Original subtitles

We're doing a documentary on mindfulness.

Downloaded from YTS.MX

You guys know anything about mindfulness?

No?

We're doing a documentary on mindfulness--

Sorry, we're really late for class.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Do you know what mindfulness is? Do you practice?

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

-No. -Not at all?

No. I'm sorry.

Do you guys know anything about mindfulness?

Uh, no.

Do you guys know anything about mindfulness?

Do you practice? No?

-No, sorry. -That's a lot of nos.

Do you guys anything about that?

-Ah, I don't-- -Never heard of it?

OK.

So do you anything about mindfulness?

What is mindfulness?

Have you guys ever heard of mindfulness?

We're doing a documentary.

You ever practice mindfulness?

We're doing a documentary on mindfulness.

Hi, we're doing a documentary on mindfulness.

Do you know--

On what?

On mindfulness.

Mindfulness?

Yeah, it's called "The Mindfulness Movie."

[BABY LAUGHING]

RICK HANSON (VOICEOVER): A baby that's

born, as it were, would not be presumed

to be mindful necessarily.

Because mindfulness involves this

sustained deliberate quality.

PAUL HARRISON (VOICEOVER): Most of the time, most of us

are just not there.

We're mindless.

Their mind wanders 47% of the time.

And when it does wander 47% of the time-- We're not there.

We don't know that we're not there,

because when you're not there, you're not there to notice.

911 OPERATOR (VOICEOVER): 911.

What's your emergency?

JON KABAT-ZINN: The world is starving for something.

And it's not starving for another issue

of "Time Magazine" or "Sports Illustrated."

But it is definitely starving for something.

And it's not just the world.

We are starving for something.

PAUL HARRISON: When I was about 20,

while I was sitting on my desk, working on some problem,

I experienced what I call a shift in perspective.

What had seemed so elusive was really right there front of me.

And at that moment, I realized that what

I needed to do in order to see it was

simply to shift my perspective.

It changed my whole life.

Because for once, I finally got it.

I mean, I really got it.

And I understood myself and I started

to understand others better.

Hi.

I'm Paul Harrison, an architect and an author.

And one of the most common questions I get asked

is why is an architect making a movie about mindfulness.

Well, that's why I want to share this story with you.

You see, I was a typical post hippie generation teenager

from the early '70s with all that reckless and mindless

behavior that made us think we were really cool.

And we loved to challenge all the rules

to the point of ending up with some very serious consequences.

WOMAN (ON RADIO): Suspect down.

Request EMT immediately.

I realized once I left high school that

was no path I wanted to stay on and I was looking for a much

better way to deal with stress, and family

issues, college, making money.

And that led me to begin practicing mindfulness.

And then about a year and a half ago,

I set out on an incredible journey

to find the core teachings of what mindfulness really is.

You see, when I started, I took the street wise approach.

I didn't want to subscribe any one camp,

but rather find what that core essence of mindfulness is.

I met with experts like Ellen Langer

at Harvard, who many of called the mother of mindfulness.

I also met with Congressman Tim Ryan, Guy Claxton

from England, Jeffrey Schwartz, psychiatrist, and even world

renowned authors like Dan Millman

from the "Peaceful Warrior."

And so my mission, my passion, is

to share my journey so you can start

learning about mindfulness.

And even more important, to learn about yourself.

ELLEN LANGER (VOICEOVER): So all certainty creates

an illusion of stability.

So certainty promotes mindlessness.

Mindlessness usually comes about by default.

And it's not motivated, it just it

never occurred to you that this thing could be other things.

Mindless mode is, I think, the mode we're on 90% of the time.

Most of the time, we eat and read the corn flakes box,

or we eat and talk, or eat and dream, or most of us

eat and read.

Or we eat and watch TV. -You get in the car.

You start the car.

Pull it out of the driveway.

You drive somewhere for 10 or 15 minutes.

You arrive and you can't remember how you got there.

You can take a cigarette out of the pack, put it in your mouth,

take out the lighter, light it, and be completely unaware.

And you're going how-- and you don't remember any of that.

Because you were daydreaming the entire time.

And even when we're not in that mode

because we're thinking about something,

we're mindless about almost everything else we're doing.

We aren't really aware of 'em because we're

so busy onto the next thing, anticipating the next thing.

And--

Mindfulness teachers describe the distracted mind

as monkey mind, a monkey that just jumps around

from one thing to the other.

We'll do something to distract ourselves.

Because most of us the get bored.

We get preoccupied.

We're on the computer when we're at work.

We're just so distracted.

We'll put the radio on, we'll put the TV on.

But I'm not watching it.

It doesn't matter what channel it's on.

It's almost like we're robots and we're

listening to this command.

And the robot can only respond and react.

ROBINA COURTIN (VOICEOVER): Mindfulness, for me,

is just a technique of identifying what's there

and distinguishing between the neurosis and the virtues,

or the good qualities.

The most common definition is paying attention

to present moment experience.

Mindfulness is your natural state of being.

It's the awakening of possibility

and the possibility of awakening.

But also, it's about just noticing what is happening

every moment of the day.

Mindfulness is one thing.

It's paying attention.

To the actions that you are taking.

It's a sustained quality of being present.

It's like being in the zone and you can actually train

your mind to be in the zone.

I call it a basic mind hygiene.

A clear minded observational perspective.

The experience of mindfulness--

Is turning into reality as it is,

as it unfolds simply right now.

Which is just really the full experience of life.

Without getting lost in thought and becoming forgetful.

Thoughts are representations of reality.

Mindfulness is the actual experience.

Is the ability to go to color white.

So mindfulness is paying attention to the moment

with an open and a willingness to let go of old patterns

and live in the present.

Did you get it?

[PHONE RINGING]

Hello?

Hang on. What?

Did you get it?

Uh.

Were you even watching?

Watching what?

The experts explaining mindfulness.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I was watching. -Mm.

Mhm.

What did it say?

Well, it-- it was something about mindfulness.

So what does that mean?

Uh, I don't have a clue.

It's because you weren't paying attention.

Uh.

Yeah, no, I did.

I was listening to it.

Yeah, but you weren't paying attention

and that's the problem.

Wait. Wait.

There's a problem?

Yeah, there's a problem.

You don't pay attention.

I don't even know what you mean because I could

easily do two things at a time.

Yeah, you were texting and hearing voices,

but you weren't listening.

What's the difference?

The difference is you were hearing voices,

but you weren't actually listening.

It's mindless.

All right, so tell me what they said, if you're so smart.

It's that mindfulness means paying

attention to what is actually happening right now, not later.

This is what you need to work on.

So you just want me to be more aware,

like to hear what's happened and to pay attention

to what's happening right now.

Yes.

That's it.

[SIGH]

That's a start.

JUN PO DENNIS KELLY (VOICEOVER): Go deep enough into witnessing

and observe the function of ego.

And you'll discover that it's just continually

running reactive loops."

PAUL HARRISON: We don't experience

reality as it really as.

We perceive it through a filter that allows us to see only what

we've been conditioned to see.

That's because we've become trapped in the neurobiology

of our own brain.

Just like every tree has a unique set of branches,

every brain has a unique pattern of neurons and connections

that are both genetic and learned over time.

So each and every one of us is wired differently.

And it's the neural architecture of our brains

that tells us who we are and how we're going

to act and react in the world.

Every thought we have is the result

of a network of hundreds of billions of brain cells

called neurons.

Unlike other cells in our body, neurons don't touch each other,

but are separated by microscopic spaces called synapses.

Neurons communicate across these synapses

through chemical transfers that blast from one cell to the next

with a zap of electricity.

Messages zip around our brain like a supersonic pinball

machine.

Each neuron sends and receives information

to 50,000 other neurons in a rapid fire production

that all adds up to 100 billion neurons

times 50,000 connections.

In fact, there are more connections

between neurons in a single human brain than there

are stars in our galaxy.

The result is a complex neural forest

of networks that form our personality,

our identity, and our habits.

Hardly ever do we find trees that grow alike

and we don't find brains that grow alike.

We are all unique.

While these trillions of neuron networks

often work in concert to create brainstorms of creativity

and new ideas, their primary purpose

is to keep each and every one of us alive and safe

by recognizing patterns as they access a constantly

changing environment.

But sometimes, things get stuck.

Who, of us, doesn't have some form of addictive behavior

or another?

Maybe for a-- for personal comfort,

or because of a desire, or whatever is behind it,

and changing them is very difficult for a lot of people

and they struggle with that.

And so a lot of them are stuck in old routines, old patterns.

Eventually, we becomes stuck in these patterns

and live our lives on auto pilot.

Essentially, becoming more and more mindless

as we continue to view the world through filters

instead of seeing things as they really are.

As we grow older, our actions and reactions become

conditioned by our hopes, our tensions, anxieties,

motivations, loves, hates, desires,

fears, or frustrations.

Thus, we analyze before we experience.

And we filter before we see.

Explaining that in brain terms is not hard to understand.

I've done it in a lot of my writing, which is we have

habits centers in our brain.

These habit centers in our brain,

roughly, are shared with reptiles.

And they are very unconscious.

So you literally do get into behavioral loops that are your

doing without you aware of it.

Our perception operates increasingly like a defense

mechanism, trapping us in patterns of behavior that

have less to do with present reality

and more to do with past experience or expectations.

But if we start changing that neural architecture

through intentionally paying attention to what's here

in a particular way, then we start

training that healthy reactivity,

that more adaptive reactivity.

That can help us with stress, anxiety, depression,

trauma, and even addiction.

As long as we continue to perceive reality as we've been

conditioned to perceive it, we're

destined to live a life in endless reactive

loops of conditioned responses.

Mindfulness changes your relationship with that habit

center so that it's not in control in anything

like the same degree.

By noticing the looping that happens

in any particular moment, that reactive looping,

that's sending us into these states of suffering.

But if you practice mindfulness once or twice

daily, you'll be able to change your brain physiology

and you'll be able to change your nervous system.

Even eight minutes or more a day

can grow measurable neural structure.

So anything in the brain that is changing and being retained

is through some kind of neuroplasticity.

And again, it's not rewiring major pathways.

It's changing the subtle connectivity

of the pathways that exist.

So neuroplasticity changes the brain

from being more centered in primary emotion, the kind

of emotion that we share with all the other mammals

to the executive centers of the brain.

We do form new neurons, new connections.

So when you practice mindfulness,

then we develop new circuits.

Neurons that fire together are wired together

throughout the entire nervous system.

They do so preferentially for what's in the field

of focused attention.

The brain is more plastic, even in adults, than people realize.

I mean there is a lot of room for change

in those habit loops.

And it doesn't-- it does not take that long.

So little mindfulness practices sustained over time

can add up to big changes for the better

over the course of your life.

The brain is plastic.

And what it has learned, it can unlearn.

So becoming mindful means untraining our brains,

emptying them of preconceived patterns.

This easily accessible ability releases us from constraints

and quickly changes mindless behavior

in to mindful behavior.

But what's more important is that mindfulness

actually evolves the brain.

It actually advances the evolutionary process

of our brain to a state where we act in a wiser more

compassionate mode, to not only ourselves,

but to others in our global environment.

So I think if we leave around 5:00 PM,

we should be there around 9-ish.

Yeah.

That sounds good.

Are you excited?

Yeah.

What about you?

Of course.

I've been waiting to go for so long.

Are you going to bring anything?

Um, like what?

Like a surprise.

A surprise?

[PHONE RINGING]

I think it would be nice to get a surprise.

Well, like, if I told you it was a surprise,

then it wouldn't, like, be a surprise.

I know, but I was just give you a

heads up that maybe it would be nice to get a surprise is all.

All right.

Well--

Why do you keep checking your phone?

I don't keep checking my phone.

Sure, you do.

I pay attention to everything you do

and you keep checking it.

It's a bad habit and it's completely mindless.

Oh, yeah? Well, so what-- what if it is?

What if it's a bad habit?

Because I need your full attention.

And look, now you're getting defensive about it.

It's your reactive loops like swinging all out of control.

You don't even realize it.

Reactive what?

Reactive loops.

It's when you react to the same thing over and over again.

Do you realize you're doing it?

Well, yeah, now I do.

Thanks for you pointing that out.

I realize it. Yeah.

You're welcome.

Now recent research in cognitive science

has confirmed that performance increases when we think less.

If a tennis player were to think of a where a ball might be

instead of seeing where that ball actually is,

it would be too late and he'd miss it.

Mindfulness enables us to respond quickly

and effortlessly to attain peak performance in any situation.

Trying is a really interesting phenomenon because to try to do

something is to not do it.

We're trying to do things, rather than just doing things.

If I said to somebody could I have a glass of water

and they said I'll try to get you a glass of water,

that wouldn't make much sense.

What does trying look like?

And it looks like this. -Try not.

There is no trying.

Just do or do not.

Which is actually very trying.

To be-- to be in that state of kind of having

to look like you're trying.

And accept whatever you do is fine for now.

We'll get better over time.

So don't try to do anything.

A very good example I think is from the film "Matrix."

There is this moment when Morpheus and Neo

having a kung fu sparring.

And Morpheus says don't try to hit me and hit me.

That's exactly-- you know, we're trying to do things,

rather than just doing things.

And mindfulness teaches us how to do things

without trying to do things.

When you prepare for an interview

and you go into the interview and then they ask you questions

that you haven't prepared for, and you're

sort of thrown because you're there ready

made with your answers.

And you don't do a very good job of it.

And then when you come out of the interview

and you're walking down the stairs

and you have what the French [SPEAKING FRENCH].

It's like, oh, yeah, I should have said that.

I should have-- oh, that's what I should have done.

It's like then you-- then you get your intelligence back.

Before the interview, before you were wise,

and afterwards you are wise, but in between, you are otherwise.

And otherwise means it's like you're trying.

You're trying to find something clever

which you bring to the situation and want to use.

But I think we're able to achieve

with the mindfulness training is the best of both worlds.

The alertness of the central nervous system

without the anxiety and the calm relaxation

and pleasantness of the parasympathetic system

without the drowsiness.

So there was an interesting study

where they were in the scanner, during the same experiment,

and they were presented with the digits

on the screen between 1 and 9.

And they had to judge whether the digit was odd or even.

So as you can imagine, it's a simple task.

You don't need to think about it much.

But they noticed in the data here,

you can see the brain is on fire.

The prefrontal cortex is engaged.

A lot of visual cortex is engaged.

Motor cortex is engaged.

I called it ego effort.

This person has a very strong sense of I

really need to do this task.

I'm really going to go for it.

I'm going to do it well.

Behaviorally, they're performing on the same level.

It's a simple task, what we call on the ceiling level,

so both performing well.

But what happening with the experienced meditator, only

absolutely essential bits of the brain for the performance

of this task.

So one is expending a lot of energy

to do the same task, whereas the other one, just, you can say,

in the state of flow.

Yeah, I don't get it.

Like, I try stuff all the time.

You don't get it?

No.

I don't get it.

OK.

Try to take this pen from me.

OK.

See, you weren't paying attention.

What?

So--

Try to take the pen from me.

OK.

See, you're not paying attention.

-Well-- -I said try to take the pen.

I didn't say take the pen.

Well, what do you mean?

Well, trying is not doing.

Hold the pen. -OK.

See?

I'm trying to take the pen, but I'm

not actually taking the pen.

Remember?

Mindfulness teaches you to do, not try.

Yeah. I mean, maybe.

Maybe you'll remember the next time

you try to meet me on time. -Yeah, maybe.

The essence of mindfulness is to observe what's there

and what we bring that observation to,

with the quality of being aware of our own awareness.

Which is sort of the opposite of being absent-minded.

It's like dedicating your awareness

to the present moment.

You're either mindful in your whole body

and in your interactions or you're sleep and unconscious.

And there's nothing like a close relationship

to show you, to mirror, what your unconscious patterns are.

So first step is to just be with what's

there, which means that all that's there is mindfulness.

We're just aware of it.

We're paying attention, being present, rather than being

distracted by so many thoughts.

If you want to summarize it, mindfulness

allows you to be authentically present

without the interference of preoccupations

about the past or the future.

So baby that's born, as it were,

would not be presumed to be mindful necessarily.

Because mindfulness involves this sustained deliberate

quality of recollectiveness.

It's the capacity of human beings to be aware.

And our human awareness can be focused

in something we call attention.

So being able to be attentive to what we're

doing, which is the essence of mindfulness,

is incredibly helpful.

We just are operating in an incomplete field of awareness.

And I'm not sure the field of awareness can ever be complete,

but it can be much faster.

And it makes you mindful of these very

fundamental physical processes.

And it makes you feel more grounded in your own body.

So when you practice mindfulness,

you're not only becoming more aware of things

that before you weren't aware of,

but you're developing these skills that can allow

you to sense the inner world.

Awareness is change.

It is the action of change.

And we need to awaken the mind, expand out sense of self

to really alert our attention, to expand our awareness.

And you can use mindfulness as a process to do it.

So once you're aware of that, you can change it.

Until you're aware of it, you can't change it.

Cultivate some mindfulness.

Be present.

Practice being in your body, practice

tasting your food in a way that is fascinated

and absorbed and nonjudgmental.

So mindfulness is about noticing what you're feeling,

paying attention, and not judging it.

By non-judgemental the explanation is--

Don't edit.

I mean, it's got-- you've got to let it come in.

So it's an awareness without the discriminating mind,

without a mind that is saying this

is better than that, comparing without the comparing mind.

So it's good to notice when our mind is wandering

and be able to take note of it without judgment,

and be curious about what's on the mind,

and gently bring it back.

So pay attention with a curious, receptive perspective,

allowing you to see new aspects and angles in everyday events.

Close your eyes.

Mm, why?

Because I want to test something.

OK.

You feel anything?

I don't know.

What am I supposed to feel?

Oh, great.

Learning what I already knew.

Oh, really?

What's-- what's that?

That you're completely unaware of everything around you.

Woo, what makes you so special?

I'm aware.

Oh, really?

Big deal. -Yeah, really.

Why don't you test me? Go ahead.

-All right, I will test you. -OK.

All right.

What am I doing?

Waving your hands in front of my face.

Yeah, because you're obviously cheating.

I'm not. I'm not cheating.

Yeah, you're looking.

No, I'm not.

Do something else.

Four fingers in front of my face.

All right.

Mm, three fingers.

Oh, come on, make it harder.

Your hands are above my head. -What?

How are you doing that?

Because I'm completely aware.

Don't you want to be aware?

Yeah, sure.

OK, so then start paying attention to the little things

around you by being mindful.

I mean, I'll try.

-No, there's no try, remember? -Oh, yeah, right.

I forgot about that.

So.

JEFFREY M. SCHWARTZ (VOICEOVER): You are not your brain

means you are not your thought.

What happens during mindfulness practice

is that people are less likely to be,

as it were, constantly stressed, rushed off their feet.

But also, they're less likely to respond

to their own negative thinking.

But the first step is to stop and be

aware of your emotional state.

And recognizing that you have thought,

but you aren't your thoughts, that you don't have

to identify with the voice that's producing

thoughts in your mind.

That thought that's coming in, I mean, that is not you.

That's a production of your habits, of your experience,

but it's a commentary on your experience.

It isn't your experience.

It's like mistaking the menu for the meal

that you're going to eat.

So your emotional states are recognized

as being emotional states, not who you are.

And they're always passing, they're always in flux.

It's happy, and sad, and angry, and fearful.

Mindful awareness is like this vast sky, where problems

and concerns and issues are like these little passing

clouds or thoughts that just pass through your mind.

Look at that thought.

Oh, you mean my thought?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's from last night.

I know.

Yeah, that's actually-- I was mad last night,

so that's like one angry little thought.

Yeah, I know.

But don't judge it. Just look at it.

But why?

Because when you judge your thoughts,

then you're engaging in it, and then it just upsets you.

Yeah, I actually got pretty upset,

like watching my thoughts.

Well, don't be upset, OK?

Let me explain this to you.

Like, if my hand is the thought, OK?

Mhm.

The space in between is the awareness.

Don't focus on my hand, focus on the awareness.

You see?

When you're mindful of it, then you feel better.

Wow, that's actually pretty awesome.

Yeah.

You know, like when you're mindless,

then your brain doesn't understand it.

But if you're mindful, your brain gets it.

You just need to change your brain.

Well, what's wrong with the one I have?

Where do I start?

Well, yeah, that's real funny.

Well, at least you're starting to get it.

Yeah, I mean, I am.

So mindfulness can get you out of these reactive loops

and change the structure of your brain.

FRED ALAN WOLF (VOICEOVER): "Remember what you did bad

or did on mindfully and try to bring mindfulness

into it the next time a similar action in your life

takes place.

It's really hard to say all of a sudden,

I'm not going to be fearful or anxious

or depressed or whatever today.

You can't just tell yourself and it goes away, right?

We wouldn't need shrinks and mindfulness

and all these other things if that's the way it worked.

So--

You can choose to get in touch with this idea of choice,

what I call a choice point.

You can choose what you want to do with it.

How do you want to relate to life?

You're not-- you don't need to be

enslaved by the automatic reactions that are there.

Consciousness tries to get control of it, but it's hard.

And basically what we have to do is we observe ourselves acting

in a certain way, and then we try

to put in checks and balances in our brains that let us cope

with those reactions when they are occurring,

rather than preventing them from occurring in the first place.

That's the hard part, preventing them from occurring.

You are choosing to shift your center of identification

from the stream to the watcher.

And mindfulness can give you better control over your--

not only your cortex, but your ability of your cortex

to control the other parts of your brain.

Why would one choose self-limitation when you

can be more free, more open?

Wait a minute.

What are you doing?

Well, I'm calling you out.

Calling me out?

Yeah, I'm sick of you thinking you're so much better than me.

Mindfulness this isn't about being better.

Oh, there you go again with that little mindfulness talk.

All right, if this is how you want it,

then I'm going to show you.

Yeah, I'm calling you out.

It didn't have to be this way, you know.

If you stopped thinking you were better than me,

I wouldn't even have to do this.

Don't you get it?

You have them both, mindful and mindless.

It's part of the same coin.

I'm saying you've got both side of the coin.

What's all this coin talk?

I'm saying you get to choose which one you use-- be mindful

or being mindless.

You have both parts to you.

But I thought I always had to be mindful.

MINDFUL: Not at all.

Look, every day, when you're doing your routine,

you're using the mindless side because you're used to it.

It's a routine, so you just go through the motions.

But what happens is, over time, you tend

to do that for your whole life.

So you need to be mindful of other parts of your life,

so that you're not mindless all the time.

So does this mean I can't call you out?

No.

But if you really want to, we'll do it this one time

and it can be our mindless moment together.

All right. Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

All right, bring it.

Ow.

Man, I'm hit, and you-- you didn't even draw your gun.

You didn't even get hit.

You're not even paying attention.

See?

When you're mindful, you'll start realizing these things.

So start practicing.

I'll practice just for you.

ELLEN LANGER (VOICEOVER): Mindfulness, as I study it,

it's the very simple process of noticing new things.

And as you notice new things, several things happen.

The first is that you come to see you didn't know it

as well as you thought you did.

It's like pulling back the curtain on the "Wizard of Oz,"

and we see what's really.

And this act of noticing is the essence of engagement.

It just opens you up to becoming

aware of things that were there before

but were not in awareness.

It doesn't matter what you notice.

The things you notice can be silly, but just the noticing

breaks down the boundary between you

and that which is being noticed.

So now, everything that's old becomes new again, in some

sense, and becomes naturally interesting.

And life becomes a bit less serious

and we become-- we take ourselves less seriously.

So you're more energetic when you're doing this, not less so.

The neurons are firing.

And in the earliest work we did, when we taught people

to be mindful in nursing homes, we

found that they lived longer.

So really, our only choice is are we paying attention

or are we not.

And in even at that, some people will pay

attention better than others.

What do you think?

About what?

Look.

Well, I'm looking.

I'm looking. What?

Are you blind?

No.

Look at it.

What am I supposed to see?

My new hair.

Oh, yeah.

Duh.

That's new hair.

You're just being mindless again, not noticing new things.

Oh, you know what? Well, whoop-dee-doo, OK?

So I don't notice things.

Well, you need to be more mindful so you can notice

new things and pay attention, therefore,

paying better attention to me.

OK, OK, yeah, I got it.

Do you get it?

Yes, I got it.

OK.

We're beginning to drill down through mindfulness practice

into the core question of psychology,

like who the hell are we in the first place, what

does it-- what is the self?

That's what the study of psychology is all about.

The term ego gets a bad rep, but it was meant neutral.

By Freud, for example, he drew on the original Latin and Greek

roots to use the word ego meaning Ich,

or I. It simply is a self-identification.

It's ego, whether it's a hyper inflated-- the best person--

best speaker in the world, or I'm the worst in the world

and people aren't going to like me.

Both of those are ego driven.

When someone says you have a huge ego,

that's not normally considered a compliment.

An individual person's identity, that's not a problem.

Egotism, concern about one's self and concern

about how the outcome of your performance

is going to reflect on your feelings about yourself

and what other people will think of you,

all of that complication, that is what gets in the way.

But I think we have the possibility

to evolve culturally to understand

the neurobiology of a separate cell

and how it is in fact a delusion.

So the conscious self is not in charge.

It's here to learn.

That's the function of the ego, to learn

what we need for this lifetime.

So much in modern culture promotes competition

and a sense of self as separate.

These are culturally learned delusions.

And sadly, they're not only making

people have meaningless lives and

unhealthy physiological states, but it's destroying our planet.

Mindfulness is an invitation to actually experience in reality

how interconnected we are.

And I'm going to get joy from your accomplishments.

I mean, that's the kind of world we need to push for.

To give you an example, people that are in institutions where

they're chronically depressed, if you listen to them as they

talk, every third word is I. I'm not feeling this,

I'm feeling-- I'm feeling terrible.

I-- I did-- I'm guilty, I'm bad, I did this,

I did that, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. I is like the color white.

It has no color.

You color it red, blue, green with a feeling that represents

the personality that you feel is the correct personality

for that action.

And you may have gotten this from observing

your parents or other parental figures

or friends or whatever who adapt similar types of colorings

to their I word when they're having

a certain emotional response to a situation.

Mindfulness is the ability to go to color white.

Um, I think I, like, want you to teach me how

to become, like, more mindful.

Oh, great.

Yeah, because, like, the other day,

I just had, like, this little incident,

where I wasn't mindful.

What happened?

Well, it's kind of a long story,

but basically, like, I was just on my phone, like texting,

and I was just crossing the street.

And the next thing I knew, like, this big bus showed

up and almost ran me over.

-Really? -Yeah.

-Uh, yeah. -Almost died.

You're gonna get yourself killed, dude.

I know.

That's why-- that's why I turned to you to become more mindful.

OK.

Well, I think you're already being more mindful.

This is a step in the right direction.

Right. I see it.

Yeah. Let me show you.

This is-- this is you with mindlessness, OK?

This is your space, the awareness,

this tiny little space. -OK.

This is your awareness with mindfulness.

-Right. -OK?

Mindlessness.

Mindfulness. -Mhm.

Mindlessness.

Mindfulness.

You see how you have more awareness to learn

about your surroundings.

You end up seeing a bus.

Otherwise--

[TIRES SCREECHING]

Mindlessness. -Wow.

That bus would have ran you over.

-Oh, yeah. -OK?

You get it? Got it?

Good? -Yes, I get it, got it, good.

Get it, got it, good. -All right.

PAUL HARRISON (VOICEOVER): Mark Twain

once said I've had many troubles in my life, most of which

never happened.

Stress makes all kinds of physical ailments worse.

Because a lot about what is distressing about physical

illness, whether you're talking about pain

or whether you're talking about any kind of debilitating state,

fatigue, what makes it worse is how we process

it centrally in our brain.

So I feel myself getting anxious.

One of those unconscious systems has been triggered.

So you now say, OK, I can't stop it, so what can I do.

I can breathe.

Take in the air.

That trick kicks on the parasympathetic nervous system,

which counteracts the sympathetic, which is the fight

flight system, and kind of slows everything down a little bit.

And so when we change the system that's here,

the stress cycle between our thoughts that come up,

so our thoughts-- an event happens and we immediately

perceive something as scary or we need to do something about,

something that's urgent or it's important,

our brain creates a snap judgment of it being good,

bad, right, wrong, fair, or unfair,

and goes into a reactive mode.

As the great stress researcher Hans Selye put it,

"It's not stress that kills us, it's our reaction to stress."

Stress is a function not of events,

but the view you take of the event.

If you open up that view in multiple ways,

it becomes less stressful.

What we can help is how we respond to stress.

That's why breathing works so well.

Because it-- it reduces the stress in the brain.

It reduces the drive from the sympathetic system

that makes you-- that's releasing adrenaline.

When you get a call from somebody

and you're really stressed out and you just take the call,

you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, OK, OK,

you know.

All right, I'll call you back, you know.

But if you're calm and you're not stressed out,

you take the call and you take your time.

And you recognize that this is important to you

or to the other person.

With the less time for reflection

that we have nowadays with so much attention

to technology filling the spaces of our day,

we don't really have a lot of time for reflection.

Can you give yourself three minutes?

Do you care enough about yourself

to give yourself three minutes, maybe minute in the morning,

then in the afternoon, minute in the evening to just sit

and be present with your breath.

If we believe we can do it, we're going to be more

motivated to actually do it.

If we don't believe we can do something,

we're not going to actually do it.

The things we can't do right now,

we can learn to do tomorrow.

When we realize that there's no outcome

we must have, that all of this leads us just to be more

at peace, easier, less reason for us to need to hit

somebody else over the head.

And mindfulness actually reduces the risk of depression

by half in people who are the most current depressed people,

with three or more episodes, that many other treatments have

failed to treat.

We also know that it's as good as antidepressants

in doing that.

Now, one thing that we didn't know eight years ago

is is that repeatable.

And we found it is repeatable, both in our lab

and in labs around the world, in lots of different countries,

have found the same result.

The simple shift of perspective can change your relationship

to the problem when you take a second look at it

with a mindful manner.

Oh, man, what's happening to me?

You're out of focus.

What the heck?

Well, maybe if you were a little more mindful,

these things wouldn't happen.

Uh, what should I do?

Try some finger tracing.

What the-- what the heck's finger tracing?

OK, watch me. Watch me, OK?

MINDLESS: OK.

Now you're going to take your finger

and very slowly go like this and see each nook and cranny.

OK.

Focus very slowly.

So you mean like this?

No, no, no, no, that's too fast and mindless.

You're not going to focus like that.

OK, very slowly.

Watch it.

Oh, so you mean slow like this.

Wow.

Yes.

Exactly.

I really like this.

Like, I'm getting into the groove of it, like--

Keep focusing, not bad.

I can feel a difference.

Yeah, see, it's not so hard.

Yeah, this is like-- this is very nice.

I'm just going to go home and just get busy finger tracing.

Mindfulness enables you to get value for money

out of your food, right?

You taste it.

You're more present.

Oh, mindless eating brought me into mindful eating, actually.

I had a-- I never met a box of cookies I didn't like.

Instead of eating absent-mindedly,

you know, going to a restaurant, spend 25 pounds

for a filet steak, de-da, de-da, de-da, and then not noticing

yourself eating it because you're

busy having an earnest conversation

with your friend about your relationship with your mother.

It's like you just wasted 25 quid.

And mindful eating actually helps people

broaden their view of food.

So when I crunch into an apple and somebody

says why are you making that loud crunching noise,

it's bothering me, I think of my grandmother being

unable to crunch an apple.

And I say, wow, I'm just enjoying every bite.

Usually, whenever I eat, whether it's just

noticing the food, smelling the food, tasting the food,

maybe slowing down a little bit as I'm eating the food,

what I find is if my hunger is really high,

if my hunger is in the 7 to 10 range, which

is the extreme hunger, and I've waited and haven't attended

to my earlier hunger signals, then I am prone,

like everybody is, I think, to mindless eating.

If we all used our brains in more energy efficient ways,

you don't eat as much.

And you feel much more energized when

you don't spend all this metabolic energy on ego

related process, on chatter.

So at a very basic level, mindfulness enables you

to kind of, you know, you taste your experience

more vividly or more richly.

-What? -How's your food?

It's good.

-Hm, you sure? -Yeah.

It's all right.

You're not even tasting it.

I like it a lot.

I tasted it. -No.

Stop what you're doing and pay attention to eating your food.

Well--

MINDFUL: Take this out.

OK. Ow.

And pay attention to what you're eating.

MINDLESS: OK.

-Chew it slowly. -I see.

Really taste it.

Like this?

MINDFUL: Slowly eat it.

Really take it in.

Mm.

MINDFUL: OK?

Yeah.

Taste it, take it in, and smell it, you know?

Really taste it.

I got to get another grape to smell it.

Well, get in there.

Really get into your food.

I mean, I smell it. Smells like

OK, just take up one bite.

So juicy in the middle.

Do you see the difference when you're mindful?

Mm.

When you're mindful and you're in the moment?

Oh, yeah.

-How much better it is. -Yeah.

And I think it's like really delicious.

MINDFUL: Right, well, because it's more delicious,

because you're being mindful.

That's good stuff.

Mindfulness has not only become increasingly popular practice

in schools around the world, but the US military

has begun to incorporate it into their centers

in an effort to help veterans and active duty

soldiers overcome some of the issues

that they deal with, such as post-traumatic stress disorder,

or PTSD.

I recently met with Dr. Jackie Maury, senior scientist project

director at USC Institute for Creative Technologies,

and Dr. Valerie Rice, the chief of the Army

Research Laboratory Field Element

at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

This is the largest army medical training facility in the world.

Let's stay take a look at how this all came about.

It was about the same time that the troops were returning

from the conflicts overseas and we were beginning

to realize there were some pretty

big issues with PTSD or other psychological health issues.

I was in combat arms.

I was doing the Vietnam era.

And they taught you how to be aggressive.

You are scanning all the time and you never

let anybody know what's going on with you because you

lose your essence of surprise.

I mean, if you hurt, so what?

Mission is first.

You don't want people to think you're weak,

especially if you're a leader.

A chain is only as strong as the weakest link.

And you didn't want to be that link.

Because if you was that link, you was finished.

If you were in battle, you've already got enough enemies.

I mean, then having your own emotions to be another one?

It's just-- it's tougher.

You just want to do what you're told to do

and you don't want to reach out and ask for help.

To go-- to go to behavioral health

was-- uh, you're not a man.

You ain't no soldier type thing.

Any activity with mental health was

subject to medical discharge or disciplinary discharge.

You just didn't.

That simple.

So that prevented a lot of soldiers,

especially young soldiers, from going, getting treatment.

You just don't bother to tell people because even not being

able to keep your personal life in control-- in control

is perceived as weakness.

As time went by and I got involved with the VA,

I found out that it was acceptable,

but I did it after I got out of the service

because it just was not acceptable at that point

in time.

There's still stigma.

But there's still stigma to go into behavioral health center.

And so for those individuals who simply wouldn't go because it

is behavioral health, then we can offer something

like this that's over a virtual world, where

they can be, if they choose to be, anonymous.

PAUL HARRISON (VOICEOVER): Dr. Steven Hickman and Alan

Goldstein both teach mindfulness in the form of life mindfulness

based stress reduction through the virtual world

of Second Life to veterans.

So we were approached, really out of the blue,

by the folks at ICT saying we're looking

for experts in mindfulness based stress reduction.

We got the idea to use a virtual world as sort

of a place of relaxation for veterans

and we found experts who are very

interested in working with us.

And they told us this amazing project that they've

been working for quite some time in providing

virtual reality and virtual world training

in various military settings.

And we had done a small village-- and a rocky village

as a proof of concept for something

else in the virtual world.

And I took one of those veterans over to see this village.

He didn't last 10 seconds in the desert.

He teleported out.

He said I can't handle this.

It's too real.

So that was the impetus for doing something that looks

like a hunting lodge, a ski lodge,

something that's very mountainous and green with lots

of water.

And we factor that into the design of the world

that we made for them.

Well, when we first started this study

and we had the computers issued to us,

it was amazing, and cool, and exciting.

And you know, you pick your own animated body

and you've got to learn how to fly

and they teach us how to walk.

And that was all really very exciting.

And you can choose different worlds

to go to, and listen, and see, and just interact

online in an amazing way.

So we're looking at whether or not

teaching mindfulness improves those areas, both for veterans

and for active duty.

And you might need just something

as simple as learning mindfulness strategies

and techniques.

If we can intervene with some of this and make a palatable

activity, something that is a tool rather

than something mysterious--

Which, again, makes the whole idea

of being an avatar kind of attractive,

plus you can look however you feel like looking,

if you want to take time.

For us, it was this whole novel idea of something

that we've been teaching them really involves face

to face contact in our minds, and this idea

of doing this in a virtual world where all of us

is represented by an avatar provides

this great opportunity.

So that we're not actually physically there in that world.

There's this being that we get to create.

We can dress the way we want, we can shape the way we want.

And people who have perhaps anxiety about being

in a social setting can still sort of

be in a virtual social setting where

they're still in the safety of their own home.

We would navigate our avatar online figures

to the designated location in a pavilion.

Our voices would come through the headsets and the headphones

and we would just interact online in a group forum.

And what's great about it, for veterans,

is even if they're in rural areas,

they can come together here.

They don't have to be able to go to a center.

People can be physically anywhere in the world,

but can still appear in Second Life in our classroom.

I think some people were afraid they might even cry

and they didn't want to cry in front of the group.

But when you're online, you can cry all you want.

Participating online, that was very--

I found it very, very good because we

everybody interacted with one another.

And we did share a lot of information about each other.

Some of my best moments that I've learned how to relax

is because of this course.

But that class taught me that I do matter

and I have to get myself in order,

to not only help me, but help my-- my folks,

my friend, my family members.

That does apply to all walks of life.

You know, it's not just from military stressors.

It's common everyday things that people are going through.

No matter what your scenario, if you want to feel better,

do better, then don't let your life pass you by.

Be a part of your life.

Slow things down, pay attention to what's going on.

The program, it just actually makes

you aware of your surroundings.

I'm enjoying life a lot more, the simple things in life,

like, you know, my chihuahua sleeping

on my foot, whereas, before, I might not

have realized how she felt or how comforting

that was for her to be there.

Now I can kind of be a little bit more mindful

of the pleasure that she obtains from me and the pleasure

that I obtain from just being around her.

I really sit back now just take my time.

Sit outside, drink some tea, listen to the wind blow

through the trees, listen to the birds,

count the cars, how many color cars or whatever,

like I used to do when I was a kid.

And I just feel great.

If I'm more relaxed, and if I'm OK, then people around me

are probably going to be more relaxed and OK.

Instead of just immediately getting upset when something

irritates you, you might think, OK, well,

maybe this person does have something going on, whereas,

before, you wouldn't-- you would just get mad

and call that individual a name or, you know,

just swear or something.

And some of those habits are bad.

Losing your temper in traffic, getting yourself riled up.

He run on my bumper, horsed around in front of me,

and turned right in front of me again, and turned right

there, right in front of me.

I mean, you know, he could have waited two seconds.

If I hadn't have been, you know, going

through this mindfulness class, I'm

not going to tell you what I would have done because I don't

want to incriminate myself.

So it's really just becoming in touch with myself

and realizing who I am.

And as a result of that, be calmer,

feel better, have less pain, have

less anxiety, less depression.

Mindfulness it just makes me think of how everything is,

how everything actually is.

For example, we do-- we had to do a eating exercise.

And being in the military, we usually

eat-- you know, eat quick because we always

have something else to do.

I wolf my food down because of habit.

Military, you know.

I had never really taken time to what

I call savor the food that I really-- that I eat,

that I consume.

And that's still, right now, a struggle for me,

to sit and enjoy a meal.

Doing this mindful exercise I got to be

able to actually taste it.

I found out that all my taste buds do work, you know.

And food is delicious if you take to eat it.

And slow down and actually taste what you eat

is a challenge to me.

But now I take time to connect with myself and my thoughts

and just to be OK with me.

So that's what mindfulness is to me.

For me, it's slow motion.

It is my choice to slow things down, to take a breath,

to snap it all back into perspective.

It makes me-- or, well, or it invites me to slow

down, Concentrate on self.

I've learned structural activity,

which was important to have.

I never considered walking meditation.

For example, I was walking-- when outside of this building,

and I just was free, feeling like I

was, you know, just free.

I didn't have any problems.

And the thing that makes this different from regular walking

is that your focus is desperately

on the slowest motion of steps that you can take.

You just walk.

And, you know, you pay attention to where you're going,

but you tune everything out.

It's almost like slow motion, which, to me, is most

of what mindfulness represents, putting

everything in slow motion.

And you can really, really relax.

It does take every bit of focus,

so you're not thinking about the past,

you're not thinking about the future.

You're just thinking, wow, this is a neat experience, to walk.

It's not easy being a teenager these days.

The constant pressure of fitting in, growing up, going

through puberty, and keeping up with the world that moves

faster than ever before can adversely affect

the mind of the adolescent.

The Mindfulness in Schools Project

was created when some teaching colleagues

and I shared an ambition to bring

together two things that were really close to our hearts.

One was mindfulness practice, which we've

been doing for many years, and the other was

the art of classroom teaching.

And we ended up writing a nine week

classroom introduction to mindfulness,

which we called Dot B.

And Dot B was really our answer to the challenge

we set ourselves, which was to write a mindfulness course

which was engaging, fun, memorable,

and also of practical use on the roller coaster

that is adolescence.

We will spend a lot of time cramming kids' brains with all

the facts that they need for their history,

or their geography, or their languages, or their sciences,

but we never really turn the lens inwards on their minds.

And the great thing about mindfulness

is that it gives you a tool to deploy when you find yourself

in a stressful situation.

And you know, OK, if I just pause,

if I notice how my breathing is, I don't necessarily

try to control it, I just notice where it is, it switches me out

of the thinking mode, the ruminative, cognitive, mode,

and into the sensing mode.

And what a lot of research is telling us at the moment,

and what I know from my own experience and from the kids

that I taught, is that our kids are pretty tough on themselves

now.

I think it's the stress, and anxiety, and all

of these things, and achievement,

the achievement ethic that we have in the culture.

All of these things actually put tremendous pressure on kids

now.

In fact, in today's world, teens are more under pressure

and experiencing higher levels of stress than ever before.

And increasing demand in technology,

academic preparation, and life transitions all result

in physical and emotional stressors,

such as bad temper, anxiety, depression,

and attention-deficit disorder.

And I wanted to find out more, so I

went to the University of California San Diego,

the center of mindfulness, and spoke

with director Steve Hickman, and course

instructor, Lorraine Hobbs.

We were running groups, mindfulness

based stress reduction groups, for adults for several years.

And then as we talked to people, other people who had taken

the mindfulness based stress reduction course

and had seen what it had done for them,

they were sort of thinking, wow, you know,

my teenager could really benefit from this, all the stress

of teen life these days.

Almost my entire life, and as far as I remember,

I've been dealing with depression, anger,

and a good deal of anxiety.

Not being able to handle my emotions well enough.

I had a short fuse.

Um, and I have ADHD.

I was struggling with my depression.

I would fight with my parents a lot and, like,

I would take it out on them.

It got to the point where I started lashing out

at my parents, so my mom came to me,

like, OK, we need to find something

to control your temper and to control your ADHD way more.

And she found this mindfulness thing and I was like, fine,

I'll try it.

I'd seen the website for the mindfulness center

and kind of saw that there was a teen group.

So I came home one day and told my husband about it

and I said I'm just going to tell her she's going.

I wasn't really sure, like-- was it meditation?

Was it like a group, therapy group?

I wasn't sure.

And then I came and I kind of got a gist of what it was.

I hadn't got the practice down, but was less resistant to go.

So after maybe two months, I liked it a lot.

I've tried other stuff.

I've tried to the count to 10 strategy.

That doesn't really work.

After the first day, I kind of just

realized there's no turning back.

I can't go back because where am I going to go.

There is no-- so I was like I better do it right.

After the first couple times, I really look forward

to coming here and doing it.

First few times, I was like this makes sense to me.

I can actually-- I can actually do it.

This is the first thing I've ever done that was really

all about the mind, which, I think,

helps get to the root of the problems.

They started teaching little intricate things they have,

the finger tracings, 7/11, self check-in, all these different

have been perfected.

Mindfulness, um, teaches for you to be mindful of yourself,

to be one with yourself.

Mindfulness is being not mindless.

You take a moment and you just take a breath.

And that calms me down a lot, especially when

you're really anxious or mad.

That one helps me.

It's like if you have an uncomfortable feeling

of sadness or anger, you're not using those tools to exactly

run away from it, but to instead examine it in a way

that you're able to let it go, but at the same time

dissect it and, like, understand the feeling it in a more, like,

objective way, without getting attached to it as well.

Bring yourself in and really--

[SIGH]

You know?

Mindfulness has really helped me not to control my thoughts

because you're never really going to be able to control

your thoughts 100%.

Your mind will always wonder to things.

But it's about, like, redirecting your thoughts

and reining in your thoughts and being able to bring them

to something more positive.

I think it's, like, for me, like, it's not about forgetting

your emotions or, like, what's happening,

it's more just, like, detaching yourself

from the-- like, your emotion, but at the same time,

observing it and accepting it.

If my problem was this cushion, like,

I'd-- sit on your problem.

Learn to be with your problem.

The life of a teenager now is probably

far more stressful even then when I went through it.

And, you know, why not give your teen the tools

to learn how to manage their own stress, like we're all,

you know, as adults, trying to learn them?

I have the tools now to understand what I'm feeling.

And because I'm really shy feel, so like, when I go and, like,

try to performance in front of people,

I get really, really nervous.

So I have used mindfulness for that because it calms me down

and I feel more comfortable then.

[SINGING]

I try and hide all of my anxiety

and depression and stuff, but with my mom,

she sees everything.

And so she's-- she says she's really

noticed a huge difference in my attention and my moods.

So I guess that's proof of the effectiveness of it.

I learned not to, like, judge myself as much

and think about the present.

Because when I think about the past or the future, like,

that's what causes me a lot of anxiety.

I've got like a mile long fuse now.

It's-- it's ridiculous.

It's really healthy.

If you're making eggs, you're mindfully making eggs.

It's an experience now, not just a task.

I used to wake up like three, four times in the night.

And now, I only wake up, like, twice.

But it actually really helped me and my stress levels.

I've noticed a huge amount of change.

My mood swings aren't nearly as violent.

My stress is completely down.

I think I'm more confident, more alive.

I was in a very sorry state before I

discovered the practice, before I discovered mindfulness.

You see, I'm bipolar, type two.

And as the diagnose-- well, tells you,

I feel extremely deep and powerful emotions

at almost any time, switching very rapidly.

And for awhile, I felt as if I was a victim of these feelings,

like they were something that I couldn't control,

like they were a monster inside me.

But then, a year ago, I started going to the mindfulness group.

And the changes that have happened since then, I

can't believe how different things are

now, much better my life is.

I think the ambition of the Mindfulness in Schools Project

is partly just to raise awareness

of what mindfulness is and give all kids a taste of it.

You know, we're not trying to convert everyone

into deep mindfulness practitioners.

We're just trying to make them aware of what it

is because it's common sense.

This, to me, seems to be the most fundamental thing

that we should teach our kids.

There's nothing else to be taught if you haven't

learned how to pay attention.

So when you teach mindfulness at home to your kids,

you're actually giving them this incredible source of

social and emotional learning.

You're giving them a source of resilience.

So those kids actually have a different feel

than kids who have a mind, of course, but don't see the mind.

You've got to train the teachers.

If the teachers aren't being mindful,

how are the kids ever going to be mindful.

But I don't think we should be thinking

that every kid in the school is going

to want to get up in the morning and practice mindfulness

for half an hour.

I think it is realistic for every kid in school

to be aware of mindfulness, to know what it is,

to have enjoyed learning about it,

to have valued the experience, so that's some of them,

yes, do go on to become mindfulness teachers.

In a sense, we human beings on our own.

It may be time for us to grow up and-- or grow down

and become planetary adults.

And that would mean, in some sense,

a deep experiential grounding in interconnectedness.

And if that's so, then maybe we have a certain kind

of responsibility if we are ever going

to grow into being a planetary adult

to actually inhabit the present moment or rediscover it.

Inhabit the present moment or rediscover it.

Inhabit the present moment or rediscover it.

-Hey. -Hi.

Notice anything different?

I sure do.

Un-huh.

Tell me.

-You got a new shirt. -Yeah.

You became mindful.

I did.

I became mindful.

Aren't you proud of me?

Extremely.

Wonderfulness, ridiculousness, with a little sprinkle

of mindfulness.

You really learned a lot with this.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's not a big deal if you

pay attention like you learn.

Yeah, I knew you had it in you.

Now we can be mindful together.

Yeah, I think that'd be awesome.

Yeah, it wasn't so hard, right?

No, it wasn't hard.

It was easy.

-High five it. -Thanks.

Woo.

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