“What we practice, we become. We can change our brains through our behavior.”
~Krista Tippet~
This past February, I had the pleasure of discovering the work of neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson from an interview with Krista Tippet who hosts my favorite podcast On Being. At the onset of their discussion, Krista acknowledges Dr. Davidson’s contributions to the discovery of Neuroplasticity as she affirms, “What we practice, we become. We can change our brains through our behavior.” The episode is titled, “Richard Davidson, A Neuroscientist on Love and Learning”. You can listen to or download the transcript at onbeing.org. I was so intrigued by their conversation that I promptly checked out the book he co-authored, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel and Live—and How You Can Change Them.
What was it about this conversation that captured my curiosity so profoundly? Listening back to that interview months later, I reflect on the struggles my 5 year-old son Teddy has encountered while adjusting to kindergarten. The first few fall months were especially challenging, as I was receiving multiple calls from the principal’s office concerning his aggressive behavior. My sweet Teddy had stabbed a classmate with a pencil, pushed a child from the top of a slide, and put hand sanitizer in another’s eye. Additional calls from his teacher seemed so condemning of my parenting, as she sought advise on how to guide his disruptive behavior while informing me of his falling behind in reading and writing. After formally meeting with the school counselor, principal, speech therapist, and classroom teacher we agreed the Licensed Specialist in School Psychology (LSSP) would perform an extensive evaluation to screen Teddy for Emotional Disturbance, Learning Disability, Dyslexia, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). This process spanned the months of January and February. By the end of March, the LSSP concluded Teddy showed clear signs of AD/HD.
Making wishes =)
Do I medicate my 5 year-old? This is one of the first questions that surfaced post evaluation results. As Dr. Davidson states and my son shows, a child that cannot attend will have difficulty learning. What fascinated me the most from this interview, was the connection Dr. Davidson makes between social emotional learning and cognitive abilities. “Thought and feeling are absolutely intermingled in the brain” he informs us. His words compelled me to think beyond Teddy’s mastery of 123’s and abc’s and to consider how his schooling has provided for his social and emotional development. I do believe there is a void in social and emotional education in our public schools. Fortunately, Dr. Davidson is founder of the Kindness Curriculum, a free program for educators, teaching young children the skills of mindfulness and self-regulation. His research shows that children who completed this curriculum performed better academically. https://centerhealthyminds.org/news/kindness-curriculum-boosts-school-success-in-preschoolers
While his interview with Krista introduced me to his work with respect to children, The Emotional Life of Your Brain provided a more intimate study of self awareness and regulation. In this book, he tells us how he came about his discovery of the brain’s six Emotional Styles in his efforts to solve, “Why and how do people differ so widely in their emotional response to the ups and downs of life?” He details the composition of 1)Resilience 2)Outlook 3)Social Intuition 4)Self-Awareness 5)Sensitivity to Context and 6)Attention.
“Emotional Style is the result of brain circuitry that is laid down in our early years by the genes we inherited from our parents and by the experiences we have. But that circuitry is not forever fixed. Although Emotional Style is ordinarily quite stable over time, it can be altered by serendipitous experiences as well as by conscious, intentional effort at any point in life, through the intentional cultivation of specific mental qualities or habits…through mental training you can alter your patterns of brain activity and the very structure of your brain in a way that will change your Emotional Style and improve your life.”
His work is empowering evidence that we can better our lives by incorporating a steady mindfulness based practice, whether it’s seated meditation or going for a walk. He poignantly tells us, “Mindfulness is remembering to embody kindness and compassion into every moment”. He states that the best practice you do is the one you do. As the Nike slogan goes, it’s so important to “Just do it.” “Our minds are just as important as our teeth,” he tells Krista, suggesting this practice is one we should make time to do everyday, whether it’s 2 minutes or 60 minutes. This mental hygiene is what he considers an “urgent public health need.” Just as we have a propensity for language, so we have the capability of mastering kindness and compassion. He references the discovery of unfortunate feral children with no mastery of language to compare our potential mastery of compassion, “We come into the world with this innate propensity, but for this propensity to be expressed, it requires nurturing.”
“The brain is neither immutable nor static but continuously remodeled by the lives we lead.”
~Richard Davidson~
Dr. Richard Davidson is a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a Harvard Ph.D graduate, who’s research is changing the way we understand the brain. He writes, “Emotion works with cognition in an integrated and seamless way to enable us to navigate the world of relationships, work, and spiritual growth…There is no clear, distinct dividing line between emotion and other mental processes; they blur into each other. As a result, virtually all brain regions play a role in or are affected by emotion, even down to the visual and auditory cortices.” Krista observes with him later in the interview the “systems in our brain that support wellbeing are connected to different organs in our body and to our immune and endocrine systems”. They discuss the nature of an “Embodied practice,” being familiar with how kindness and gratitude feel in our bodies in order to reinstate them.
Upon meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1992, Dr, Davidson made a commitment to study the effect of virtuous qualities like kindness and compassion on the brain and overall health. His work led to him to establish the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where research aims to cultivate well-being and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind. You can find out more about Dr. Davidson’s ongoing research at https://centerhealthyminds.org. or follow @healthy.minds on Instagram.
If you’re in the mood for a film, Dr. Richard Davidson is featured in the 2011 documentary Happy by Roko Belic. Check out its trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcMQmuvzPmI
Follow @onbeing and checkout onbeing.org for more enticing explorations on the art of living.