two hemispheres.
Split-brain patients and the corpus callosum
00:10:38
In the previous episode of Dharma Lab, Cort, you brought up the case of split-brain patients whose corpus callosum — the main fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres of the brain — has been surgically severed.
That is not done very much anymore, but in patients who have very severe epilepsy that originates in one hemisphere and spreads to the other hemisphere, producing a huge grand mal seizure, it was found that if you surgically separate the hemispheres, you can dramatically reduce the severity of the epilepsy.
So that has been done. It’s not done very much anymore, but there was a time when that kind of neurosurgery was done.
There are patients walking around with two hemispheres that are relatively independent because the fiber bundle was severed. But in most of us, that’s not true.
Our two hemispheres are talking together all the time. Whatever specialization might exist, and it does exist to some extent, the two hemispheres are typically cooperating and sending information rapidly back and forth.
What surprised Richie in the early asymmetry research?
00:11:57
Cortland Dahl:I’m curious. There are two big questions I want to ask. One goes back to the book and the stuff in popular culture, but maybe let’s set that aside for a moment.
You had been researching this for a long time. You started back in the seventies, and this was clearly a huge focus of yours in the eighties.
Amidst these hundreds of papers that you studied, plus hundreds more in the broader field with other colleagues and researchers, what were the things that were surprising?
When was your mind blown? When were you surprised? What were the big breakthroughs where you thought, “Whoa, I didn’t see that coming,” or that really shifted the understanding in some way?
Richard Davidson:I would say the biggest breakthrough was that these were the days before MRI was available, before functional MRI was available.
Cortland Dahl:So most of this was EEG, looking at electrical patterns in the brain?
Richard Davidson:Exactly. We were looking at EEG, electrical patterns from scalp electrodes that were non-invasive. You’ve had that done to yourself. And we can make some inferences about how activation patterns are shifting and occurring using that method.
The resting brain data they almost threw away
00:13:10
The thing that was most mind-blowing to us from all this work is that when you put these electrodes on people and just ask them to sit and rest — before we gave them tasks — we would collect eight minutes of resting data.
They would alternate between one minute of eyes open and one minute of eyes closed. We would collect eight minutes of “resting” data.
Cortland Dahl:So you were doing, as we do in brain imaging all the time now, an early resting-state analysis, essentially.
Richard Davidson:Exactly. But we typically did very little with that in the early days. Actually, in the very early days, the honest truth is we did nothing with it.
It was just a time to make sure our recordings were accurate. If there were any tweaks in calibration, or if an electrode was not making good contact, we would fix it at that time.
But we would throw out the data, because we were interested in what happens when we give people tasks and look at changes in the brain.
It turns out that we were throwing out the most interesting data.
What people were showing when they were just sitting and resting and not doing anything turned out to be fascinating. Some people had greater activation on the left side of their brain when they were sitting and resting. Other people had greater activation on the right side.
That differed depending on whether the electrodes were in the back of the head or the front of the head, so it wasn’t the same across the hemispheres.
Stable patterns in the resting brain
00:15:15
When we first started seeing this and paying attention to it, we thought, “It can’t really be stable. It can’t be a characteristic of people.”
So we brought people back a week later, a month later.
Cortland Dahl:So you thought it was just random shifting. If you looked long enough, you would see that everybody was all over the place. You just got a snapshot, but you didn’t want to draw any conclusions.
Richard Davidson:Exactly.
Then we brought people back several weeks later, several months later. Unbelievably, it was super stable.
If a person was showing left-sided activation today, if we tested them three months from now, we would almost certainly see a very similar pattern three months later.
Cortland Dahl:So this is like a neural disposition, basically.
Richard Davidson:A neural disposition.
It didn’t matter who the people were putting on the electrodes, who was testing them, or what day of the week it was. They were showing a very stable pattern. Remarkably stable.
That really blew our minds. We were not expecting that at all.
From “noise” to emotional style
00:16:04
Once we started discovering that, we thought: if this is really a stable characteristic, then it must be associated with some behavioral differences or experiential differences.
That’s when we started our whole journey into this domain of affective style, or emotional style, which refers to enduring ways in which people respond differently to emotional challenges.
We discovered a whole bunch of interesting things with that.
This is a great case of something we first thought of as noise turning out to be the most interesting part of our experiment. Fortunately, we were paying enough attention that it enabled us to discover something novel.
Cortland Dahl:It’s funny that there’s such a parallel with how the default mode network was discovered later with imaging research. It was almost the exact same thing: accidentally noticing something in resting-state periods.
That seems like a natural segue into what eventually became this popular meme around the brain, the left side and right side. It’s funny how it becomes almost a caricature of the brain. We’ve talked elsewhere about dopamine or the amygdala. There may be some legitimate, genuine scientific insight, but then we draw all sorts of conclusions. It becomes good and bad, overly simplistic, and we lose the nuance.
The prefrontal cortex and emotion
00:18:23
If we translate that into what you actually learned, in this case it sounds like a lot about emotion. At some point we’re going to talk about the whole field of affective neuroscience, because I’m imagining that in those early days you weren’t necessarily thinking about emotion as a guiding principle, but it sounds like it led you into that realm.
Richard Davidson:We were thinking about emotion early on. That was part of what we were trying to do. We were thinking particularly about what role the prefrontal cortex was playing in emotion.
In the last episode of Dharma Lab, I mentioned this obscure paper written by a very famous neuroanatomist at MIT.
Cortland Dahl:The cult classic of scientific research, I remember.
Richard Davidson:Right. This was a guy I studied neuroanatomy with, Walle Nauta. He wrote a paper published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, where he speculated for the first time, really by a mainstream scientist, about the role of the prefrontal cortex in emotion.
That is what got me started on this path to look at the prefrontal cortex and emotion.
But the hype about brain asymmetry was focused on the specializations in the back of the brain, not the front of the brain. We were really the first to introduce the notion of asymmetries in the front of the brain that may be related to emotion.
There was earlier work on asymmetries having to do with language and visual-spatial processes, more focused on what is going on in the back of the brain. The right-brain coloring book is really alluding to work focused on specialization of the two hemispheres in the back, not in the front.
Could you choose to use one side of the brain?
00:19:58
Cortland Dahl:A lot of the stuff in popular culture gave the impression that you could kind of choose. Even the title of that book suggests, “I want to draw from the right side of my brain,” and somehow I’m going to shut off the left side.
To what degree is this under volitional control? I’m guessing some function or activity might be, but maybe not. To what degree is there any control?
Richard Davidson:One of the very early papers I published — which I haven’t thought about in literally decades — was a biofeedback study where we gave people feedback, not based on activation in one hemisphere or the other, but based on the difference in activation.
We were giving them feedback to change their asymmetry. We found that people were able to do that to some extent with very little training, just using this kind of neurofeedback.
Cortland Dahl:On the one hand, that makes sense to me. You could learn quite quickly what you’re doing that makes something go up or down.
But it’s a different thing to say that a given function, like drawing, can be shifted in that way. Language, for example, probably isn’t something you’re going to shift to the right side of the brain. Certain functions, processes, and activities are going to fall more to one side or the other.
When it came to all the stuff in popular culture, did that make sense to you? Did it feel like it was drawing on something legitimate, or did it feel like we were in hand-wavy territory?
A grain of truth, taken too far
00:21:52
Richard Davidson:There was a grain of truth, but it was way overgeneralized.
To the extent that it is grounded, it is referring to what may be going on in posterior parts of the cortex, mostly the parietal and temporal regions of the brain.
It’s interesting to ask what fundamental dimension might actually be the basis of this lateralization. That was a question asked early on.
Why is language more specialized to the left hemisphere? Is there something about the left hemisphere in those regions that is more conducive or preferential for language? And what is going on in the right hemisphere that may be more conducive to certain kinds of visual and spatial functions?
Sequential vs. parallel processing
00:22:55
One of the core dimensions that has been studied — though I would not say it is definitive — is that language, especially speech, is sequential.
We can’t say six words at the same time. Just can’t do it.
Cortland Dahl:I’m pretty sure my son could when he was really young, but in any case, it’s usually true.
Richard Davidson:Usually true.
But if you have pictures of those six words — let’s say there are six animals and you present a picture — you can see all six at the same time.
That difference is what we call sequential versus parallel processing. There are certain kinds of visual-spatial skills that can be done more in parallel, and other kinds of skills and tasks that require more sequential activity.
Why real creativity requires both hemispheres
00:23:50
Of course, real human creativity, I think, requires both.
This is why we have this massive fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres together, so they can work in an integrated way and utilize whatever specialization might be in each hemisphere together, in a synergistic way, to accomplish something that may be greater than either hemisphere alone can accomplish.
I think it’s really an oversimplification to think that the right hemisphere is creative and the left is not.
Every human being has the potential to be creative. When humans are the most creative, we’re harnessing the full capabilities of our brain.
It’s not just the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. It’s both.
That is one of the really important take-home messages.
Interhemispheric coordination and creativity
00:24:51
One of the speculations that is super interesting — although there really has not been very much science around this — is that what may really stimulate creativity are tasks that require a lot of interhemispheric coordination.
One class of tasks that require a lot of interhemispheric coordination are certain kinds of motor tasks. For example, jugglers.
Juggling requires a lot of interhemispheric coordination. It’s not just hand-eye coordination, but coordinating what’s happening between the two hands.
One of the things we know is that pretty much the control of the right hand is in the left motor region of the brain, and the left hand is pretty much controlled by the right side of the brain.
If the hands are working together, it requires interaction between them. So one really interesting, untested hypothesis is whether exercises that facilitate this kind of interhemispheric coordination may be beneficial for certain kinds of creative activities that may have nothing to do with those motor tasks.
Tibetan mudras and two-handed movement
00:26:08
Cortland Dahl:We talked about this Tibetan practice of mudras, where you’re doing things with your hands, but what’s going on with one hand is totally different from what’s going on with the other hand.
It’s like the whole thing where you pat your head and circle your stomach, but on steroids. They almost have to operate completely independently, but it goes against some biological wiring. You have to retrain something deep to do that.
That would be an example of something where you’re doing it physically, but the idea is that perhaps it is opening something up in the creative space, or in some other way.
Richard Davidson:Yes. This was something that Cort and I talked about just before we started recording.
There are these mudras in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. They are hand gestures, and they can be very complex and quite different. They involve different motions of each hand, all occurring simultaneously in a kind of beautiful orchestration when done by an accomplished practitioner.
There may be some real side benefits that Tibetan yogis thousands of years ago had some experiential insight about, which may potentially be revealed in some future science.
Visualization, imagination, and creativity
00:27:31
Cortland Dahl:There are so many interesting things there. That’s another little rabbit hole.
It’s interesting that at the time you do those physical gestures, you’re also doing very elaborate movements with your imagination. You’re visualizing whole worlds, essentially. It’s like you’re dreaming something into existence, but you’re doing these physical movements at the same time.
It really is all about creativity in some respect.
I’ve already cataloged a whole range of things to talk about. In a subsequent episode, I really want to dig deeper into the hemispheric differences in the resting state — not only that you found those hemispheric differences, but what they mapped onto in terms of experiential qualities.
What was different about those people aside from the electrical activity in their brain? Maybe that’s something we can dig into in a future episode.
Closing
00:28:34
Richard Davidson:I’d love to do that.
Cortland Dahl:Yet another great window into all the amazing work you’ve done, Richie. Thank you for sharing this.
And for everybody joining, thank you for sticking around and spending a little time with us. I can promise many more discussions like this. So if you found this interesting, there will be much more to come.
Thank you, Richie, and thank you everybody for tuning in.
Richard Davidson:Thank you, Cort. Thank you all.


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In this episode, Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl unpack a very misunderstood molecule in popular culture: dopamine. Often blamed for craving, scrolling, distraction, and the endless loop of wanting more, dopamine is not something we can “detox” from or simply turn off. It is essential to motivation, aspiration, learning, and even the desire to practice meditation. Together, Richie and Cort explore what dopamine actually does in the brain, why wanting and liking are not the same thing, how novelty keeps us hooked, and how savoring may help us step out of compulsive loops and reorient toward what is genuinely nourishing. Enjoy!
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Podcast Chapter List
(00:00:00) – Dopamine is not something we can turn off
(00:03:46) – What is a neurotransmitter?
(00:06:04) – Dopamine as neurotransmitter and neuromodulator
(00:08:20) – Why the brain is too complex for simple chemical stories
(00:12:02) – The awe and mystery of the brain
(00:15:51) – Dopamine, motivation, and the myth of dopamine detox
(00:17:04) – Wanting vs. liking
(00:19:24) – Doom scrolling and the loop of seeking
(00:22:32) – Does dopamine explain why we keep scrolling?
(00:24:21) – Experiential fusion and mindless behavior
(00:25:42) – Why one molecule is never the whole story
(00:26:57) – Novelty and reward prediction error
(00:29:00) – The Easter egg example: seeking, finding, and disappointment
(00:30:23) – Dopamine in different brain circuits
(00:35:37) – What actually helps with compulsive loops?
(00:37:47) – Savoring as a way out of wanting
(00:39:24) – Meditation, breath, and the practice of savoring
(00:43:20) – Letting go of seeking
(00:43:56) – Gratitude, bodhicitta, and the sweetness of connection
(00:45:28) – Renunciation as reorientation
(00:48:00) – Closing
Related Topics From the Archives:
Written transcript for those who prefer to read
Lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Dopamine Is Not Something We Can Turn Off (00:00:00)
Richard Davidson:Dopamine is essential for human life.
Cortland Dahl:There’s no turning dopamine off.
Richard Davidson:No turning dopamine off. And anyone who thinks they’re going on a dopamine detox and really banishing their brain of dopamine, I hate to burst the bubble, but that would not be compatible with life.
Dopamine is essential in motivation, desire, seeking, and anything that is goal-directed. It has been described by the neuroscientist Kent Berridge as central to “wanting,” which he contrasts with something that it is often confused with: “liking.”
Many times, we like the things we want. But not all the time. Sometimes we get caught up in a wanting cycle that is not necessarily leading to liking.
But dopamine also plays an incredibly positive and important role. When I spring out of bed in the morning, go down to have my cup of tea, and have the strong aspiration to meditate, that is inevitably relying on the dopamine system too.
Welcome to Dharma Lab (00:01:45)
Cortland Dahl:Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with my dear friend Richie, Dr. Richard Davidson, who, as I’m sure most of you know, is one of the most eminent neuroscientists on the planet.
We’re incredibly fortunate to have him in discussion yet again, and for a topic that he is especially well suited to talk about, which is dopamine.
I never thought dopamine would be a hook for a conversation like this, but it has taken on almost mythic status in popular culture. It has almost become the bad boy of the brain, like the amygdala, which is one brain region that always gets a bad rap and is associated with all sorts of negative things.
These days, of course, we hear a lot about dopamine. You might have heard of things like a dopamine detox, which makes it sound like dopamine is some toxic thing in the brain that we want to get rid of or shut off or have less of in some way.
So we thought we could get into the science of neurotransmitters generally, and then specifically dopamine. What does the science really say? What function does dopamine actually play, not only in our brains but in our ability to thrive and flourish?
Richie, maybe we can start by zooming way out. I’m guessing people have heard the word dopamine. Some may have geeked out a little and learned more or even tried something like a dopamine detox. Other people may have heard about serotonin or other neurotransmitters, but my guess is that people’s understanding is still a little fuzzy.
Could we start with the idea of a neurotransmitter, and then zoom in and look at dopamine specifically?
What Is a Neurotransmitter? (00:03:46)
Richard Davidson:Yes. Thank you so much. This is a juicy topic and very appropriate for Dharma Lab.
There is a constellation of molecules in the brain that play many different roles. One of those roles is what you mentioned: a neurotransmitter.
A neurotransmitter has a very specific role in mediating the interaction between two neurons. When one neuron fires, it sends an electric potential down the axon of that neuron. You can think of the axon as the wire extending from the cell body. The cell body is where the basic machinery is, and the axon extends from the neuron.
Those axons can be short, and they can also be very, very long. If I asked you right now to move the big toe in your right foot, all of you should be able to do that. That is actually a neuron that extends all the way from your brain to your big toe.
Cortland Dahl:That’s a single neuron? That’s cool. I didn’t know that.
Richard Davidson:Yes, it is a single neuron. Neurons have many different lengths.
At the end of the axon, there is machinery that releases a little packet of chemical. That packet binds to what is called a receptor on another neuron, and that initiates an electric change in the second neuron.
That is how communication works between two or more neurons. That is called a neurotransmitter.
Dopamine as Neurotransmitter and Neuromodulator (00:06:04)
There are also neurotransmitters and other molecules that act as neuromodulators. A neuromodulator is different from a neurotransmitter. Dopamine, which is the topic of our conversation today, can serve as both a neurotransmitter and a neuromodulator.
What is the difference?
A neuromodulator alters the threshold for the firing of a neuron. It is not directly involved in cell-to-cell communication in the same way. It is more like the molecular soup in which the neuron resides, and that changes the threshold for the firing of the subsequent neuron.
There are many molecules that serve as both neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, and dopamine is one of them.
I think most neuroscientists would agree that we have not yet discovered the full range of neuromodulators and neurotransmitters in the human brain. It is a vast number. In the popular press, we’ve heard about dopamine, serotonin, maybe norepinephrine, maybe GABA. But there are hundreds of these molecules playing complicated roles.
This is why, in general, it is extremely hazardous to pin a particular mental state on a single molecule. That is almost assuredly excessively simplistic and wrong.
To the best of our knowledge, there is no well-defined psychological state that can be pinned to one specific molecule. It is much more complex than that.
Why the Brain Is Too Complex for Simple Chemical Stories (00:08:20)
Cortland Dahl:Just as a footnote, I think it’s mind-boggling when you hear how complex our brains are. Could you say a little about the estimates of how many neurons there are, and then beyond that, the connections between neurons?
Now we’re talking about neurons communicating with each other. It’s an order of magnitude we can’t even comprehend.
Richard Davidson:The estimated number of neurons in the human brain is about 85 or 88 billion.
Cortland Dahl:That’s a “b,” everyone.
Richard Davidson:Yes, billion. And the estimated number of connections among those neurons is in the trillions.
Cortland Dahl:That’s in your head, everyone. Trillions of interconnections, and all these little communications, neuromodulators and neurotransmitters. The number of times that is happening right now, as you’re listening, is beyond what we can actually think about.
Richard Davidson:That’s very true. I often reflect on this as a humility induction, because it is so complicated and we really understand so little of it at this point in time.
If we pause to appreciate the complexity, and if we are honest with ourselves, it really is a humility induction.
It also exposes how gross our measures are. We’ve done a lot of research with EEG, including the first paper we published with long-term meditation practitioners. EEG involves putting electrodes on the scalp surface. We use it because it is non-invasive and has very fast time resolution.
But some people have likened EEG to taking a stethoscope, putting it on the hood of a car, and trying to understand how the car works by listening to the sounds from the stethoscope. That is what EEG is like.
Cortland Dahl:So by “gross,” you mean it is such a coarse level of analysis for something that is so incredibly nuanced, beyond what our minds can comprehend. At some point in history, we’ll look back and it will seem like the Stone Age, the way we look at the brain now.
Richard Davidson:Totally.
There is a whole class of research that goes on in animals, and there are serious ethical issues about this kind of research. That could be the subject of another Dharma Lab. We won’t talk about that right now.
Putting those ethical issues temporarily aside, those studies in animals are done because they use methods that cannot be used in humans. They are invasive methods that allow scientists to look at a much more granular level of analysis that cannot be examined with the methods we currently have in humans.
The Awe and Mystery of the Brain (00:12:02)
Cortland Dahl:This was not where we were expecting to go, but I think this could be another episode too: the mystery of the brain.
You might come to somebody like Richie and think you’re going to get sophisticated knowledge, and in many ways you will. But in another way, you get a sense that even the world’s leading experts are barely knocking on the door of this universe that is so awe-inspiringly complex and nuanced.
It’s almost like looking up into the night sky and feeling the majesty of this incredible universe, and realizing that this is literally happening between our ears. It’s awe-inducing when you open up to that.
Richard Davidson:It is. We are constantly forming new synapses, and even structural changes in the brain happen much more quickly than we ever thought they could.
One really interesting thing about the brain is that it has no receptors for feeling itself. When you touch your skin, you can feel that. If you put a vibrator on the skin, you would feel that. But if you opened the brain and put a little vibrator directly on the brain, you wouldn’t feel it.
There is probably an evolutionary reason for this. Our brains are active all the time. If we felt tingling every time our brains were active or new synapses were forming, it would disrupt our capacity to navigate everyday life. We wouldn’t be able to sleep. It would interfere with everything.
But I sometimes do a little practice where I envision all these changes occurring. It is majestic. It really is awe-inspiring. I’ve looked at enough images from studies that have taken samples of brain tissue, where you can see with an electron microscope at super-high resolution what we can’t see non-invasively. You see the extraordinary complexity and beauty that we simply do not have introspective access to.
Cortland Dahl:Yet another topic to put a pin in for a future episode: the mystery of the brain, and beyond that the mystery of consciousness.
But let’s zoom back in to neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. One way to think about this is that neurotransmitters are how neurons are talking to each other, and neuromodulators influence the level of activity between neurons.
Dopamine is interesting because it has become so meme-worthy. What do we actually know about dopamine and the functions it serves in the brain?
Dopamine, Motivation, and the Myth of Dopamine Detox (00:15:51)
Richard Davidson:Dopamine is essential for human life.
Cortland Dahl:There’s no turning dopamine off.
Richard Davidson:No turning dopamine off. Anyone who thinks they’re going on a dopamine detox and really banishing their brain of dopamine, I hate to burst the bubble, but that would not be compatible with life.
Dopamine is essential in what we can think of as motivation, desire, seeking, anything goal-directed where we have a plan. Even if it’s a pedestrian plan, like after this podcast we might go have dinner. It could be something as simple as that. There is an element of motivation involved in that, and it involves the dopamine systems in the brain.
Wanting vs. Liking (00:17:04)
Dopamine has been described by a very famous neuroscientist, Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan, who has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the dopamine system. He has labeled a key function of the dopamine system as “wanting,” and he contrasts that with something it is often confused with, which is “liking.”
Many times, we like the things we want. But not all the time.
For Dharma Lab viewers, who likely have some appreciation for how the mind works, I think we all have some insight into recognizing that sometimes we get caught up in a wanting cycle that is not necessarily leading to liking. It is a kind of perseverative loop of wanting.
This is part of the reason why there are popular stereotypes about dopamine.
But dopamine also plays an incredibly positive and important role. When I spring out of bed in the morning, go down to have my cup of tea, and then meditate, and have the strong aspiration to meditate, that is inevitably relying on the dopamine system too.
If dopamine were completely blunted, it would be very difficult to get out of bed and do anything. You can think of dopamine as part of an approach-oriented, energetic stance.
Anytime we have an aspiration to do something, that is going to rely, at least to some extent, on the dopamine system. So this is not a system we want to get rid of.
Doom Scrolling and the Loop of Seeking (00:19:24)
Cortland Dahl:Let me give you a real-world experience, and I’d love to ask how dopamine does or does not play a role in it.
I am very rarely on social media. It’s not something I spend much time on. But the other night I had an experience that a lot of people probably have all the time. Somebody forwarded me a link from one of these apps where you end up scrolling forever.
It was a video that made me laugh hysterically out loud. I was sitting by myself in a room, and if someone had looked in the window, they would have thought I was nuts.
It was a video where two friends were looking at themselves on the screen, and one had put on a filter that made it look like a bug was crawling across the other person’s face. So the person sees what looks like a spider on their face and starts slapping themselves. It was hilarious.
I watched that and was literally laughing hysterically. And the algorithms of these apps know when you watch the whole thing twice. So then it shows you more of the thing you clearly liked.
Then there was another one, and the next one was even funnier. It was wives playing a prank on their spouses, pretending to freak out like something was happening, just to see what the husband would do. And the husbands would start screaming and running around. Again, it was hilarious. I was laughing out loud.
But then I got into this loop where I was trying to find another one. It was so funny, and I had this little burst of joy. Then I literally wasted an hour of my time. After a few minutes I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was just scrolling mindlessly.
I wasn’t consciously thinking, “I have to find another funny video.” I was just in this inner loop, sucked into the endless scroll, until I finally thought, “I’ve got to go to bed.” Then I felt like, “What a waste of time.”
That first minute or two was actually funny. It was nice to laugh hysterically. And then it became a lot of mind-numbing scrolling that was utterly unsatisfying.
So let’s look at a moment like that from the perspective of what is going on in the brain, and specifically with dopamine. These are the moments where people demonize dopamine, as though that’s the thing that happened and we need to somehow extract it.
What would you say about that?
Does Dopamine Explain Why We Keep Scrolling? (00:22:32)
Richard Davidson:Those are interesting experiences that I think all of us have occasionally.
I would say dopamine likely plays some role, at least in the initial entry into that scrolling perseveration. Whether it is sustaining that over the whole period of time, I don’t know. It’s an interesting question.
Part of it depends on the extent to which you feel a real strong urge to do it. If someone took away your phone at that point, how would you react? There are ways of probing whether the wanting cycle is really dominant.
There could be other reasons why people scroll. One of my theories is that people engage in this kind of behavior in part to block the default mode, because the scrolling is consuming.
I’m curious about your phenomenological report of when you are scrolling. But I think that at least in the initial stages of scrolling, when people are really into it, there is what we would call experiential fusion.
Experiential Fusion and Mindless Behavior (00:24:21)
Cortland Dahl:For sure.
Richard Davidson:Their whole awareness is fused with the activity they’re engaged in. There’s not a lot of meta-awareness. They’re just sucked in.
Cortland Dahl:It’s almost like there’s no conscious doom scrolling, because if you were fully aware and conscious, you would just stop doing it.
I sometimes have the same experience drinking soda. You almost have to do it mindlessly, because if you really savor the taste, it’s actually kind of gross. I’ve noticed there are certain foods and certain things you consume that only work mindlessly.
Richard Davidson:But that’s not true of French fries.
Cortland Dahl:Richie, now you’re in sensitive territory. We’re not going to go there. I will concede soda. French fries, we’ll see. I’ll experiment with that.
But it’s true. Certain things only work mindlessly. When you consciously do them, you would not do them anymore because they don’t feel good. It’s interesting. It changes a lot.
Richard Davidson:Exactly. That is in part what sustains that kind of behavior as well. And I don’t think that is primarily a dopaminergic process.
Viewers may ask, “Okay, then what molecule is responsible for that?” And I would say, likely 500 molecules. Don’t even try to think about it that way. It’s not the right level of analysis.
Novelty and Reward Prediction Error (00:25:42)
Cortland Dahl:Going back to Berridge’s work, we have a whole episode on the distinction between liking and wanting, and there’s a great paper where he summarizes a lot of the research in this area.
If you look at the experience I was having, there was a moment of genuine liking. I was having fun. I was laughing hysterically. Then there was a moment of seeking. I was just looking.
There are all sorts of interesting things in the way algorithms work. There is something around duration. There is something around novelty. If you really pay attention, it’s not just that everything is the same. The algorithm gives you things that are different intentionally, and then you get something you like and it feels new again.
If you got the exact same thing 10 times in a row, even if you liked it at first, you would grow accustomed to it. It would lose the novelty factor. So there is something around duration, novelty, and emotion. There are all sorts of things mixed into it.
Richard Davidson:The novelty piece you’re mentioning is really important. It is a very important aspect of dopamine function that has been studied.
There is this idea of a reward prediction error, as it is called in the technical scientific lingo.
What is a reward prediction error?
In this case, you have a certain class of video that you’re looking at. You saw one, so you have a mental model of what these videos are like.
Cortland Dahl:So now that’s what I want. That’s the wanting. I’m looking for that.
Richard Davidson:Exactly. You’re looking for that.
Let’s say the next video you encounter is even more hysterical. That is a reward prediction error. You would actually see a larger dopamine spike than you saw previously.
If you saw a video that was comparable to what you just saw, there wouldn’t be any change in the dopamine signal. If you saw a video that was much less interesting and less compelling, there would be a decline, a decrement in dopamine.
Dopamine signaling is very dynamic and responsive to the information to which you are being exposed. It plays an important role in certain aspects of learning, and it informs your future seeking.
The Easter Egg Example: Seeking, Finding, and Disappointment (00:29:00)
Cortland Dahl:Let’s unpack that.
We just had Easter in the U.S., and I had this image of a little kid running around looking for an Easter egg. They have the model. They know what they want. They’re looking, they’re not finding, then they find something. Sometimes they find something beyond what they expected, maybe an extra big piece of candy or the basket with all the candy.
That seems like a good example because the seeking is very clear. The mental model is very clear. The not finding, and then the finding more, has all the dimensions you talked about.
But it’s interesting. You’re saying that when the kid is looking for the Easter egg and doesn’t find it, say they lift up the cushion of the couch and there’s nothing there, dopamine levels will actually drop in that moment?
Richard Davidson:Yes.
Cortland Dahl:Because if you forget about the neurotransmitters and just look at behavior, of course the seeking doesn’t stop. They immediately shift and think, “Where do I need to go next?”
So there’s something still driving the seeking. But if dopamine is dropping, and if dopamine is that motivational, goal-directed impulse in the brain, how does that work?
Dopamine in Different Brain Circuits (00:30:23)
Richard Davidson:Those are excellent questions. It’s an opportunity to speak about another piece of complexity: dopamine is found in a number of different parts of the brain. It’s not just in one isolated location.
Its function in different parts of the brain is different. It is the same molecule, but the location is different, the receptors are different, the connections are different, and the function is different.
The dopamine that is part of the wanting circuit is found primarily in an area of the brain called the ventral striatum, a subcortical area that is rich in dopamine.
We know that if there is brain damage to that area, based mostly on animal studies, animals will not seek in the ways we’ve been talking about. But it doesn’t affect their enjoyment of a reward.
Let’s say bananas are their favorite food. They can smell the banana. They know it’s six feet away. If they walk, they can get the banana. But they will not go and get it, even though they can smell it.
But if you put the banana in their mouth, they will enjoy it. Scientists know they enjoy it because they make certain sounds and facial expressions when they are enjoying it. If you video them, you can see it.
There are other molecules that seem much more associated with pleasure. The two major classes of molecules associated with pleasure in the brain are endogenous opiates and endogenous cannabinoids. Endocannabinoids are related to the active ingredient in marijuana, and they are found endogenously in the human brain. Those molecules are active in response to pleasure.
The reward prediction error signaling I was talking about is mediated in a different but adjacent part of the brain that is also rich in dopamine. The caudate nucleus is critically important for prediction error signaling. There is also prediction error signaling in other areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex.
So these dopamine-related functions occur in different areas of the brain.
Cortland Dahl:So going back to the Easter egg example, the child is looking for something, wanting something, and not finding it where they expect it to be. Is it in the caudate that the levels would drop, but in the ventral striatum they might still be high because the child is still seeking?
Richard Davidson:I’m not sure what would happen in that specific case. If the child is still seeking, you would expect dopamine levels to be high in the ventral striatum.
The prediction error changes we’re talking about are phasic changes. They are extremely short-lived, very dynamic, up and down. They are like an evoked potential, an electrical signal that goes down and then up very quickly.
These are changes that we cannot see in the human brain because we do not have methods to look at changes on that time course non-invasively.
What Actually Helps with Compulsive Loops? (00:35:37)
Cortland Dahl:Zooming out, with memes like dopamine detox, I think what people are trying to understand and intervene in are these cycles that are essentially unfulfilling but become almost compulsive behavior. Doom scrolling is maybe the classic example.
You’re doing something inherently unfulfilling, and yet you do it compulsively and for long periods of time.
One key takeaway is that this is likely much more complex than we normally think. Even with one chemical, one neurotransmitter or neuromodulator, it depends on which part of the brain you’re looking at, which network you’re looking at, and the time course from one moment to the next.
So you can’t just say, “That’s the thing we want to stop happening,” because it is way more complex than that.
But what could we say? In my mind, disentangling liking and wanting is one of the most helpful things for understanding how this is processed in the brain. What would you want people to know that could help them navigate some of these compulsive behaviors that we get stuck in?
Savoring as a Way Out of Wanting (00:37:47)
Richard Davidson:The knowledge we’re providing in this discussion can be helpful as background. But locking onto it in an excessively concrete way may not be that helpful.
Getting stuck in doom scrolling may involve dopamine initially, but it has to be much more complicated than that. It clearly involves other things too.
I think the distinction between wanting and liking is very important. Creating the causes and conditions that help us appreciate the liking, and really tune in to the events or stimuli associated with liking, can be enormously helpful.
Some psychologists have called this savoring. We can really savor these positive moments, and that can help us get unstuck from the loop of wanting.
The dopamine story is interesting, and at a very high level there is truth to the fact that dopamine is primarily associated with wanting and seeking. To the extent that this kind of behavior is causing problems, we can do our best to change it.
But one of the best ways to change it may be simply to focus more on liking.
Meditation, Breath, and the Practice of Savoring (00:39:24)
Cortland Dahl:That is such an important point, and it reminds me of key insights from meditation and my own practice.
Even with something like mindful breathing, which was the first practice I learned and one I still do, there are practices where the orientation is almost neutral. You step back and orient to awareness itself. You are not worrying so much about what is happening within the field of awareness. Whatever is happening is just a neutral phenomenon, and orienting to awareness itself is the focus.
But there is another kind of practice that is very different, and it is all about savoring.
You can practice breathing with awareness in many different ways. One way is where awareness is the main point and the breath is just a support or anchor. But another way is to breathe as a process of savoring. You really tune into the felt sense of the nourishing, even healing quality of the breath.
Because I’ve done both forms of practice, and a lot of the savoring aspect, even now as I do this I have goosebumps. I can feel this chemical reaction in my body. My whole body is feeling this just because the moment you remember it, it starts happening.
At the beginning, it uses the imagination. Then at a certain point, it elicits a visceral response. You feel this pleasant energy, and you immerse yourself in the healing energy of your own breath. It is there every moment.
That is different from stepping back and being aware. Both are helpful and profound, but they do different things.
The key is that you can do this with anything. Loving-kindness and compassion practices are like savoring connection. You first elicit the feeling of connectedness.
I can do this right now. We’re talking, and I can say, “This is Richie. I love Richie.” Immediately I feel that. I do love you. And then you can immerse yourself in that.
It is a skill to stay tuned in. It’s like finding the frequency. Habit energy pulls you off course, but you learn to keep it dialed in, and you can get good at it.
When you’re around the Dalai Lama, he is always in that frequency. He is never not in that frequency. You can feel it when you’re with him. He is radiating that because he is completely dialed into that frequency.
In a way, this quality of savoring is a skill you can learn and deploy in different ways. It could be eating an orange. It could be connecting with somebody else. It could be how you relate to your own breath.
There is no chasing in it. It is just tuning into something that is already there.
Letting Go of Seeking (00:43:20)
Richard Davidson:Exactly. I love that description. You don’t need to seek it because it’s right there.
You can let go of seeking completely and tune right into the delicious nectar that is always there.
Cortland Dahl:I feel like if people just knew this, it would change so much. There is so much chasing in our lives. Even meditation can become another place where we bring chasing energy and seeking energy, which almost never works out very well.
Maybe we can end here. Are there any practical things from your own practice that help you stay with the savoring side of things, and notice the pull toward chasing and seeking?
Gratitude, Bodhicitta, and the Sweetness of Connection (00:43:56)
Richard Davidson:For me, appreciation and gratitude are really important.
Also, the kind of practice that you and I do before each Dharma Lab episode, bodhicitta practice, is very important. Reflecting on how our actions can be of benefit to others has a sweetness associated with it.
Really leaning in and connecting to that sweet quality of connection is heart-opening for me. It naturally allows the wanting piece to subside on its own.
There is not an active pushing down of wanting. It is more about leaning into and connecting with this sweetness.
If you do find that wanting is rearing its head, then to use a strategy we’ve been taught by Mingyur Rinpoche, you can become aware of it. Really just be aware of your wanting. If you stay aware of it and do not get totally sucked into it, it will subside on its own.
Renunciation as Reorientation (00:45:28)
Cortland Dahl:That’s beautiful. There are some helpful things here, especially if we zoom out to the detox idea.
A lot of the meme around dopamine detox is almost an abstinence mentality. You just need to stop all stimulation, anything that is creating problems. It can feel like a retreat-from-the-world mentality.
This reminds me of one of the most misunderstood words in Buddhist psychology and meditation practice. There is a Tibetan term, ngé jung, which we often translate as renunciation. But renunciation conjures up exactly the detox mentality, as though it is all about letting go, distancing yourself from the bad stuff or the things that create problems.
But what that term really means, and what I think is a more accurate and helpful translation, is reorientation.
It is more about what you are turning toward than what you are letting go of or turning away from. If you forget that, it is not sustainable. It is depleting. You have nothing bringing you joy or motivating you. You have taken something away, but there is nothing there to sustain you.
This is about orienting toward something nourishing, fulfilling, and wholesome. Then the letting go becomes natural, because you are tasting an alternative that is obviously superior to the thing you let go of.
Doom scrolling versus connecting with a friend, or savoring something meaningful. Of course that feels better. You have that contrast in your mind, rather than just saying, “I’m going to let go of that,” and then what?
So maybe it is not just about letting go of endless wanting and craving. It is perhaps even more about what you like, what you savor, and what you find fulfilling.
It feels like you are giving the brain analysis of that.
Richard Davidson:That’s beautiful.
Closing (00:48:00)
Cortland Dahl:We could clearly talk a lot more about this. It feels like we just scratched the surface. We introduced a whole cast of characters with other neurotransmitters and other things, so maybe we can do more of this in future episodes.
As always, thank you so much, Richie. I learned a lot. This is super interesting, and I’m sure everybody came away with something helpful in their lives.
Thank you for everything you shared.
Richard Davidson:Thank you. Wonderful to be here.
Cortland Dahl:Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll have many more conversations like this. If you’re still with us, thank you for watching, and we’ll see you again soon. Take care.


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