1 00:00:00,420 --> 00:00:03,530 Hello and welcome to the new psychology of Depression. 2 00:00:03,530 --> 00:00:09,530 A series of programmes with me, Dr. Danny Pennyman and Professor Mark Williams of Oxford University. 3 00:00:09,530 --> 00:00:16,110 In the previous programme, we looked at the effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy. 4 00:00:16,110 --> 00:00:20,880 And in this programme, we're going to look at the impact mindfulness has on the brain. 5 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:21,750 Mark, 6 00:00:21,750 --> 00:00:32,430 one of the most interesting things I think about mindfulness is the impact it has in real time on the brain through various brain imaging studies. 7 00:00:32,430 --> 00:00:37,830 Can you describe those for us? You know, there's now been a number of studies. 8 00:00:37,830 --> 00:00:43,050 One of the things about mindfulness is it came on the scene as a secular practise and as a way of dealing with stress 9 00:00:43,050 --> 00:00:50,130 and depression at the same time that our ability to look right into the brain as people were actually thinking, 10 00:00:50,130 --> 00:00:56,880 doing task for someone opened up as well. So there's something called functional magnetic resonance imaging. 11 00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:05,910 And what that does is to effectively look at what changes are happening in real time in the brain as you're doing tasks. 12 00:01:05,910 --> 00:01:11,610 There's also structural MRI, which can take a very accurate picture of the structure of the brain. 13 00:01:11,610 --> 00:01:17,870 So both of these have led to important discoveries. For the first thing, if you just look at the structural work on the brain, 14 00:01:17,870 --> 00:01:23,400 something called Sarah Lazaar in America has done some fascinating work showing that long term meditators, 15 00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:29,280 people who were meditating for maybe 10 years, show structural differences in the brain. 16 00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:33,150 In one sense, it's not surprising that learning a skill changes the brain. 17 00:01:33,150 --> 00:01:39,450 After all, if you learn juggling, if you learn to play the piano, there's going to be long term changes in the brain. 18 00:01:39,450 --> 00:01:43,590 That's why you can sit down after 10 years of learning the piano and play it. 19 00:01:43,590 --> 00:01:53,400 It's going to be different and that different has to be encoded in the brain. What's different about this is that playing the piano or in juggling, 20 00:01:53,400 --> 00:01:56,730 you're actually doing something with your hands in relation to the outside world. 21 00:01:56,730 --> 00:02:03,510 You'd expect changes in the brain that once they're Eleazar found was that mental training, that is this meditating, 22 00:02:03,510 --> 00:02:08,130 mindful meditation in which you sit on a chair and just notice your mind wandering and bring it back. 23 00:02:08,130 --> 00:02:14,280 Now, did your mind wander the big bang that that itself? If you do that for a few years, actually changes the brain. 24 00:02:14,280 --> 00:02:22,020 Now, the question is, what it change? One of the most interesting parts of the brain that it changes is the part of the brain called the insula. 25 00:02:22,020 --> 00:02:29,400 Now, other research shows the insula is like a sort of a junction of body sensations. 26 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:33,450 It switches on when you have any strong body sensations, but it also has links. 27 00:02:33,450 --> 00:02:40,110 It links together sensations from the surface of the body, sensations from the inside the body, the viscera. 28 00:02:40,110 --> 00:02:47,730 For example, you know what your tummy does when it flips over, but also has projections to the cortical other areas of the neocortex. 29 00:02:47,730 --> 00:02:52,080 The frontal part of the brain. So it's a bit of a junction. 30 00:02:52,080 --> 00:02:59,430 And people have found, for example, that the insula lights up when you're doing a task that demands empathy. 31 00:02:59,430 --> 00:03:03,720 When you see somebody else in pain, a loved one in pain, then the insula lights up. 32 00:03:03,720 --> 00:03:07,050 And if it doesn't light up, then you don't feel empathy. 33 00:03:07,050 --> 00:03:14,490 So the fact that you get long term changes in this part of the cortical surface of the brain is, I think, extremely important. 34 00:03:14,490 --> 00:03:21,360 Some people have said this is a very important part of the brain for I'll be able to to feel the feelings of other people, 35 00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:25,320 to have compassion for other people, to have kindness towards other people. 36 00:03:25,320 --> 00:03:27,720 Now, this is not just kind of towards the people. 37 00:03:27,720 --> 00:03:33,990 It's actually kindness towards yourself as well, because in depression and many other mental health problems, 38 00:03:33,990 --> 00:03:39,530 people feel very unkind towards themselves, very unkind. They are their own worst critic. 39 00:03:39,530 --> 00:03:43,260 Therefore, the ability to cultivate kindness and compassion is really important. 40 00:03:43,260 --> 00:03:50,010 Does it take 10 years or do the positive effects begin to kick in after, know, a few days or a few weeks? 41 00:03:50,010 --> 00:03:52,100 This is one of the fascinating things. Norman Farb, 42 00:03:52,100 --> 00:03:58,320 working in Toronto with Adam Anderson and Zindel Siecle have done research on just eight weeks of mindfulness 43 00:03:58,320 --> 00:04:04,200 training using an MBA star programme in which people come in and do the do the programme for eight weeks. 44 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:09,030 But they look at them either before or after. And what they find is something really interesting. 45 00:04:09,030 --> 00:04:17,010 First of all, it involves the insula as well. If you get people to focus on their body, for example, it never done mindfulness before. 46 00:04:17,010 --> 00:04:21,000 What tends to happen and you can see it in the brain is that not only do they 47 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:25,230 focus on their body or on the experience of something in moment to moment, 48 00:04:25,230 --> 00:04:33,690 but they start to think about stuff. In other words, it spreads to thoughts, memories, a lot of thinking about the self and so on. 49 00:04:33,690 --> 00:04:40,320 And you see this part of the brain involved in self processing lighting up as well. 50 00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:51,030 Now, when you learn mindfulness, you learn to focus on the body and you learn to stay with the experience of sadness or anxiety or 51 00:04:51,030 --> 00:05:00,140 irritability and stay with that through the body sensations without it creating a story about things and. 52 00:05:00,140 --> 00:05:04,400 In their studies, they find that that's exactly what they can see in the brain. 53 00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:11,060 After eight weeks, you see that the insula can light up as people are able to focus on the experience, 54 00:05:11,060 --> 00:05:20,240 on the raw experience, having an emotion, for example. But then it's uncoupled from those parts of the brain that are, as it were telling you, 55 00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:25,820 a story about or thinking about stuff we know from lots of other laboratory experiments. 56 00:05:25,820 --> 00:05:31,340 This ability to experience things without thinking about them turns out to be really important, 57 00:05:31,340 --> 00:05:38,840 because a lot of the problem in depression, in worrying anxiety in eating disorders is overthinking. 58 00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:44,780 You think too much about things and you take a problem and actually make it worse by thinking too much. 59 00:05:44,780 --> 00:05:50,090 The fact that you can see in the brain these things getting uncoupled is, I think, really, really hopeful. 60 00:05:50,090 --> 00:05:55,040 We've got a biological marker, as it were, of this experience. 61 00:05:55,040 --> 00:06:02,760 Be able to deal more wisely with things rather than just always overthinking and problem solving about. 62 00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:11,180 But what does this mean in the real world? Does it mean, for example, we come off the hair trigger, which means if we find our path blocked, 63 00:06:11,180 --> 00:06:16,850 we react less angrily or with less anxiety or with less stress. 64 00:06:16,850 --> 00:06:22,520 So we've known for years that the fight and flight mechanism is a very evolutionary old system. 65 00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:25,940 If you see the ear of a tiger, you don't want to be playing around anymore. 66 00:06:25,940 --> 00:06:30,440 You need to freeze. And then when it's safe to do so, you make a dash to safety. 67 00:06:30,440 --> 00:06:36,740 And this is very automatic. It's very old. It preserves your life in dangerous situations. 68 00:06:36,740 --> 00:06:42,680 Now, part of this system is what's called the amygdala. It's deep in the brain. 69 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:51,950 It responds to anything that's highly arousing and most particularly to fearful situations in which you need to take direct action. 70 00:06:51,950 --> 00:06:59,420 In fact, we know that from Joseph Ledoux's work, that this amygdala, when you see something looks like a snake, 71 00:06:59,420 --> 00:07:03,080 there's a pathway that goes straight from the eyes to the thalamus to the amygdala. 72 00:07:03,080 --> 00:07:10,670 And that does that before you even started to think you started to react before you can actually think about what you're doing. 73 00:07:10,670 --> 00:07:19,190 What's interesting is the amygdala was designed to deal with real threats in the outside world, but human beings have evolved. 74 00:07:19,190 --> 00:07:25,280 Another extraordinary capacity, and that's the capacity to have language and to have inner language. 75 00:07:25,280 --> 00:07:29,540 We can think. We can imagine and we can bring back memories from a long time ago, 76 00:07:29,540 --> 00:07:36,350 or we can create an image of something that might happen next week, might happen next year. 77 00:07:36,350 --> 00:07:47,660 And it's almost as if, having created or simulated these events in the mind's eye, as it were, then the amygdala reacts as if it was a tiger for real. 78 00:07:47,660 --> 00:07:53,480 Now nobody can run fast enough to get away from their own imagination because the imagination goes with them. 79 00:07:53,480 --> 00:07:57,590 Nobody can run fast enough to get away from their own. So imagine fears. 80 00:07:57,590 --> 00:08:00,380 And yet the amygdala doesn't know that, you know. 81 00:08:00,380 --> 00:08:08,720 So what happens is that if you look at gazelles, for example, in the African savannah being chased by a leopard or a lion, they run like crazy. 82 00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:14,750 But when the lion is dragged one gazelle off or is given up the chase for the day, the gazelles go back to grazing. 83 00:08:14,750 --> 00:08:21,950 They have to graze to live. And the fact that they're grazing quite calmly five minutes later shows that their amygdala, 84 00:08:21,950 --> 00:08:25,790 which was going crazy five minutes ago, has now gone back to normal. 85 00:08:25,790 --> 00:08:34,100 They've switched on the fighting flight when they needed it. But more importantly, they've switched it off when they don't need it anymore. 86 00:08:34,100 --> 00:08:40,100 In humans, we can switch on. But because of our imagination and our memory and our worries for the future, 87 00:08:40,100 --> 00:08:46,000 which we can bring up right now, unlike the gazelles, we don't switch off the amygdala. 88 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:51,260 And now is that true in neuroscience? It turns out to be wonderfully true in an extraordinary way. 89 00:08:51,260 --> 00:09:00,500 So David Cresswell working in the United States, has put people into the scanner who are known to vary in how mindful they naturally are. 90 00:09:00,500 --> 00:09:04,580 So some people are very mindful. They notice things in the environment. 91 00:09:04,580 --> 00:09:07,370 They taste their food. They don't rush around so much. 92 00:09:07,370 --> 00:09:13,490 But other people in the scanner, they're the sort of people that are always rushing from one task to the other to keep up. 93 00:09:13,490 --> 00:09:17,750 They're always there. They never taste their food. They never notice where they are. 94 00:09:17,750 --> 00:09:19,280 Guess what happens in the scanner? 95 00:09:19,280 --> 00:09:29,060 It looks very much from his work, as if people who rush around all the time, who are mindless, their amygdala is chronically overactive. 96 00:09:29,060 --> 00:09:33,710 It's like the amygdala is stuck on the on position. They're the gazelles that don't stop running. 97 00:09:33,710 --> 00:09:41,810 And so lots of people who rush from task to task in their daily thinking they're being creative is just an illusion of creative productivity. 98 00:09:41,810 --> 00:09:44,090 It's actually as far as their brain is concerned. 99 00:09:44,090 --> 00:09:51,770 They're running away from something that has very pervasive effect because it going to affect how you process a lot of other information. 100 00:09:51,770 --> 00:09:59,740 In effect, you're saying that mindfulness is powerful enough to alter even the most deep seated. 101 00:09:59,740 --> 00:10:04,400 Primitive or most parts of our brain? Absolutely. We've mentioned the insula. 102 00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:10,120 That's part of the cortex. But we've mentioned the amygdala, which is part of the more ancient emotion system of the brain. 103 00:10:10,120 --> 00:10:15,790 But there are sort of intermediate things. There's something called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. 104 00:10:15,790 --> 00:10:23,470 We know that that switches on or responds if you feel as though we're either in pain or social pain. 105 00:10:23,470 --> 00:10:27,280 So let's say that, you know, you are part of a threesome throwing a ball to each other. 106 00:10:27,280 --> 00:10:31,720 And suddenly the two people you were playing with started throwing the ball to each other and they missed you out. 107 00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:33,760 You start if you were you know, 108 00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:40,540 now you can do an experiment in which you put people in a scanner and you pretend you're playing a game with them and they're part of a game, 109 00:10:40,540 --> 00:10:45,160 a threesome at a ball tossing gain on the computer. 110 00:10:45,160 --> 00:10:51,850 And then you start making the game actually deliberately look as if you're being excluded. 111 00:10:51,850 --> 00:10:55,630 If these other two people are playing with each other and not with you. 112 00:10:55,630 --> 00:11:02,620 And what you find is the dorsal anterior thing, the cortex actually begins to respond to this as if you are in pain. 113 00:11:02,620 --> 00:11:05,560 It's like a social. You're feeling socially excluded. 114 00:11:05,560 --> 00:11:14,410 And some research now from the states, again, finds that people who are high on trait mindfulness have much less effect. 115 00:11:14,410 --> 00:11:18,790 They don't feel so socially excluded. They're able to sort of take a step back from that. 116 00:11:18,790 --> 00:11:22,480 But people who are more in this rushing around mode all the time, 117 00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:26,620 who are frantically rushing rental against your there are much more sensitive to this. 118 00:11:26,620 --> 00:11:34,360 They actually feel excluded, a drop of a hat. They're on this hair trigger not just for a tiger, but for feeling actually in the outgroup as well. 119 00:11:34,360 --> 00:11:38,350 So it's not surprising that they're spending a lot of the time trying to trying to find a way 120 00:11:38,350 --> 00:11:43,690 into the ingroup because they're so sensitive to these little signs of social exclusion. 121 00:11:43,690 --> 00:11:48,670 And there's not just real social exclusion. This is imagine social exclusion. 122 00:11:48,670 --> 00:11:58,030 Again, in the real world, if we tamp down on the negative pathways of the brain and they enhance the so-called positive pathways of the brain, 123 00:11:58,030 --> 00:12:04,870 does that enhance creativity and productivity and as well as self-esteem and general levels of happiness? 124 00:12:04,870 --> 00:12:11,440 Absolutely. So there's a study now in the Netherlands that have looked at people going through an empathy programme. 125 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:16,240 They find that it reduces negative affect, but it also increases wellbeing. 126 00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:23,230 The reduction in negative affect flows from the ability, the greater ability people learn to let go of nasty things from their past. 127 00:12:23,230 --> 00:12:30,550 So they don't ruminate and dwell on them. The increase in well-being actually doesn't so much relate to that as the ability to really notice. 128 00:12:30,550 --> 00:12:39,220 Day to day, moment to moment, living, tasting things they've, as we've forgotten to taste, begin to see small things like flowers, trees. 129 00:12:39,220 --> 00:12:45,370 The smile of a child, which you'd normally just ignore. It doesn't take more effort to notice these. 130 00:12:45,370 --> 00:12:49,270 You just need to notice that you're not noticing them. That's enough. 131 00:12:49,270 --> 00:12:55,540 Then, as it were. Wake up. So this increase in well-being is extremely important. 132 00:12:55,540 --> 00:13:02,990 But there's something else goes on as well. Some other brain studies done, first of all, by Richard Davidson in Wisconsin, in America. 133 00:13:02,990 --> 00:13:08,120 And we've replicated his work here in Oxford. Looks not at Fmr AI studies. 134 00:13:08,120 --> 00:13:13,630 The imaging the brain through that, but uses EEG. That's the electro Ancef, the graph. 135 00:13:13,630 --> 00:13:19,840 Those take measures from the surface of the brain. And it looks at the electoral activity that goes on all the time. 136 00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:25,400 The humming, buzzing sort of thing that goes on normally the brain what Richard Davidson found was really interesting, 137 00:13:25,400 --> 00:13:32,830 that people who were always avoiding things, who didn't like what was going on in their mind or going on around them. 138 00:13:32,830 --> 00:13:40,540 The brain gets into a pattern in which the right side at the frontal air of the brain is more active than the left. 139 00:13:40,540 --> 00:13:44,350 And if you show somebody a nasty photograph, then that's what will happen to all of us. 140 00:13:44,350 --> 00:13:51,370 The right side will go right on the left. However, if you show somebody a photograph of a smiling child, suddenly you find it switches. 141 00:13:51,370 --> 00:13:59,010 The left is now more active than the right. For years we thought that was a sort of a set point that you couldn't change. 142 00:13:59,010 --> 00:14:00,940 It was a personality characteristic. 143 00:14:00,940 --> 00:14:09,370 What Davidson showed with John Cabot, Zen and others, was that through doing an eight week mindfulness course and BSR course, you could switch this. 144 00:14:09,370 --> 00:14:16,990 So it was more likely to be more activation on the left, the right, more into this approach mode than the avoidance mode. 145 00:14:16,990 --> 00:14:21,340 What's more, a few months later, people had maintained this neural pattern. 146 00:14:21,340 --> 00:14:24,640 And the more that they maintained it, even in the face of sadness, 147 00:14:24,640 --> 00:14:31,630 because they also used the Prokofiev and found that normally when people listen to that, the brain's signature shifts more to the left. 148 00:14:31,630 --> 00:14:39,550 But in this case, they are able to maintain that sense of being open and willing to experience their emotions. 149 00:14:39,550 --> 00:14:46,240 And what's more, those who were most able to do that were able to show differences in their immune system. 150 00:14:46,240 --> 00:14:53,860 So their response to an influenza jab, for example, showed that their immune system, the state of their body, was in a more healthy state. 151 00:14:53,860 --> 00:14:59,650 So how long each day do you need to meditate to gain all these benefits? Well, I think people need to try to. 152 00:14:59,650 --> 00:15:03,850 Themselves. There's no prescription, there's no prescription in our clinic. 153 00:15:03,850 --> 00:15:11,400 People do 40 minutes a day. People who've been seriously depressed for for many years, they start at the very first day. 154 00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:17,920 Day one, they start with 40 or 50 minutes a day and then carry on doing that six days a week for eight weeks. 155 00:15:17,920 --> 00:15:23,950 If people don't have serious clinical problems, then they may find shorter meditations more useful. 156 00:15:23,950 --> 00:15:29,650 And as you know, in their funding world book, we offer people something and one minute we offer them a three minute. 157 00:15:29,650 --> 00:15:34,330 But the standard meditation for the first week is eight minutes to be done twice a day. 158 00:15:34,330 --> 00:15:43,330 And what that allows people to do is not just to get used to long meditations, but to the transition from not meditating to meditation here. 159 00:15:43,330 --> 00:15:46,780 People, if you want to get up in the morning. That's the most difficult thing to do. 160 00:15:46,780 --> 00:15:54,850 Get up and meditate or stop the tele television and go meditate or make that transition into meditation. 161 00:15:54,850 --> 00:16:03,250 So what we've done in our book is to use shorter, more frequent meditations where it's more likely that people who have to fit them into their life. 162 00:16:03,250 --> 00:16:07,330 Then when they get there, then they can decide how long to stay there. Okay. 163 00:16:07,330 --> 00:16:16,390 How little can I get away with? I think the attitude of going for is how much do you need to do to discover what needs to be discovered? 164 00:16:16,390 --> 00:16:24,220 Because meditation is a training programme in which you start to find or discover that you get insights into the 165 00:16:24,220 --> 00:16:30,640 patterns of mind that are getting you into sort of entangled in your day to day life and your relationships and so on. 166 00:16:30,640 --> 00:16:40,330 As you meditate more on a daily basis, you begin to discover more so that the invitation is to meditate as frequently 167 00:16:40,330 --> 00:16:45,160 and for long enough that you begin to want to do it on the basis you say, 168 00:16:45,160 --> 00:16:48,910 what are we going to discover today? Not how little can I get away with? 169 00:16:48,910 --> 00:16:53,080 Because that's the sort of that is the activating the avoidance mode of the mind. 170 00:16:53,080 --> 00:17:00,070 And therefore, we know the voids. The mode actually sets up a rather narrowing, constricted view. 171 00:17:00,070 --> 00:17:07,450 An interesting experiment was done some years ago in which this illustrates these different approaches to life in general. 172 00:17:07,450 --> 00:17:16,840 For example, what this experiment did is called the Mouse in the Maze Experiment, and they had students do a series of simple paper and pencil tests. 173 00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:22,060 The first one was to help a little mouse get out of a maze, you know, get home safely. 174 00:17:22,060 --> 00:17:27,110 The second one was one of those creativity tests. How many uses can you think of for a brick? 175 00:17:27,110 --> 00:17:34,330 And then somebody analyses them to look. How creative are they? I mean, for example, if you just say build a wall, it's not terribly creative. 176 00:17:34,330 --> 00:17:39,940 But one person came up with all pounding down to dust, add water and use it for face paints. 177 00:17:39,940 --> 00:17:44,770 Well, that's slightly more creative. So you can you can use that as a source of creativity test. 178 00:17:44,770 --> 00:17:48,130 Well, here the students were doing this creativity test. 179 00:17:48,130 --> 00:17:55,930 But first of all, they did this help this mouse get out of a maze, out of this labyrinth, unbeknown to students. 180 00:17:55,930 --> 00:18:01,150 There were two versions of this maze. So they all had to put their pencil on and get the mouse out of the maze. 181 00:18:01,150 --> 00:18:03,610 It took about two minutes. They all did it successfully. 182 00:18:03,610 --> 00:18:11,860 But in one version of this cartoon maze, the little mouse, just before he got out and got to his mousehole on the on this picture, 183 00:18:11,860 --> 00:18:16,170 there was a lump of cheese waiting for him to feast on before he went to bed. 184 00:18:16,170 --> 00:18:22,150 In the other the other half, the students had no no cheese. 185 00:18:22,150 --> 00:18:29,890 But there was a picture of an owl floating overhead ready to swoop down and catch the mouse in its talons at any moment. 186 00:18:29,890 --> 00:18:34,600 So here were these groups of students, some of them getting the mouse out of the maze with that paper, 187 00:18:34,600 --> 00:18:38,710 with their pencil on the paper and in the corner of their eye, there was cheese. 188 00:18:38,710 --> 00:18:46,780 The other students in the corner of their eye was an owl. Now, all the students did the maze perfectly well in a couple of minutes. 189 00:18:46,780 --> 00:18:54,400 But the students who'd done this, two minutes on the maze with the owl in the corner of their eyes, they did it. 190 00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:57,970 They were 50 percent less creative on the creativity task. 191 00:18:57,970 --> 00:19:03,490 It's astonishing, isn't it? It's amazing. It was published in one big psychology journals a few years ago. 192 00:19:03,490 --> 00:19:07,920 And not only did it affect that effect, people's memory as well. People were more cautious. 193 00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:12,760 And when you think about it, it makes sense. We have evolved to look out for predators. 194 00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:19,090 And millions of years ago, we needed to look out for predators. And when you see a predator, you don't get playful. 195 00:19:19,090 --> 00:19:22,840 You don't get creative. You basically like a rabbit to a rabbit hole. 196 00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:28,450 You want the tunnel vision to lead you from here to your rabbit hole. You don't look either way. 197 00:19:28,450 --> 00:19:35,680 What we now know is that, of course, when people are in avoidance mode all the time, then it's a problem. 198 00:19:35,680 --> 00:19:40,930 So that affects meditation as well. If people are sick, how little can I get away with then? 199 00:19:40,930 --> 00:19:46,210 Of course, it's a very legitimate question to ask. But there's just the danger that actually that's avoidance mode. 200 00:19:46,210 --> 00:19:51,130 So one of the things in meditation is just a notice that to say, ah, listen to that thought. 201 00:19:51,130 --> 00:19:54,880 That's probably avoidance mode turning up. Just smile at yourself. 202 00:19:54,880 --> 00:19:59,560 There's no need to give yourself a harsh judgement. Just smile itself saying, hey, my mind's. 203 00:19:59,560 --> 00:20:06,550 Seeming to be in a frantic mode. So this illustrates why I need to get on my cushion or my studio, my chair, 204 00:20:06,550 --> 00:20:11,380 and do a few minutes of meditation in which you recognise these patterns of the mind, 205 00:20:11,380 --> 00:20:17,450 like weather patterns moving across the landscape and begin to learn to smile at them. 206 00:20:17,450 --> 00:20:25,010 This is clearly a rapidly evolving area. Over the next five, 10, 20 years, how do you expect it to pad out? 207 00:20:25,010 --> 00:20:30,560 One of the things that we've learnt is this tunnel vision doesn't just affect, you know, your attention. 208 00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:34,220 It affects things like suicidal depression as well. 209 00:20:34,220 --> 00:20:42,050 We now know from our research in Oxford that when people have been suicidal in the past, if they get a little bit of sad mood, 210 00:20:42,050 --> 00:20:47,900 unlike anybody else who's been depressed, even depressed many times, if they've been depressed and suicidal. 211 00:20:47,900 --> 00:20:52,970 This tunnel vision doesn't just affect what they see. It affects what problems they come up with. 212 00:20:52,970 --> 00:21:00,050 We need more research to notice how those signatures of suicidal depression can be avoided. 213 00:21:00,050 --> 00:21:07,940 Our research is beginning to show that some people naturally come up with mindful statements there to help them through. 214 00:21:07,940 --> 00:21:11,750 Other people don't. And we need to know how we can best help them. 215 00:21:11,750 --> 00:21:15,530 The other thing is that we want to prevent the very first depression. 216 00:21:15,530 --> 00:21:21,230 So we're working closely with mindfulness in schools dot org, which is a school's mindfulness programme. 217 00:21:21,230 --> 00:21:29,360 That's the U.K. version. But there are many programmes in the United States and all over the world actually teaching meditation to schoolchildren. 218 00:21:29,360 --> 00:21:36,140 It turns out they love it. They can do it really well with a good teacher who knows about mindfulness, who's got a mindfulness practise. 219 00:21:36,140 --> 00:21:41,000 It doesn't take very much for children to go, wow, this is amazing. 220 00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,080 So introducing into schools is really important. But we can go even earlier than that. 221 00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:49,550 We know that couples expecting a baby respond very well to being taught mindfulness. 222 00:21:49,550 --> 00:21:53,780 It helps them deal with the fear of childbirth. It helps them deal with the pain of childbirth. 223 00:21:53,780 --> 00:21:55,400 And what's more, the evidence, 224 00:21:55,400 --> 00:22:02,960 early evidence suggests that it helps the bonding of the couples together through this difficult time can be very difficult for some couples, 225 00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:10,760 but also the bonding with the infant, with the new baby. There's critical dance that's done between a baby and their parents. 226 00:22:10,760 --> 00:22:17,570 And often if the parents are depressed, preoccupied mum or dad, then they don't do this delicate dance. 227 00:22:17,570 --> 00:22:23,510 This meshing with their baby. And we know that has long term consequences for for the developing child. 228 00:22:23,510 --> 00:22:27,710 So teaching people to attend is hugely important. 229 00:22:27,710 --> 00:22:36,590 It's the work that Nancy Bartok, he started in California. And we hope to start a European initiative based on her work here based in Oxford. 230 00:22:36,590 --> 00:22:41,790 Wade, should people begin meditating then? Is it suitable for five year olds? 231 00:22:41,790 --> 00:22:45,470 10 tenure? It can be five, six year olds. There's no problem. Just short meditation. 232 00:22:45,470 --> 00:22:51,380 I mean, you can teach a child to focus on the soles of the feet, for example. You can teach a child to find a place. 233 00:22:51,380 --> 00:22:55,730 Are still quiet space within them. Interestingly, you don't have to very long. 234 00:22:55,730 --> 00:22:59,930 Children get it very, very quickly. Of course, the brain is developing. 235 00:22:59,930 --> 00:23:05,150 You don't have to do very much. Most of us who are adults, we've trained in the thinking analytic mind. 236 00:23:05,150 --> 00:23:11,030 We've never trained to actually notice our own bodies, to notice our experience, to notice what's going on in our minds. 237 00:23:11,030 --> 00:23:17,660 Children take that very well. That's really surprising because I certainly when I was a child, I lived in a dream world. 238 00:23:17,660 --> 00:23:24,110 I loved it. I wouldn't change a thing. But I can't imagine at that age I would have taken to mindfulness meditation. 239 00:23:24,110 --> 00:23:32,420 Well, if it enabled you to ground yourself so that you could take advantage of your dream world, that you might have enjoyed it even more. 240 00:23:32,420 --> 00:23:37,760 Because mindfulness is not just about stopping your daydreams. It's about choosing. 241 00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:44,930 It's about allowing you to daydream if you want to. And if there are troubles around, it's allowing you to address those skilfully as well. 242 00:23:44,930 --> 00:23:50,630 And that's what the children actually seem to get out of it. So in some of the work done in Oxford by my colleagues, 243 00:23:50,630 --> 00:23:55,970 Dina Leavelle and Sarah Hennelly and by the Mindfulness in Schools programme, they discover, for example, 244 00:23:55,970 --> 00:24:02,090 15 year old girls who are feeling rather phobic of school, who hate their lessons, 245 00:24:02,090 --> 00:24:09,140 who aren't able to concentrate, to stay awake at night, beginning to find ways that they can manage that better. 246 00:24:09,140 --> 00:24:15,200 And that teaches the girls and boys themselves and their parents notice the difference very quickly. 247 00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:20,180 Now, this is all rapidly developing work. We need better trials to do this. 248 00:24:20,180 --> 00:24:24,560 But when people reach adulthood, there's still lots of questions we need to ask. 249 00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:27,890 We know that people who have bipolar disorder, for example, 250 00:24:27,890 --> 00:24:34,610 which is a very serious that used to be called manic depression, very serious problem for many people. 251 00:24:34,610 --> 00:24:37,760 People take to mindfulness very well. 252 00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:45,590 But there now needs to be trials to say, well, does it actually prevent new episodes of mania or new episodes, depression? 253 00:24:45,590 --> 00:24:52,490 And of course, the brain science itself is helping us know how mindfulness has its effects, how it affects different types of depression, 254 00:24:52,490 --> 00:24:57,860 and also which practises within mindfulness are best for whom we have a whole range of practises. 255 00:24:57,860 --> 00:25:02,660 And at the moment, people trialled all these practises and they discover which is best for them. 256 00:25:02,660 --> 00:25:10,820 But I think the advance in brain science are beginning to show what is the best practise for people perhaps who ruminate and brood a lot? 257 00:25:10,820 --> 00:25:16,870 What's the best practise for people who are very avoidant? How can we give people different gateways in. 258 00:25:16,870 --> 00:25:24,340 The same sort of open spaciousness of awareness that can be shown in their brain and in their lives. 259 00:25:24,340 --> 00:25:29,590 I'm sure there's plenty of people who are listening to this programme would would love to help in some ways. 260 00:25:29,590 --> 00:25:31,900 Is there any way that they can? Well, indeed. 261 00:25:31,900 --> 00:25:37,810 If they want more details, of course, they can go to the Frantic World dot com website or to reading the book Mindfulness. 262 00:25:37,810 --> 00:25:42,340 Finding Peace in a Frantic World. But also, there's been a book specifically written for people depressed, depressed, 263 00:25:42,340 --> 00:25:48,310 the mindful way through depression by myself and John Teesdale and Zengel Seagle and John Cabot Zen. 264 00:25:48,310 --> 00:25:52,480 And also, because there's so much research to be done in the future, 265 00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:57,040 we're beginning to get a development campaign together at Oxford Mindfulness Centre. 266 00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:06,460 As part of the university's Oxford Thinking campaign to fund a professorship in mind and science that we able to take this forward in the future. 267 00:26:06,460 --> 00:26:11,050 Over the eight hundred years of Oxford University, sometimes hundreds of years ago, 268 00:26:11,050 --> 00:26:19,330 people who wanted to make a difference making a permanent difference in the world did so by investing in endowments for the university. 269 00:26:19,330 --> 00:26:25,420 So they knew that even in decades or hundreds of years time, no matter how much the field had changed, 270 00:26:25,420 --> 00:26:33,670 there'd be somebody there working right on the forefront of it. And who knows where this field will be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years time. 271 00:26:33,670 --> 00:26:38,500 But by raising the endowment for a new professorship of Mines and Science to work on this, 272 00:26:38,500 --> 00:26:42,850 we know that wherever the field is, somebody will be working on the forefront in the future. 273 00:26:42,850 --> 00:26:51,550 And if anybody wants to help, of course, they can go to Oxford mindfulness dot org or through the university's own website and discover the 274 00:26:51,550 --> 00:26:58,510 development campaign that we're putting together as part of Oxford University's contribution to this field. 275 00:26:58,510 --> 00:27:06,460 The mind is one of the most fascinating things that anybody could research. But when it goes wrong, it's one of the most tragic things to see. 276 00:27:06,460 --> 00:27:12,700 I think that certainly the 35 years that I've been working in the field of depression on the psychological treatment of depression, 277 00:27:12,700 --> 00:27:17,380 I've seen many changes. I can't anticipate where we'll be in another 35 years. 278 00:27:17,380 --> 00:27:24,250 I may not be around to see it, but I think committing ourselves now to saying this work is really important. 279 00:27:24,250 --> 00:27:32,470 And wherever we got, there's going to be people that need more treatments, more effective treatments, both to prevent depression and prevent suicide. 280 00:27:32,470 --> 00:27:37,870 That's what I think we need to be committed to, and that's what I'd like to see happen over the next few years. 281 00:27:37,870 --> 00:27:44,200 Well, it really could change the world. Which is ironic for a teaching that is two and a half thousand years old. 282 00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:45,813 Thank you very much again.