 So welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast today. We're speaking with New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Dan Siegel He's just come out with aware the science and practice of Presence and that's not what's under the tree at Christmastime, okay? The book this book is really an in-depth look at the science that underlies Meditation's effectiveness this book teaches readers how to harness the power of the principle where attention goes Neural firing flows and neural connection grows. I like that. That's that's very nice. So Okay, tell me more about this What does that mean? Well, what it means is that we now know from science That if you do a regular practice Focusing your attention in particular ways ways we could talk about you actually Do a number of things in the brain that include basically growing particular networks That are what are called integrated they link differentiated areas together That's what integration is and we could talk about the specific areas But the overall frame for brain plasticity for how the brain changes in response to experience Is that you can use your mind to change the structure of your brain? And that actually can cultivate a kind of brain functioning that develops resilience insight and emotional balance in your life Then there are a whole bunch of physiological changes we can talk about but that's just to address the brain aspect of it Okay, so, you know, you're obviously a neuroscientist. In fact, you're a psychiatrist How did how you know as a psychiatrist? Did you? Get interested in meditation in as a psychiatrist. Let's start there sure well It kind of was through a very strange way. I got to say, you know, I Was actually trained as a scientist First, you know as a college student biochemist, but then when I was in my post graduate years I learned to study relationships between Babies and their parents called attachment So it was in the beginning of the decade of the brain and I had been very interested in how experience shapes the structure of the brain from my days in medical school my teacher of neuroscience David Hubel won the Nobel Prize when I was in school for showing that the Experiences that we have Changes literally the structure of the brain and so that's basically how I began learning about neuroscience was through Dr. Hubel's teachings and you know this Finding when I entered pediatrics and then went into psychiatry Always stayed with me and when I was a researcher in attachment I started asking questions like why does the attuned Communication of a parent to a child the way a child can have the experience where a parent tunes into their inner Feelings and the meanings of things not just their behavior, but what's actually going on in their inner mental life Why does that attunement lead to a positive outcome in the child's life? And if you don't have that attunement it actually Compromises the growth of the brain of the child So I actually started more in terms of relationships and seeing the mind is actually both Relational as well as an output of the brain and the whole body. So That's was before I ever used the word meditation in my life. And then when I wrote a book on that Called the developing mind My daughter's preschool director said will you please teach some workshops on parenting? So I did that and she and I ultimately Mary Hartzell and I wrote a book called parenting me inside out and we said parents should be conscientious intentional aware awake, you know and kind and what they did we wanted a word to Summarize all that stuff. So we said, okay. Well, how about this phrase? How about be mindful and when we published this in the book and parents would read the book in Classes they would say when in this class are you going to teach us to meditate and literally Mary and I who are not meditators said What and they go your book says meditation is a fundamental principle and we said What book are you reading? They said parenting from the inside out? We said show us and they would say it says here be mindful We said that means be conscientious caring and take all this up. They go. No, no, no It's a form of meditation which I didn't know about and I said what kind of meditation they go mindfulness meditation So that began back in 2004 probably around there a whole series of things that kind of coincidentally happened Where I was put on a panel with a guy named John Kevin Zinn who kind of translated? Buddhist meditation for medical use and mindfulness based stress reduction and he and I were in a panel together He said you don't know anything about meditation I go absolutely not but the attunement of parent-child relationships looks like it produces the same outcome as Mindfulness meditation whatever that is and he said go meditate. So I went to meditate. So I wrote a book called the mindful brain Suggesting that the attunement that you do in mindfulness meditation is an internal form of attunement Whereas the parent-child relationship that I studied is an interpersonal form of attunement And that's probably why they were leading to the same integrative changes in the brain was my hypothesis and Experiences of well-being in both a relational attunement and an internal to it. So that's to answer your question That's kind of the back door Meditation became a part of my life So I got two questions. So if I'm out playing with my grandchildren and I'm sitting here like this going oh That's nice kids You're you're probably telling me that I'm not going to connect with my kids or my grandkids Is that number one? That's exactly what I'm saying Okay, all right now number two he says okay. I want you to go out and meditate That's we're gonna talk about that obviously but okay So here's a meditator saying you know, you're you're all full of it go Meditate and then you'll understand right. Can you just tell somebody to go meditate? Well, you know John Kabat-Zinn You know had a lot of You know expertise behind them, you know the world's leader in this and the panel to me was really fascinating I really trusted him. So I my first time meditating pretty much was doing a week-long silent retreat with a hundred scientists And and that was kind of I don't recommend that as a way to start But I had been doing something called the Wheel of Awareness before that Which I never would have called the meditation before it was to me an Exercise to help grow the brain in integrative ways that I have been doing with my patients But I never would have called the meditation. It was just a reflective exercise kind of like, you know You have relaxation techniques and stuff like that This wasn't so much to relax things But it was taking two ideas that this integration this differentiation linkage was held and Consciousness is needed for change and I just asked the question Well, what if you integrated consciousness and my patients who had anxiety or mild to moderate depression or trauma this Wheel of Awareness thing which we can talk about, you know, it just helped them So I I saw it as a therapeutic tool and in fact on that week-long silent retreat You're able to talk a little bit. I actually tried to present it to one of the teachers and he said don't be so sure of yourself So I got a little nervous about the wheel and just sort of kept it in my private practice Without making it public, but I I would have just called it a reflective exercise. It's public in here now It's the wheel. All right, because I'll say I did it with 10,000 people systematically in workshops And once the results were so universal and so positive You know, I I actually had my publisher come to one of those workshops and she just said you got to turn this into a book and Sarah Carter, so I said, you know, that's probably it's probably time to do it But that that's now many many years later that it's like, you know, 14 years later so I learned about the mindfulness meditation world while being an active psychotherapist and You know, it was very interesting to me You know, because psychotherapy is not the same as meditation, but it involves an attunement and in psychotherapy Just like with attachment your tune. So there was something profound about these Forms I think of integration of energy and information flow whether it's directed by your own mind in a solo meditation Or it's in a relational communication I think they're both creating states of integration is what I think and so so I started to feel at home and then You know, I'd start teaching with John and teaching with other meditation teachers And I didn't have much background, but you know, I began to learn from them and you know saw that the Wheel of Awareness Which they said should be called a form of mindfulness meditation John Kevin Zinn did it and said that and then Jack cornfield did it and said that so and I said, okay You know, I'll come out of the closet and just start teaching it and see how it goes, you know And so the workshops have been very Educational for me to you know, not just with my patients, of course, you know, they want to you know, keep the relationship going So I didn't want to use that as data. So I just want to workshop participants who could just be honest about how it went and Just systematically as a scientist collected it from 10,000 Participants whoever took the microphone, you know certain percentage of those 10,000 and then got that data and then once that was done The question was, you know, what exactly is going on in the mind that these universal findings will come out if you could put the knowing of consciousness And differentiate in the hub metaphor hub put the knowns on the rim and systematically link them with the spoke of attention People would have these incredible experiences Over and over and over again that is different workshop, which is a similar experiences So then in the book I talked about what I think is likely going on It's a hypothesis and I'm working with some brain scientists to see if you can get a neural correlate with it I'm working with physicists to see if it corresponds with Conservative approaches to understanding the nature of energy and it's been very exciting a very and I'm really excited with this book coming up because As you say, you know, it's the first in-depth description of the mechanisms of mind beneath the wheel of awareness and So I'm really intrigued to see how people take it on. Yeah, so so, you know, you're you're a scientist you went to Harvard I went to Yale. So obviously our brain. Oh, yeah, our brains were affected very differently So and you know, I trained at the NIH and you were an NH fellow at UCLA And so you've approached this as I do from, you know, scientific background Which I think we actually have to do whenever we get into the the spears of Alternative medicine. I hate that word, but we'll use it So give me some of the the Scientific Basis and benefits of meditation that you and others have found. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know I want to really honor the scientists. Dr. Gundry because as you're pointing out, you know, it's a It's hard work to be stay conservative to the empirical findings have frameworks of knowledge And then, you know, then also as clinicians, you know You have to be trained in the science, but then you have to apply it in as conservative way But as useful ways you can and for a while Not so long ago like let's say, you know 15 years ago, maybe even even more recently, you know, the word meditation was thought of as like woo-woo and we're Yeah, you know out there. And so I really want to honor the hard work of Scientists like John Kevitson and Richard Davidson and Shauna Shapiro and many many others and Mishi Ja And there are tons of other people we can name Judson Brewer, you know So I just want to name some of them. There are many more not naming and I want to apologize to them But you know because their hard work has taken the word meditation from something that people understand they'd be skeptical about and moved it to a level of Really a practice kind of like I think that Maybe the best way to start is it's kind of like exercising your body You know, I know when when my wife first she was telling me the story the other day Because she's a longtime meditator actually she first jog and she grew up in a farm and her parents said Don't you get enough exercise walking around? Why do you have to run around, you know? And she said no, I feel good jogging, you know And and there was a time when people thought physical exercise like didn't make much sense And now we know it's actually really important for the health of your whole being including your brain And meditation in similar ways, you know exercising your mind To actually strengthen the circuitry of your brain and in addition to growing those integrative areas And we said that makes the brain more nimble and resilient. That's what research very clearly shows The following five Findings are kind of mind-blowing. You know, you listen to these five findings It said a pharmaceutical company found a pill that creates these changes. You would take it and you would invest in that company like that. Well these Findings are published in the most rigorous peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world and I sent this book out to my peers to make sure I had it downright and you know, they gave me positive responses That's good. In fact, one of them even wrote back This is Alyssa Eppel who wrote a book called the telomere effect with a Nobel Prize winning researcher her colleague Elizabeth Blackburn She said Dan everything you write is correct. You just left something out Has your book gone to the printer yet and it hadn't gone yet. I said no, it's going like in two days What's up? What did I leave out? She said you need to also say in addition to things that I said it slows the aging process And I said get out of here. How can I say that? She goes this is like the world's expert Elizabeth Blackburn and Alyssa Apple the world's experts in aging. She said that's what the research shows So let's start with that one. Why does Alyssa Eppel say that? Why does Elizabeth Blackburn say that? because When you develop open awareness or receptive way of being called presence You're actually optimizing an enzyme called telomerase That repairs and maintains the caps on your chromosomes that are called telomeres And it was that system that Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize for discovering Well, one of the best predictors of telomerase levels and then therefore that optimize The ends of your chromosomes. So make your cells healthier and have more long Lives and you are healthier and have a longer life because you're composed of these cells is mental presence Being aware of what's happening as it's happening and not getting swept up by judgments or It is distracted by all sorts of other things but being here for what's happening. That's what presence is not something mysterious you know and mental presence is one of the best predictors of Optimizing telomerase levels keeping your cells healthy and slowing the aging process. So that's amazing. What else do you do? you actually change the epigenetic That is non DNA molecules that sit on top of the genome These are histones and mepho verbs that change the configuration of certain genes in this case the gene responsible for inflammation So that with mental presence, you're actually Optimizing the configuration of the epigenetic regulators to reduce inflammation your body and as you know now We know inflammation is one of the key common elements of the major diseases of our time So if you can reduce inflammation Wow So that's awesome number three You improve your immune function So you could fight infections better number four you optimize cardiovascular risk factors like reducing cholesterol Lowering blood pressure, you know creating what's called heart rate variability Coherence right this means your system is more integrated basically and then number five is you reduce stress The stress hormone cortisol is reduced. So If we said here we've discovered a pill that does it what we have It's you know the word meditation just means training your mind. It's training your mind to cultivate presence So it's you know, I considered an integrative meditation That's just my take on it. But whatever it has three pillars. It's Cultivating focused attention Open awareness and what I call kind intention or compassion kindness You know, these are the three pillars that are underneath the kinds of meditative practices that produce these five physiological mechanisms of health and Row integration in the brain. So there you go So why not why you know, you mentioned you mentioned stress and cortisol? So why is it that meditation is such a good stress reliever? What what is the mechanism that you've discovered, you know, and others there are a number of theories about that And do you like to be called dr. Gundry or Steve? I'll do whatever you want either way. All right I'll be formal dr. Gunner from Yale. I know what you'd like for me. There you go So dr. Gunner, you know, there are a number of theories about that. Here's one way to think about it you Meditate which just means training the mind In a given session, let's say you're 12 minute a day session, which Amishi job is just teaching with her a Wonderful researcher from the University of Miami. She says in her studies, that's like a minimum daily You know, I have a practice you do 20 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day Whatever, but it's good to think of a dozen a day But it might be less that you can do to but a regular practice Let's just say the research is really pointing to regularity kind of like brushing your teeth You don't say hey, I brushed my teeth the last summer You know, you don't do that. You want to do it on a regular basis Even if you're not doing the two and a half minutes, whatever. Okay, so instead of really really we're supposed to brush every day I mean I saw a new research that said flossing doesn't help No, I'm just joking or it's like the dentist says you say which teeth should I floss just the ones you want to keep So all right, sorry to interrupt. No, no, no, no, it's great. It's it's so the issue is the same thing, you know It's mind high mental hygiene. Maybe it's mental flaws. I don't know, but it's um It's the idea that you're you're taking care of your hygiene of your mind. Now. What does that mean? This means that you create a state I think it's an integrative state and we can talk about what that means in the brain and the body and in that state When it's repeated over time, it leads to neuroplastic changes That allow you to deal with life stresses in a very different way so that you basically become Filled with a trait of resilience now from a mind point of view. Here's the way to think about it if consciousness is like a container of water and the stresses of life are like a tablespoon of salt Many people have a container of consciousness. That's like the size of an espresso cup It's small and when life dishes out a tablespoon of salt and you dump it into a espresso cup amount of water. What does that taste like? Pretty salty pretty salty. That's stressful to drink it, right? Now what the wheel of awareness just to give you one example of a meditation Which puts the awareness in the hub and the things you're aware of on the rim It basically takes a small hub that espresso cup size and teaches you how to make it really really big Let's just say for numbers say a hundred gallons Now life dishes out from the rim the same stressor which is a tablespoon of salt You now have a ready container of a hundred gallons not the smallest espresso cup and you put the salt in that What it you stir it up. What does it taste like? Nothing nothing. It's fresh water That's I think why stress is reduced because when you literally expand the container of the mind's awareness This is why the book I wrote is called aware when you expand awareness Everything changes and when Alyssa Apple and myself and two of my interns Suzanne Parker and Ben Nelson when we wrote up a paper Try to address this exact thing We use the mechanisms of mind that I explore in the aware book To try to understand why telomerase levels are optimized Why you're actually reducing inflammation and why stress is reduced? So I think What that expanded container of consciousness is is a way of shifting Literally the way the whole body functions And that is a state of presence So Since you brought up the wheel of awareness, tell me, you know, how this works. How does someone Go to their happy place, which is kind of what I think you're saying For our viewer. So how does the wheel of awareness work? Yeah, well, it's interesting because a happy place Can be like an image like of myself at the beach or something like that and for relaxation techniques That's what we do, you know, imagine a happy place This may be a happy place, but it can often be something quite new to people. That's really incredible resource That certainly brings happiness, but it brings more too than just relaxation. So You know, it's an interesting thing to think about that, but so let's say how you do this So basically it's a very simple practice For a young child, it would be just a drawing Of the wheel with a sense of knowing in the hub and the knowns on the rim Like we said if I say hello, you can know that I said hello And you also have that's the hub and you have the knowing on the rim So basically if it's an adult doing this or an adolescent, you do it as a reflective practice If you want to call it meditation rate, you don't need to meditation just means training the mind Here if you're going to use that term, you want to say what kind of meditation is it? It's an integrative meditation. It's integrating consciousness Um, so how does it do it? You imagine yourself in the hub With the rim around the hub and then you send a spoke of attention out to the first segment of the rim And then systematically you go from hearing the first sense You let hearing go you go to sight the light coming in your eyes Then you go from light to smell The taste to touch and you then have the training of focused attention For each of those senses and you take a deep breath You move this spoke over and people do this, you know from my website with people stream it Or you can memorize and do it yourself. Then you go to the interior of the body So this is registered in a very different part of the brain. For example, it's interoception And we can talk about the brain circuits if you want But the point is that now you're going inside the body the sensations of muscles and bones And then to the genitals the intestines the respiratory system and the heart And so you're bringing into awareness these sensations again one by one So you do one you let it go and they go to the next and then when you're doing that it's also focused attention So that's the first pillar of mind training. You now move it over to the third segment of the rim Now we experience the training of open awareness Where you just invite any kind of mental activity any emotion Thought memory idea whole dream longing desire belief anything into awareness and this for many people is kind of a shocker Because so often we're focusing on the rim and that's great But now you're really kind of center yourself more in the hub So it's an interesting thing to hear the descriptions where people say, whoa I invited anything in but nothing came and for the first time in my life. I felt incredibly peaceful Oh my god, that was amazing And so that's why you might call it the happy place, but it's not a particular image of a place. It's actually pure awareness Then you have people explore What it feels like to have a thought for example as one mental activity example Arise stay present and go away And then you even in a more advanced step have them bend to spoke around so they experience pure awareness of awareness And that's kind of a mind blowing moment Which is really exciting to talk about and then you straighten the spoke out or send it out to the fourth and final segment of the rim So you're aware of your connections your connections to people sitting next to you People in your family your friends people you work with people live in your community People who live in your city your state your country All of humanity and all living beings and this gives people a deep sense of I belong here As a member of the living ecosystem of earth And it's a beautiful moment to hear people's reflections on that and then you know when I presented this to a esteemed neuroscientist lab richie david's lab His researchers had just completed a study which now there are many of and they said if you add to your fourth segment of the rim Verbal statements people say inside their mind We've shown it actually leads to these positive changes in the brain and physiology and even behavior And then I found that other research labs have done the same thing And so I incorporated that in the wheel also So basically you make statements of kind intention towards all living beings towards yourself and toward an integrated sense of who we are And um and that's the end of the practice. So it takes about 20 minutes in one version, you know I have a seven minute short version for people on the go You know, but but it's good to start with the longer one and just get used to all the elements of the wheel And so basically what you're doing is differentiating huff from rim and all the rim elements from each other and then linking them together So that's why we call it an integration of consciousness practice. It's very accessible and it's amazing to hear How people take this into their lives So um, so help me with this a lot of people when you say the word meditation that you think of We're all in flowing robes or yoga pants and yeah We're we're we're saying a you know a word Ohm and we're trying to completely shut our brain Down what what I'm hearing from you is that that's not actually what your program of awareness is Am I getting that right? You're getting exactly right and you know, it's built on the idea that Integration is health and consciousness needed for change. So if you're to grow towards health, you could integrate consciousness It turns out it has what research has shown are the three pillars Of effective aspects of training the mind focusing attention is not just emptying the mind. It's stabilizing the mind Opening awareness is really distinguishing the hub from the rim if you will and this gives you incredible power And I'll give an example of a young boy who learned how to do this and it was just amazing And then kind intention is where you release natural ability we have to become aware of our interconnections and to bring A positive attitude towards our inner life and the life inside of others as well. And so this is um You know when people have the image. Oh, you should have no thoughts and nothing going on The part of that that does I think have an element of truth is you want to be Learning that pure awareness has no thoughts But you don't need to just sit in the hub It's about integrating the rim and the hub Honoring them both, you know, so like when you drive a car You need to take a rim element which is like pressing on the brakes at a red light or you will become one with everything You know you need you need to have both rim and hub and there's a whole mechanism view of that So but it is saying that you need to be able to realize you have the power I'll give example of billy five-year-old Picked out of one school for beating up a kid in his prior school comes to a new school In that kindergarten the teacher kindergarten teacher. Let's call her miss Smith She teaches every kid the wheel of awareness on the second day. She writes me an email She says billy comes to her the break And she says you know recess says miss Smith miss Smith You've got to give me a break because I'm on the yard joey took my blocks. I'm about to hit him Which is what he did the other school. I'm lost on my rim. I got to get back to my hub So she gives him a break He takes time away He centers himself and from that hub is not only he's aware of his impulse to hit But it puts a pause between impulse and action And for a lot of reasons that I talk about the where book the hub is the source of other options So he's also locating his mind in a place where other choices exist And then he can draw on those and choose to share with joey and months later She wrote me back. He's woven into the classroom beautifully and learn these skills So in that way the hub allows you to distance yourself from an impulse Rest in just kind of this open awareness and say You know, I can be aware of my impulse to hit joey, but I think that's not a good idea. I think I'll choose some other path That's what we want to give kids and ourselves And so so as a you know as a as a psychiatrist You're telling me that you can take a five-year-old, you know belligerent kid and turn them into a cooperative human being Is that what i'm hearing miss smith? She's not alone. This is yeah I mean you'd be amazed because kids actually really want to become more integrated It's it's often from trauma and other very upsetting situations that they've learned You know taking ways of dealing with the world they come from that don't apply to the school setting Let's say so you want to give them these resources and every kid has a hub inside them and nothing has taken away They can be lost on the rim, you know to keep that metaphor going And so a teacher knowing this Can look at a child and say I know you have it in you. Here's a drawing and amazingly It's not just billy, but other kids have responded to When you're taught about how your mind works, you can let it work in a more pro-social way where you have more emotional resilience and more positive ways of being in the world Cool. Yeah, so you so you're saying there's hope for even a You know a heart surgeon like I was trained, you know Heart surgeons are supposed to be the nastiest human beings in the world where you know, we're jet fighter pilots who are you know Ice runs through our veins You're saying, you know you can help me Well, dr. Gundry, I don't know if you need help, but let me ask you something and no seriously seriously. Let me ask you something because Like I when I did the surgery rotation at mass general I mean, I loved it. They really wanted me to go there and be a resident surgeon And I love doing surgery because I know you're joking about it But I thought in many ways Surgeons actually get right to the literally the heart of the matter like what's the problem. Let's take care of it And so in that way it was pretty direct what I noticed not just for surgeons, but for medical students was You know people weren't teaching us about our minds So I remember being in the ether dome there at mass general and realizing, you know, we were kind of being etherized as students So recently actually I was asked to go to stanford medical school And teach all the medical faculty about this thing I do called mind site, which is seeing the mind And the amazing thing was, you know a surgeon invited me to come He was the head of continued education, but the dean of the school was an internist So the dean gets out there and he says Leave it to a surgeon to an asked a psychiatrist to come to speak to all of us the medical faculty I'm going. Oh my god. Here we go again. This is troublesome But then he does this amazing thing. He picks up this piece of paper from the podium and he goes But let me show you how wrong I was This morning from the Mayo Clinic We get this report that even though, you know, five years ago There were 44 of postgraduate trainees across all the different disciplines were anxious depressed or suicidal They're burning out Five years later now that number has gone from 44 percent to 56 percent He goes we are in deep trouble And then my whole talk for the rest of the day was building on what the dean said, which is You know, not just surgeons, none of us learned to take care of our own minds Even recently I was asked to speak to all the veterinarians in america 3000 and one group 2000 other they've achieved the highest rate of suicide of any profession. Apparently that's what they said And yeah, it's it's a long story, which we don't need to get into here But the point is whether you're an animal physician or a human physician Or anyone really we need to teach all of us To take care of our own mind and it's been amazing to me how that is rarely done Meditation is just a word for training your mind And if it bugs bugs people dub the word you don't need the word Let's just use the word mind if you have subjective experience And consciousness you've got a mind And if you've got a mind you can learn to make your mind stronger The wheel of awareness is all about doing that now you get the benefit of not only getting a stronger mind You get a more integrated brain and you get these five physiologically proven as outcomes of well-being. So as you said Why not? And that's what I'll ask you why not and that's what the dean said Why aren't we doing something to actually help our own? Over half 56% Of our trainees Are burnt out some of them suicidal depressed anxious What are we doing Something's not right No, you're absolutely right. I have a third-year family practice residents rotate through through my clinic And these poor ladies and gentlemen Uh, I you know, I do functional medicine or restorative medicine and I work I'll spend an hour with my initial patient in a half hour every time I see them and They're trained that if they're going to make a living they have to See a patient for 10 minutes maximum and get about 80 people through the door every day or they're done for And you know the stress levels that these young people they're young to me now Have a thinking about how in the world is they can't relate to these people as patients They're you know, they're typing on their computer rather than even talking to the patient. So you're right It's we've done a horrible disservice. Oh, I know. I know it's just It is so sad and we we've got to stop it and I think what's you know, to me what is really um A powerful starting place is there's a study in 2011 Where they did a controlled, you know blind study where they had, you know, people coming in for a common cold just see You know a general practitioner and in one group The general practitioner just said an empathic comment like oh, it's may and you're a student This must be so hard to have a cold, you know, do this do this do this for your cold And the other group didn't make the empathic comment. Um, they just said do this do this do this One group their immune function and their fighting of the virus was much more robust And they got over the cold a day sooner and that was the group that got the empathic comment Right. So you could almost say it's I mean, I'll say boldly it's malpractice To not give physicians the training and the time to be empathic with their patients Yeah, you're absolutely right years ago I was the consultant for a movie called the doctor with with william hurt And it's about a heart surgeon who's just this kind of nasty couldn't care less guy Who develops cancer and is suddenly put in the role as a patient and he Sees the lack of compassion or the treatment of him as a human being And you know, it does a real mind warp on him in the long story short of the film And it's a true story not about me But it's a true story and it was about his transformation from being this cold hearted, you know Iceman to Realizing that compassion was the healing part. Exactly. And yeah, so we're both on the same page. Okay I'll tell you one thing about that that I think is just from a brain point of view We have these circuits. I call them mind site circuits These are circuits that allow you to make maps in the cortex and other areas of the Mind of oneself in the mind of others the subjective experience of oneself and others So they're mind site circuits liver you can show That when a human being Is faced in a situation whether it's a threat Or just feeling that the person in front of them is not similar to them They literally shut off their mind site circuits and they treat the individual in front of them As an object like a chair or a rock they dehumanize them They literally take the humanity out of the individual in front of them So you can have a person who is actually full of mind site when they get home But doesn't use it at all at work Or what's more common is that you learn to not use it and you don't use it at home either And your whole life becomes empty, which I think is what the burnout comes from Anyway, these mind site circuits are teachable. It's what we need to teach I think kids in kindergarten up. It's what the wheel of awareness teaches And it's what we need to do for our colleagues in our fields of medicine Okay, so You know, I I believe you you've got the studies to prove it What do you say to people who who don't believe any of this? I say, what do you believe in? If the science doesn't help you say That what you do with your mind and the focus of attention the opening awareness development of kind attention In these controlled research studies shows and improves your physiological Measurable aspects of well-being that it changes the structure of the brain in a more integrative way So the brain becomes more regulated What more do you want? You're absolutely right. Can't couldn't have said it couldn't have said it better You know, I've got a new book coming out to early next year called the longevity paradox and Spoiler alert, there's a whole chapter on how meditation extends your lifespan With scientific studies that prove exactly your points So if you if you want to live well a very long time Meditation really should be a part of everybody's life. I agree and and like you say if you can keep teach five-year-old There's hope for any of us. I guess exactly exactly. All right So on these podcasts, we always have one audience question and they're not necessarily for you So if you you'll feel excuse me for a second, I've got a question that actually doesn't relate to you Okay, but you might enjoy the answer. Sure. So Steve Thompson writes in good afternoon. Dr. G I was told a local grass-fed farm has I assure cows. They milk and sell by the way, that's a cow from scotland Would that be acceptable or are we still looking at kc na one? Well, Steve, I actually had to look this one up because I didn't know the cow Even though I lived in england and went to scotland a lot It's unfortunately an kc na one cow So now most norther european cows are kc na one Including and it's a very beautiful cow. There's some nice pictures of it on the internet, but you can't have it. Okay So, sorry about that now Back to dr. Siegel so Listen everybody Get this book particularly if you're sitting on the fence. You're worried about Ah, you know, it's touchy-feely. It's woo-woo stuff. I'm not in a flowing robe Here's the science of why you want to do this and here's a system For you nerds out there to you know, here's what I do. Here's the steps. He spells it right out So again, thank you for coming on. Please get this book. It's going to help you die young At a very ripe old age. Okay Thank you, dr. Siegel appreciate your gunry a pleasure. All right I'm dr. Stephen gunry and I'm always looking out for you