Mindfulness & Psychology: Robert J. Goodman W/ Tim Schofield - Ep. 25

In this episode of the Project Mindfulness Podcast,

We talk about mindfulness and psychology.

How does it help us regulate emotions or affect our memory?

Welcome to the Project Mindfulness Podcast.

We'll take you on a journey across the globe and talk with other meditators about their practice,

The lessons they have learned and what they want the world to know.

Good day and welcome.

This is episode 25 and I'm Christian Nijtersond.

Thank you for joining us.

Today I have a talk with Robert Gutman,

Assistant professor at Northern Arizona University.

Robert is a psychologist who examines the neurological,

Behavioral and psychosocial consequences of mindfulness.

In this episode,

We talk about the influence of mindfulness on memory,

Regulating emotions and aging-related memory decline.

I'm sure this talk will help you understand why mindfulness is so important for each and every one of us.

Today we're talking with Rob Gutman about mindfulness and psychology and joining me on the podcast is Tim Schofield.

Tim,

Welcome.

Hi Christian.

Hi Rob.

Rob,

Thank you very much for joining me today on the podcast.

Happy to talk to you.

It's my pleasure.

Awesome.

Rob,

Just to dive into it and let our listeners know,

Who are you and what do you do in life?

Sure.

Well,

So professionally,

I'm a professor of psychology,

More specifically social neuroscience.

So basically,

I study how situational factors influence thoughts,

Feelings and behavior,

Particularly at the level of the brain.

And my primary focus has been on mindfulness meditation and particularly how early Buddhist styles of mindfulness meditation influence the brain and how people interact with each other in social situations,

How they handle their emotions,

How it influences their memory.

So professionally,

That's what I do.

Outside of my profession,

I have a variety of different hobbies.

I like long distance backpacking.

It's kind of like a retreat.

Yeah.

And,

You know,

I'm into tech and that kind of stuff as well.

That's cool.

And so now I'm wondering,

Like,

How did you die or like,

How did you encounter Buddhism and meditation?

When did that happen?

Well,

It happened.

I mean,

It started around 1998.

I was getting a degree in computer science and I was minoring in philosophy.

And I came across a philosopher slash social psychologist named Eric Fromm.

And he was very ripe for my youth.

You know,

I was kind of an angsty type person.

And Eric Fromm,

His early works really focused on humanism and the problems with capitalism and these types of issues.

And it struck a chord with me.

So what happens,

I took a deep dive and began reading every book I could get my hands on from him.

In the arc of his profession,

He started out very kind of social warrior,

You know,

Trying to promote things like socialism and talk about how capitalism was bad.

But it progressed into,

You know,

By the end of his life,

He was basically using Buddhism in psychotherapy.

And he was actually the first person to bring over DT Suzuki to the United States.

He wrote the foreword for Nayanapanika Theraz,

The heart of Buddhist meditation.

So it was through that.

It was kind of unexpected.

And of course,

Along the way,

I got into practice and that was the real transformation.

And that's how it all started.

That's a yeah,

That's quite a journey.

I think it's funny because I,

For instance,

I have friends who at a certain age got into a certain self improvement or self something that is more about reflecting on yourself.

And from that now in the end,

Some of them are into meditation.

It's funny how it seems to lead to a certain path for a lot of us.

Sure.

Yeah.

And so day to day,

What's what is your practice?

Like,

Do you have a certain routine or morning meditation that you run through?

Is there a certain teaching or tradition that you follow?

So yeah,

I mean,

You know,

I'm of the mindset that,

You know,

There's no necessarily one rough path that everyone kind of finds what works for them and it may change like everything else.

But currently and for the last,

I'd say nine or 10 years,

I've been very invested in practicing Satipatthana style.

So going through the different sequences of the four foundations in fullness.

So often I'll start by doing,

You know,

Basic settling in mindfulness of breathing,

Mindfulness of the whole body,

Expanding awareness to the whole body,

And then kind of enter into like scanning anatomical parts,

Elements,

Mortality.

So it's,

I'd say my style of practice really anchors on using model awareness to confront the existential dilemmas we all face.

So using mindfulness as a way to be with things that could be uncomfortable and exploring those types of emotions.

And,

You know,

I mean,

The proof is in the pudding,

So to speak.

Like I feel like after doing those types of practices,

It's as if there's like a monkey that's taken off your back that you didn't even know was there.

So I feel like a lot of the stress and things that we have in our life kind of fall under the surface of our conscious awareness.

And that these Satipatthana style practices can bring up some of those deeply rooted concerns and anxieties in a context that's healthy to work with them.

So in a sense,

It's similar,

I would say,

Particularly the first Satipatthana,

The first foundation of mindfulness,

Working with the body.

It's very similar to exposure therapy.

That's interesting.

So for you as a person right now in your job,

Is it to combine this sort of Eastern philosophy and this mindfulness and meditation that you found there with the Western psychology?

Is that an accurate way to describe it?

The tools of Western psychology,

Sure.

I feel that the reason I think I place a bunch of emphasis on the early Buddhist culturalizations of mindfulness is that we're kind of in a conundrum in the West.

And not just the West,

But Buddhism as a whole,

You're dealing with a pluralistic tradition that spans many,

Many centuries.

And in the West,

You have perspectives on mindfulness that are informed by a variety of different goals,

One predominant one being clinical treatment.

So incorporate mindfulness with clinical treatment.

And so when you ask a Buddhist or when you ask a psychologist in the West,

What is mindfulness,

You can ask five people and get 15 different answers.

And so I think from a scientific perspective,

This poses a very big challenge to mindfulness research because we have to be able to operationally define the constructs that we're working with.

Given that there's a whole palette of different meanings of mindfulness across different traditions,

I thought it would be best to pick one and be specific about the types of psychological processes that it's purported to influence.

So yeah,

The agenda is certainly not to go out and prove early Buddhism as being true.

In fact,

More often than not,

Finding lack of evidence in certain things that would be predicted by early Buddhism.

And that's just as informative.

So.

Yeah.

I mean,

Looking at,

For instance,

Western psychology in the way it developed,

There was,

I have to say it right,

I think it was William James who talked about introspection.

You have to correct me there if it was not William James.

But yeah,

He really talked about introspection and I think the early roots of psychology in also Western culture,

They have a lot of this mindfulness influence,

But it just got kicked out because it wasn't statistically,

They couldn't work with it.

That was the idea why it got out of our whole curriculum.

And now it's coming back,

Luckily.

But it got out because they felt like,

Yeah,

But we can't prove it.

We can't statistically show that it's having effect on this and that.

And I think I'm very happy that it's now returning to our world,

So to say,

In our view on psychology.

But I wonder,

Is there something lost about mindfulness in the way that we approach it now in the West?

Yeah,

I mean,

I think it depends on the perspective of the person in the West.

Certainly there's a distinction in the intention of mindfulness whenever you're trying to get people who are at a minus one to a zero,

Taking people who are suffering from psychological disorders and getting them to,

Quote,

Normal.

That has a very different flavor from mindfulness of going from somewhat normal to ration.

And I think one thing that's missing there is the emphasis on ethics and the importance of ethics as a foundational support for all meditation practice.

You don't see much emphasis on ethics in cognitive behavioral therapy infused with mindfulness,

For example.

Right.

Yeah,

That makes sense.

So to link back to your work,

How would you define mindfulness in psychology?

So the definition that I personally work with.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So really,

Yeah,

Exactly.

The one you work with and you find that brings true to the work you do.

So I would say,

You know,

The easy answer would be it's a broad,

Open,

Equanimous and receptive awareness of present moment experience.

However,

I think,

You know,

Oftentimes mindfulness kind of gets conflated with just attention in general.

And I think mindfulness represents a particular quality of attention.

In contrast to attentional focus,

Where we're anchoring our attention on some type of object and sustaining attention on it,

I see mindfulness as this broader capacity,

A meta-awareness that acknowledges and can keep track of the current state of the mind.

So mindfulness is this more broad receptivity to change.

It's actually being with the change in the present moment,

Including the change in your own mind.

And so mindfulness is that thing that can kind of bring us back when our mind goes astray.

So I feel also that there's a value in mindfulness in terms of this equanimity of concept,

Where the way that our mind reacts to pleasant and unpleasant experiences is reduced,

Right?

So rather than,

You know,

It's kind of,

You know,

From a Buddhist perspective to like clinging,

The idea of clinging and always trying to get what we want and avoid what we don't want.

I feel,

You know,

That is absolutely central,

Particularly in early Buddhist conceptualizations,

Is that,

You know,

It goes to an extreme in early Buddhist conceptualizations in that you're trying to endogenously kind of generate unpleasant things,

Precisely be with them and not avoid them.

And to notice the subtle joy of the present moment that's always there if they fail to recognize.

Yeah,

I think this equanimity aspect,

It's similar to the non-judgment.

I think in the West,

The term non-judgment awareness,

While that's accurate,

Particularly for people who are beginning to start a practice,

I feel we have to be very careful with that word because it could easily be argued that the point of mindfulness is to judge things in terms of whether or not they will lead to future suffering or not.

And so maybe a better word would be discernment,

Right?

But when we're talking about non-judgment,

I don't think that necessarily means that we're not actively making distinctions between things and judging things as good or bad,

But that the age of awareness is open to any experience and that we allow anything that's happening experience without judgment.

So I would say that non-judgment aspect,

Very similar to equanimity,

But I think the term non-judgment has been frequently misunderstood.

So would you say that in your view that mindfulness occupies a space in the treatment arena that is more preventative in terms of,

For want of a better phrase,

Like a brain training process rather than something that's.

.

.

I mean,

I guess it can be both,

Right,

But maybe more preventative than something that's direct action,

Right?

I mean,

I know there are obvious immediate effects of meditation and there are apps out there certainly I've seen that say have meditations geared towards people who are,

Let's say,

In the midst of a panic attack,

But is it your view that the effects,

The long-term changes to our view of our experience outweigh those more immediate effects in the sense of treatment?

Is that a fair characterization?

Well,

I mean,

I'd like to disclose that I am not a clinical psychologist.

No,

No,

I understand.

I'm not well versed in the clinical treatment.

However,

I would say there's certainly a distinction between the type of mindfulness that's used to deal with an oncoming panic attack and the type of mindfulness that makes.

.

.

Acknowledge the impermanence of everything or of the illusory nature of our identity.

The deep,

At least for me,

What I find to be the deep spiritual revelations are not as emphasized.

So like an example of this,

And again,

There's no criticism.

I'm not criticizing Western clinical approaches to mind,

I think,

Tremendously beneficial,

But there's a distinction.

So for example,

I a bit earlier about this Satipatana meditation,

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness as described in the Majjhima Nikaya of Buddhism.

That structure was the blueprint for mindfulness-based stress reduction.

It starts with the body,

And then you work with feelings,

You work with full-blown emotional states.

But the flavor is different.

So for example,

In mindfulness-based stress reduction,

We scan the body,

Right?

We notice sensations in the body and sensations of touch or pressure or tingling or warmth.

That can take a variety of different forms.

However,

In the Buddhism,

When working with the body,

You're scanning the body,

But you're scanning the body in a different way,

Right?

So the first contemplation in Satipatana on the body is commonly translated as mindfulness of the foulness of the body.

And it starts by examining,

Going through and essentially visualizing.

You can feel certain things,

But this is not necessary,

Right?

It's about seeing that you start things that are typically tracked,

Like the hair,

The eyes,

The skin,

The teeth,

Things that we typically identify with and consider to be ourselves.

And then that scan progresses through to more neutral things and ends up scanning the contents of your intestines and these kinds of things.

And acknowledging that it's not that any of them are bad,

But practicing that equanimity and that balance in that practice.

So you can see here that those two exes,

Despite that MBSR is based on the Satipatana scheme,

The flavor and the intention,

I feel,

That this practice is quite unique.

Cool.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And coming from that,

How does mindfulness influence the way we experience and regulate our emotions?

Well,

So that's an area that I've kind of been focusing on my research for a while,

And it's been taking some interesting turns recently.

But basically,

It kind of starts to understand the way that emotions arise in our experience from a psychological perspective.

So in the 70s,

There was a model of stress called the Lazarus-Folkman transactional model of stress.

This model suggests is that the reason stress arises is because of our relationship to experience.

So basically,

If I encounter some thing that's potentially meaningful to me,

I would make an appraisal,

A very rapid appraisal,

Not a thought,

But a very,

Very rapid kind of measurement.

Basically,

I say,

Is this threatening or not?

And if I identify something as threatening,

Then a secondary appraisal is made.

That secondary appraisal is basically,

Can I handle this right now?

And if it's a threat and I feel like I'm not capable of handling it,

That's when the stress response emerges.

So if you take that Lazarus-Folkman model and you kind of embed it into more modern theories of emotion generation and emotion regulation,

It paints an image.

So one predominant model of how emotions are generated is called the modal model by James Gross.

And this model suggests that it goes in four steps.

The first step is we encounter some psychologically relevant situation.

The second step is that we deploy our attention to that situation in a particular way.

The third step is that we make an appraisal.

These are the same types of appraisals as just discussed in the Lazarus-Folkman model.

And then following that appraisal,

We experience an emotion congruent with that appraisal.

And so it's interesting because the modal model suggests that you can regulate emotions at basically any of those four stages.

So for example,

We could regulate the emotion at the level of the response.

So say I was at a grocery store and I was getting ready to check out and someone cut in front of me.

Well I regulate my emotion.

I could get angry and then just kind of use total self-control to restrain myself and not engage in socially unacceptable behavior.

That's very effortful and depleting if you do that all the time.

Another way that you could regulate it is at the level of the appraisal.

So if you realize this situation,

You could say,

Oh,

Well maybe I didn't think,

Even though I'm angry,

Maybe I should consider that this person might have a sick child at home and they didn't even know that they cut in front of me.

And so I can kind of go back and revise that appraisal to dampen the intensity of that emotional response.

And that's great,

But it's also effortful.

So if we go back further to the level of attention,

Most of the research on using attention to modulate emotions is focused on distraction and particularly focused on the negative long-term consequences of action.

So by not paying attention,

By just turning and looking at the magazines and kind of suppressing that upset,

That can be damaging in the long term.

In the short term,

It can be effective.

But a lot of my work has focused on how it's not,

That distraction might not be the only way that by fully being present moment to moment,

That can have a transformative effect on the way that we appraise things.

And that appraisal is what causes those negative emotions to arise in the first place.

So it's how you pay attention that matters.

And so we're showing this using a variety of different paradigms.

The predominant one is using electroencephalography.

And people basically look at a variety of different types of images.

And the images vary in terms of how pleasant or unpleasant they are and how intense they are,

How arousing they are.

And what we found,

Initially the evidence is mixed,

But about seven studies later,

We're finding that people who tend to be more mindful or people who go through an intensive mindfulness training or people who are induced with state mindfulness,

Short term training,

That whenever they see these uncomfortable images,

Pictures of burn victims,

Various violence,

Things like this,

That their attention is actually,

They recruit more attentional forces and that attention is sustained on those stimuli for a longer duration.

But after the fact,

When you ask the people,

How upsetting was it?

They say it was less upsetting.

So what we're showing is that at a neurological level and linking neurological activity to their self-reported experience,

We're kind of showing that how you pay attention matters and that there's a value in not turning away from uncomfortable things and simply being with them as a means to regulate your emotional experience.

This has had an interesting turn recently,

Started investigating one specific emotion that has some pretty interesting implications,

And that's the emotion of disgust.

So disgust is an emotion that keeps us away from potential sources of contamination and disease.

And this is great,

Right?

If we did not have the disgust response,

We'd be putting all kinds of gross stuff in our mouth and we would constantly have to activate our physiological immune system,

Right?

So this kind of psychological mechanism of the disgust response keeps us away from that stuff.

However,

It's kind of neurologically become intertwined with areas involved in our interpersonal relationships.

So for example,

If you think to our evolutionary ancestors who were wandering around in small nomadic groups,

One potential source of contamination and disease that they faced were outgroups.

Other groups of people who potentially had immunities to diseases that they didn't have.

And so we started becoming disgusted by people who look different from us,

Who talk different from us,

And this plays a very key role in this.

So study after study demonstrates that both correlationally and causally using experimental manipulations of disgust,

That disgust leads people to have more negative attitudes and prejudice towards outgroups,

A variety of different outgroups.

And you know that mindfulness tends to promote prosocial behavior,

Right?

It tends to make people more inclusive.

Maybe emotion regulation plays a key role and that's another benefit of using mindfulness as a way to regulate emotional experience is that it makes people more prosocial and less prejudiced.

So we've done some work.

We had people go through a pretty intensive mindfulness retreat type setting.

And specifically they worked,

They practiced in the four foundations of mindfulness,

Right?

The Satya Bhatana scheme where they worked every day on scanning the body and eliciting a disgust response in meditation practice and attending to that over and over.

And what we found is that we replicate findings from before showing that people who are,

You know,

Who receive.

.

.