All language subtitles for My.Year.of.Living.Mindfully.2020.WEBRip.x264-ION10

- [Driver] We're about 2 minutes
away from the main entrance.

- How far away is the Syrian
border from here?

- Syrian border is about
17 to 18 kilometres,

north of the Za'atari camp.
- Yeah.

- The border is completely
sealed off.

Jordan is no longer accepting

or able to take
any more refugees

because of security issues.

Unfortunately we cannot
film the main gate.

- [Shannon] Ah ha.

- So we will have to
turn cameras off.

- [Shannon voiceover] When
I started my experiment

to see what would happen to
my mental wellbeing

if I meditated every
day for a year,

I didn't plan to end up
in the Middle East,

a region which is the front line

of a global humanitarian crisis,

and the heart of so
much suffering.

None the less it was
here, on the dusty streets

of one of the biggest
refugee camps in the world

where the psychological
scars left by war

and homelessness
are in plain sight,

that the importance of my
first question finally hit home.

But my story actually begins
half a world away,

and more than a year ago.

In my work as a journalist
and film maker,

I had started to research
a new documentary

on what can only be described
as a mental health crisis.

And I don't just mean
the wellbeing

of the 70 million people

who have lost their homes
to war and famine.

Despite living in a time
of unprecedented progress

in science, technology,
and medicine,

according to the leading
medical science journal,

The Lancet, every country
in the world is facing

and failing to tackle a host
of mental health disorders.

- If economic affluence
was a recipe for happiness

and freedom from
pain and suffering,

then the developed
world should be

about as happy as it gets.

But it's not.

- [Nick Van Dam] The rough
estimates suggest that,

something like 20 to 25%
of people will experience

mental illness within
their lifetime.

So we're talking about
one in four people.

And there's even more
interest in data more recently

suggesting that that might
even be an underestimate

which I find shocking.

And if you think one in four
people, that's huge, right.

And if that's an
underestimate, you know,

what are we talking about?

- Around the world there
about 300 million people,

right now, suffering
with depression.

And if you think
about depression as
a recurrent problem,

that means it's a
1 billion person problem.

- The statistics on kids
who are in college,

who are taking
anti-depressant drugs.

And it's almost so
high, it's unbelievable.

It's a kind of
pharmaceutical madness.

- We are definitely in an
epidemic of chronic stress.

And we are not meant
to be under stress everyday

for years at a time.

And that's when
the damage occurs.

- Because the number one thing
determining health is the mind.

It affects us directly
because what goes on

in our mental and
our emotional state

influences us psychologically,

but there's the indirect
affects, as well.

So when we're not feeling
good in ourselves,

we are not likely to look
after ourselves well,

eat well, exercise

and so everything's impacted
by our state of mind.

That's why I say it's the
number one thing

and we're just not
taking it seriously.

- [Shannon voiceover] Above all,
there was one fact

I couldn't get out of my head.

Unless we change course,

by 2030, depression will
overtake heart disease

and be the single biggest
health problem we face.

And it wasn't just my
future I was worried about.

I wanted to be able
to teach my kids

how to prepare themselves
for the world that is coming.

As they faced a future of
disruption and uncertainty,

how could they protect, nurture
and nourish their minds?

The single filter through which
they will experience the world.

While there was
tonnes of information

on what we should all
be eating and drinking,

how much sleep we
should be getting

and how much exercise
we should be doing,

when I looked for
a widely accepted,

evidence-based recommendation
for our mental health,

the brain's equivalent of a
30-minute jog around the block,

or the mind's daily serving
of five fruit and vegetables.

There was nothing.

So I guess I just, I
wanted to show you this.

These are my health records
since I first got sick.

I had constant pain
all through my body.

And I had insomnia.

Yeah emotionally, I was
in a pretty dark place.

This is the first letter
that was written

after I was diagnosed.

I thought I was
seeing this doctor

because he was going
to tell me that I needed

to take a couple
of weeks off work

and put my feet up.

But actually, he told me
that he suspected

that I have an autoimmune
disease called lupus,

for which there is
no known cause

and there is no known cure.

- [Interviewer]
How old were you?

- So I was 24, then, 24.

When you've got a chronic
disease and you're desperate,

you will like, I would
hand over my money

to anyone and everyone
who offered me a cure.

I spent thousands and thousands
and thousands of dollars

trying to find something
that would cure me.

One of my symptoms was that I,
thought I had food allergies.

So I went to this place called
Advanced Allergy Elimination

that promised I would be
able to cure my allergy.

I think I spent $700
with these guys.

And yeah, here's this
news release from when

the government took
them to court

and they were found to
have misled consumers

about the efficacy
of their treatments.

And I was one of the
victims of that.

And that's when I started
basically turning to science.

[pensive music]

- [Shannon voicover] Experiment
notes.

If there's anyway that I
can prevent my kids

from suffering in the
same way I have,

I want to find it.

And I suspect if
there is an answer,

it will buried in the
latest scientific research.

To me, any realistic solution

has to meet some
key requirements.

It has to be available to any
one, anywhere, at any time

which means, it has to be
free or at least, low cost.

It has to be available
to anyone regardless

of their education
or life circumstances

and it has to fit
into the busy schedules

of people living
in the real world.

My other key requirement
is that it has to be based

on a solid foundation of
scientific evidence.

Now all that sounds
like a lot to ask

but there is one thing
that ticks all my boxes.

Mindfulness meditation.

I know we have decades of
research informing the advice

on exercise, food and sleep.

But in the last 10 years,

new technology has enabled
scientists to peer inside

our brains and bodies
while we sit quietly

with our thoughts and feelings.

In other words, meditate.

And contemplative
science has exploded.

Whilst there are a number

of popular forms of meditation,

mindfulness in particular has
captured scientific attention

and gone from a few hundred
peer review papers

to almost 6,000.

From what I can tell,

it's a simple yet adaptable
form of mental training

that seems to work on a range

of different
psychological levels.

And in a similar
way to exercise,

can sit quite comfortably

alongside the best of
current medical practice.

And this is what I find
really interesting

in the context of my question.

An eight-week programme
underpinned by mindfulness

has repeatedly been found
equal to medication

for preventing
recurrent depression.

Given the mental health crisis,

should we all be practising
mindfulness in the same way

that we should exercise
and eat our vegetables?

Or is this evidence too
good to be true?

There's only one
way to find out.

I'm going to do an experiment,

My Year of Living Mindfully.

Hi Marc. Okay, so you're
across what--

You're across what the
film is, obviously?

[Marc faintly talking on phone]

Yeah.

Specifically in a nut shell,
specifically, it's meditation.

So, you probably maybe, unless
you've been under a rock,

you've probably heard that
meditation is being sold

as this cure all panacea.

And so, this is kind of
a project that's looking

at you know, is meditation,

is it just self-report
quality of life that changes?

Or is there something really
interesting that happens

on a biological level?

- Hey.
- Neil. Hello.

- Welcome.
- Nice to meet you in person.

- Yeah, come on through.

- Well go down to this
lab, straight ahead here.

- [Shannon] I'm thrilled that a
whole heap of scientists

have come on board.

Two neuroscientists,
I've got somebody looking

at my telomeres.

We're tracking my
stress hormones.

That's where you
guys come into it

with the gene expression
side of things.

Especially from the perspective

that I have an
autoimmune disease.

Here's the sample.
- Excellent.

Throw it in the freezer
to keep it nice and cold.

- And then she has 30 minutes

from when she's taken that blood

to get it back to the lab.

Has this ever been done before?

- So, not at this
sort of intensity,

in terms of the
scheduling of testing.

- It says saliva.

Who has saliva on
their to-do list?

So that's why I'm so
grateful that

you guys came on board
and said you're interested

and I'm fascinated.

Experiment notes.

It's been a wirlwind
but I think I'm ready

to put my hypothesis
to the test.

I first got sick 13 years ago,

during an especially
difficult time in my life.

Although specialists have given

my autoimmune disease
various labels,

if the science is
anything to go by,

then regular
mindfulness meditation

should have positive affects

on my mind, body and health.

I've set up interviews with 18

of the world's top
mindfulness scientists

to guide me over the next year.

And I now have
six researchers onboard

to track every biomarker
linked to mindfulness

as well as my
subjective wellbeing.

Step one is to be poked,
prodded, scanned and screened

to establish a baseline
before I start to meditate.

- So we've already
done this scan once

and now we're going to do
it with the meditation.

- [Shannon] Okay.

- So we have comparable data.

- [Shannon] And how
does the brain look?

- It looks great.
- There's a brain.

- We were commenting on
it that there's a brain.

It's very nice, well formed.

No abnormalities.

This part is the hippocampus.

And it's one of the
regions we're interested in.

And we're interested
in the hippocampus

because it's one
structure in the brain

that we can measure
very well.

It's sensitive to stress.

It shrinks more with ageing.

So if we want to see whether
some interventions decrease

the effect of ageing,
that's one place we look at.

- [Shannon voiceover] The theory
behind meditation's effect

on the brain is that
when we do something,

there's activity in our
brain and over time,

if it's done over
and over again,

those networks become stronger.

It's the old neurons
that fire together,

wire together catchphrase.

And it doesn't matter if
I'm learning to navigate

London's streets in a taxi cab,

practising the piano,

or training in
mindfulness meditation.

If I do my exercises, my brain
should theoretically change.

So far, several studies
have used MRI's

to look at the brain structure
of long-term meditators.

And there are
noticeable differences.

Professor Nicolas Cherbuin
who's studying my brain

was involved in one
experiment which found

that at age 50, the brains
of meditators were seven

and a half years younger
than non-meditators.

This has huge implications
because brain ageing

or atrophy is linked with
everything from dementia

and alzheimers to
depression and addiction.

So at first glance,
I'm thinking, younger brain?

Sign me up.

But there's a catch.

Their findings led
to more questions,

crucially were their
brains different

because they were
long-term meditators?

Or were they more inclined
to stick with meditation

because they had different
brains to begin with?

The missing link here
is scientific data

that tracks people like
me over time.

So, yeah, so I've just been
lying in bed thinking

that maybe...

Doing another low budget
feature documentary

is a really silly idea.

And I think to myself, okay,

insomnia is back,

it looks like my autoimmune
disease is presenting.

Like, is making this film

just the stupidest
idea in the world?

Like, am I gonna pay
for this with my health?

And I start catastrophising

and I start thinking,
oh my God, like,

how can be sick and
be a good mum?

So, like I have been
chronically stressed lately.

I've probably taken on a
bit more than I should have.

- Hmm hmm.

- If I was to keep this up

and you know, my
insomnia has returned.

would you think that
my symptoms could

become worse?
- Yes.

But I think we've talked
about this before.

Having realistic expectations

of how you manage that as well.

I think--
- What do you mean by that?

- In a perfect world,

we'd all be stress-free but,

today's society, we're all so,

have so many
different pressures.

You as well, like you're
working full-time,

you've got two young children,

you've got a lot on your plate.

It'll be interesting to see
this year of stress management,

whether that's possible.
- Hmm, yeah.

- And--

- [Shannon] You're not even
sure it's possible.

- No, no, no, I'm
not saying it's not.

I'm not saying it's not.

I'm just saying, you know,
like I think,

it'll be interesting what
you achieve from that.

- [Shannon] You're a scientist,

but you're also a
working mother.

Do you have any idea
how I am possibly going

to find the time to
meditate everyday?

- I think of this very similar

to what dentists
say about flossing.

Floss one tooth.

If you can commit to
flossing one tooth,

your dental health
will improve, why?

Because nobody
flosses one tooth.

You're there, you're
ready to go.

You're going to do
the full routine.

Just taking the
posture of practicing

even if you get up after that,

with that as your requirement
for your day,

I think that you're likely
to have a lot of success

with this in the next year.

- [Shannon voiceover] Experiment
notes, methodology.

To start, I'm aiming for 20
minutes a day using an app

and I'll slowly
build from there.

I've also signed up for
an eight-week course

and a 10-day silent retreat.

Apart from that, nothing
else will change.

I'll still have my usual
parenting duties

and full-time work commitments.

As a journalist, that
means researching,

writing and travelling
for interviews.

And I won't change
my diet or exercise habits.

As for the actual practice,

I'm turning to the experts.

I just want to get on tape
your definition of mindfulness.

- [Jon Kabat-Zinn] So my working
definition of mindfulness,

this is what I call an
operational definition

is that it's the
awareness that arises

from paying attention on purpose

in the present moment,
non-judgmentally.

And the non-judgemental
part is the kicker, so to speak

and people need
to understand

that non-judgmentally
doesn't mean

that you won't
have any judgements,

it means that you
will be mindful

of how many judgements you have.

How attached we all are to
wanting things to be this way

and not wanting them
to be that way.

So this is kind of,

it's an operational definition

because when you
put it into operation,

then mindfulness
arises within you.

- [Joseph] You can begin the
meditation by settling

into a comfortable posture.

You begin to feel
your body breathing.

- Mindfulness is a sort
of state or capacity,

a way of being.

And meditation is a
whole family of practices

that are in the service
of cultivating mindfulness.

So in Pali and Sanskrit,

the word for meditation
is bhavana,

which means to develop
or to cultivate.

And so meditation is in
the service of cultivating

and developing mindfulness.

- [Joseph] You become aware
of predominant sensations.

- So mindfulness is
not a way of relaxing.

When we pay attention
and look at our mind,

we discover all sorts of things,

which may be anything
but relaxing.

- [Joseph] As we end the
meditation, you can open
your eyes.

As you re-engage with
your life and the world,

you can always come back
to the very simple feeling

of the body.

The body sitting, the body
standing, the body walking.

In this way, we see that
meditation is not simply

about sitting, it's not
simply about one posture.

It's bringing awareness
and mindfulness

to every aspect of our lives.

- The brain is changing
wittingly or unwittingly,

constantly, and the
invitation in all this work

is that we can actually
take more responsibility

for the shaping of our brains

in ways which may underlie
positive qualities

of the mind and wellbeing.

- [Shannon Voiceover] Experiment
notes, day 14.

I'm getting the gist that
mindfulness is essentially

a three and a half thousand
year old technique

to teach me how my mind works.

I'm really grateful for
the expert advice

because there's just so
much mindfulness on offer

that it's hard to know
who to trust.

It's available in classrooms
and boardrooms,

in studios and online.

There are mindful books,
apps, gyms, buses

and even mayonnaise.

Meditation is now the
fastest growing health trend

in the US and has transformed

from an ancient
Buddhist practise

into a 1.1 billion
dollar industry.

I'm starting to realise,
there's a big difference

between the mindfulness
for mental health

that I'm reading about

in the most prestigious
science journals

and the chicken pot
pie-based meditation system

that promises to nourish
my mind and body

that was developed by the
rather cheeky marketing
department at KFC.

- [KFC Character] A system
that will ease your suffering.

And your hunger.

- So I'm on the road at the
moment doing some interviews

and I've just been sent
a scientific paper

that's been published
in a respected journal.

The paper's called,
Mind the Hype.

So, listen to this.

As mindfulness has increasingly
pervaded every aspect

of contemporary society,

so have misunderstandings
about what it is,

whom it helps and how it
affects the mind and brain.

At a practical level, this
misinformation and propagation

of poor research
methodology has potentially

led to people being harmed,
cheated, disappointed

and or disaffected.

So I'm just going to try and get
in touch with the lead author

of the paper, Nicholas Van Dam.

He said he's available
to talk to me over Skype.

- The main story or the
main sort of thing

we want to convey is that
a lot of the portrayal

of meditation and
mindfulness research

is probably overly positive.

That's not just the media,

that's also a lot of
scientific researchers

and you know, promoters of
mindfulness and meditation.

There's this sort of, this
idea or this sort of sentiment

that it can be used
as sort of a solution

or a treatment or a fix
for just about anything.

And there's been this massive
growth in the marketisation

of that idea, you know,

that there's lots of
people now selling products

that promise and
offer mindfulness.

And one of my sort of, the
things I teach my students,

you know, when I'm
training clinical students

how to do psychotherapy,

I always tell them
essentially you know,

if someone tells you that
this new intervention

will fix everything,

then you know, ask
them hard questions.

Because anyone who's
trying to tell you

that one thing works
100% of the time

for 100% of the people, is not
telling you the whole story.

- So, do you think that the
public appetite for mindfulness

is outpacing the evidence
base that we have?

- Oh yeah, yeah.

That's for sure.

- There is absolutely
hype that's exacerbated

by many press reports

that aren't necessarily
doing responsible delivery

of research findings.

- It's one of the struggles
of mindfulness science

is just coming to
terms with the reality

that we are trying
to catch up

to what's happened
in terms of a dissemination

and implementation of
mindfulness practices

and interventions.

- It's interesting to see
that a lot of these very popular

mindfulness training
programmes don't particularly

have the science
behind them.

And also don't
particularly get

at the core mechanistic
underpinnings

of how mindfulness works.

Maybe I'm just a scientist
but I really think

that that's a core piece
that we would want to bake

into the trainings.

If we're developing a pill

to help people lower
their blood pressure,

I would want to understand

how people's blood pressure
is rising in the first place

so that I could design a
pill specifically for that.

- [Shannon] Is this still
a worthwhile experiment?

- [Marc Wilkins] I think,
I mean, part of me says that

as a scientist, I want
to know what will happen.

I'm excited by this.

I think it's really,
really interesting.

At the same time, we know
that there's a limitation

in the design of what
we're going to do.

But we'll need to work
with that as best we can

to see what the
data tells us.

- [Shannon] So I'm in
a situation now,

where I have committed tens
of thousands of dollars

towards lab time but I'm
seriously questioning

whether or not it's actually
going to tell us anything.

- At the end of the day,
the biggest limitation

and the biggest problem is,

it's hard to know whether
or not the findings

that you would get from
one person will tell you,

you know, anything about
a different person.

Because essentially,
with one person,

we just can't draw
that conclusion

and that it'll generalise
to everyone.

And that's not to say
it's worthless, right.

I mean, there are lots
of case studies out there

and case studies are often
really important starts.

You know, what you
will typically observe

in most scientific fields
particularly in,

you know, the applied
sciences and medicine,

is we often start
with case studies.

- [Shannon] Today's interview
was all about interviewing

the people who are all like,

we don't know anything,
the science isn't there.

...like...

so, basically I left
today going,

hang on, why are we
doing this again?

- Well, let me just say,

this film certainly has
a lot of question marks.

- Oh God, I don't know
what we're doing Jules.

I think we're idiots.

I think the only way
forward here is

to accept that the scientists

might not have all the answers.

I think I need to go and find
some real life case studies.

♪ I have been searching
all of my days ♪

♪ All of my days

♪ Many road you know

♪ I've been walking on

♪ All of my days

♪ And I've been trying to find

♪ What's been in my mind

♪ As the days keep
turning into night ♪

♪ yes even breathing

♪ Feels all right.

So it is just past one
o'clock in the morning.

And tomorrow I have got

one of the more important
interviews for the documentary.

My alarm is set to go
off at 20 past four,

so in about four hours from now

and I haven't slept a wink.

I just can't sleep.

I really wanted to be,

I wanted to bring my
A-game to this interview.

I've been really looking
forward to it

and I'm really well prepared

and in my mind,
I had all these great ideas

as to how it's going to flow.

And instead I am
going to be a zombie.

So, let's start at
the very beginning.

How many million people
saw you lose your mind

on television?

- 5.019 million,

according to the
Nielsen ratings.

I started in television and
news when I was 22

and then when I was 28,
I got a job at ABC News.

Shortly after I arrived,
9/11 happened

and I ended up
spending a lot of time

in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Israel, the West Bank, Gaza.

I went to Iraq six times.

And I didn't spend a
lot of time thinking

about what the psychological
consequences might be.

And so when I came home,
I kind of bottomed out.

I got depressed,

although I didn't even
know I was depressed.

I was having trouble
getting out of bed.

I felt like I had a low
grade fever all the time.

I went and consulted
a bunch of doctors.

And before I actually got
a diagnosis of depression,

I did something very dumb,

which is I started
to self-medicate

with recreational drugs
including cocaine and ecstasy.

The bottom for me was

freaking out on
national television.

June 2004, I was reading
the headlines.

May also lower their
risk for cancer,

but it is too early
to prescribe statins,

slowly for cancer production.

My lungs seized up.

My heart was racing.

I just couldn't talk

which is a problem

when talking is what you
need to do for a living

and it's a vicious cycle

between the thinking and
the physical manifestation.

So your body starts to mutiny

and your mind picks
up on that, obviously.

And is like,
"What the fuck is this?"

And you start thinking,

"Oh my God, I'm freaking out,
I'm having a panic attack

and I'm on television."

And then the body
reacts to all of that

and starts freaking
out even more.

The fight or flight response
was useful in the context

of when we were being chased
by saber-tooth tigers,

but in a modern context,

we are both the person
being chased by the tiger

and the tiger.

You know, we're doing
it to ourselves.

- People are worried
about the future.

They're worried about
the economy.

They're worried about
their personal finances.

They're worried about
their children.

They're worried about
everything.

We're living in this
inner mental world

where we're constantly
creating trouble for ourselves.

- And now we're seeing
anxiety problems

and mental health problems in
younger and younger age groups

and some people
could argue, well,

it was there but we just
weren't diagnosing it before.

But that only explains
a small part of it.

- So for people at risk
for depression,

sad mood and negative
thinking can be very powerful

and very potent.

Just a small negative thought
can very quickly spiral

into a downward spiral
of depressive thinking,

withdrawal and
depressive relapse.

- Evolutionarily, we
needed to stay safe.

So looking for threats,

the ability to
focus on problems

and hopefully either
avoid them or fix them

was actually very good
for our survival.

So, the fact that we
spend so much of our time

criticising ourselves or
thinking about what we did wrong

or what we might do wrong

actually comes with a
very wholesome desire

and that's a desire to be safe.

- The stressful
experience may be

for let's say five minutes

an exchange you had with
a colleague or your boss.

And if it were only
those five minutes

that the stress had
an impact on us,

we probably wouldn't be
having this conversation.

But the way I think about
it is that the brain

is actually wonderful
at mental time travel.

And we can rewind the
mind back to experience

that event for days and weeks.

- [Elissa Epal] In general
in stress research,

it has been found that
exposure to a situation

doesn't really determine
mental health,

let's say depression,

as much as how someone is
interpreting the situation.

So feelings of stress
are important

and what happens to
people is important too

but if I were to put
my money on one,

I would say it's
the psychological
response to situations

not just, does a
situation exists or not.

- So the first thing is to
realise that it is affecting you

and the second is that
there is something actually,

there are many things
that you can do about it

and the potential is

of resolving it and coming to
a very different kind of place

where we look squarely
at the real dangers

as opposed to the
illusory dangers to us

and we start dealing with them.

- [Dan Harris] I came
home one night

and my wife gave me a book by
a guy named Dr. Mark Epstein

who I liked right away because
he had actual credentials

as opposed to some of
these self-help folks

who don't, to put it kindly.

Epstein writes about the overlap

between psychology and Buddhism

and it was this very dry-eyed
to common sense diagnosis

of the human situation.

Buddha uses this term that
we have the monkey mind,

hurling ourselves from one
hit of pleasant experience,

one movie, one vacation,
one latte to the next

and yet never fully satisfied.

The Buddha's description
of a human situation

was very compelling.

His prescription was repellent

which was that he says
you should meditate.

I did not want to do that.

I thought it was ridiculous

To the extent that I even
thought about meditation,

I thought it was for
people who are really

into you know, kombucha
and crystals and Enya.

But for me what changed
my mind was reading

about the science.

- For example, mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy

has been shown now to be as
good as gold standard treatment

for the treatment of depression.

It's only been around
for about 15 or so years,

whereas the medication
developments has been

around for 50, 75 years.

And so it's already caught up.

So I think there's
a lot of interest

in helping people develop

their own natural
capacities to heal.

- And my study was one of
the first to look at whether

you could use MBCT to
treat active depression.

And we were really
interested in mechanisms,

so we looked at
stress reactivity.

And so one of the best
ways to stress people out

is make them stand up
and give a speech.

And we found that the group
that received meditation,

they still had a stress
response which is good

because you want to
have a stress response

but they recovered more quickly.

And the control group were
probably still kind of thinking

about like, oh that was
the worst experience ever

and like really
ruminating about it

whereas the mindfulness group
had learned to let go of that.

- And so one of the ways
that mindfulness works

is by reducing that
reactivity, that automaticity

of the content of our thoughts.

So it's really amazing.

An amazing thing about humans
is the impact of language

and linguistic symbol
and verbal thought.

I am unlovable.

I'm fat.

I am all sorts of things.

And just that content can
trigger other thoughts,

can trigger physiological
responses

like I can feel in my body now,

emotions and so on.

And so reducing
that identification,

with those passing expriences,

just as events in
our consciousness

is one of the most
important ways through

which mindfulness
leads to wellbeing

and reduced mental
health struggles.

- [Dan Harris] I would
say it was a couple weeks

before I started to
notice some differences.

The biggest one is mindfulness.

We spend so much of our time
just kind of yanked around

by the malevolent
puppeteer of our ego.

You know, where
the thought pops,

some neurotic obsession
pops into our head,

you know, I need a
sleeve of Oreos

or I need to say the
thing that's going to fuck

up the next 48 hours
of my marriage.

And we just do it, you know,

there's no buffer
between the stimulus

and our blind reaction.

Mindfulness, it's like
this inner-meteorologist

that can see, oh, yeah,

there's a hurricane
about to hit land

but I don't need to get carried
away by it automatically,

reflexively, habitually.

I have some choice.

I'm still the same
person, right?

So I still have a predisposition
toward anxiety

and depression, panic.

But what I find is that
I'm less likely to believe

the bullshit that the
ego coughs up.

So what could be a
several day long trudge

through mopiness and despair

actually can be truncated
quite dramatically

to a couple hours, a couple
of minutes, who knows,

depending on how mindful I am.

- Does the critical
thinking journalist in you

ever worry that you've just
bought massively into a cult?

- I mean I called it
10% Happier.

If the book was called
Be Happy Now

or like This Is The Solution
To All Of Your Problems,

yeah, I'd worry about that.

I think the vast swathe
of humanity could benefit

from this very simple
thing of just sitting down,

closing your eyes or not,

trying to feel your breath
coming in and going out

and then when you
get distracted,

start again, and
again and again.

The lessons there from this
really simple little thing

are incredibly rich.

What follows on from
that is an empathy

with every other human

who has the same
process going on.

And so now when
you see other people

who are losing their shit at
the aeroplane ticket counter

or whatever, you're like,
"Oh yeah, that's me, too."

- [Shannon] Okay, so this
feels utterly ridiculous.

I am about to
speak at an event.

And I thought I was running late

and I'm feeling rushed

and there was traffic

and people relying on me.

So I'm about to take
a mindful minute

in the bathroom.

I'm really worried
somebody's going to come in.

I'm going to look like
an absolute bloody idiot.

- [Sharon] In this meditation,

we're going to add the
element of recognising

and noting those
things that arise

which are not the breath.

- So day 51 of my
year of living mindfully

and here I am meditating
on the sidewalk.

- [Sharon] It may be
thinking that comes up.

It maybe imagery,
it may be emotion.

It may be sensations
in your body.

Whatever it is, it's
simply not the breath.

- There we go. A mindful minute

in the bathroom before an event.

Experiment notes, day 38.

I've realised that science
is only a small part

of this story.

Since meeting Dan Harris,

I've become aware of an
incessant mean voice in my head

that took up residence
sometime when I was a kid

and drives so much of what I do.

And it's making my meditation
practise almost intolerable.

Like I know this sounds crazy

because we're pretty
deep in already.

But I...

To be honest, I've been
hating it.

I'm struggling to find
the time to meditate

and I'm not like, it's...
meditation is not pleasant

until yesterday

where something changed.

And I was doing it because
I was on a plane

coming back from Melbourne

where I'd just been
doing a presentation,

but for a very brief moment,

it was like just peace

and I just sort of held it

and it wasn't like it
switched off suddenly.

It was like there was this
slow winding down of it

until eventually I was back

to just how I am normally
which is you know,

lots of thoughts going on, lots
of crazy thinking happening.

So I feel like that moment
was this kind of,

it was a beat of interest

that makes me think that
I want to keep going.

I interviewed the French-born
Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard

right at the end of what
was a four day,

whirlwind tour for
him of Australia

and yet he still sparkled.

In order to have
that somethingness,

do I need to move
to the Himalaya

and meditate for
months on end?

- No, I don't think
you need to meditate

in any specific place.

What I do believe based
on my own experiences

as a practitioner as
well as a scientist

is that, that kind
of ever-present joy

and lightness and spontaneity

really comes from
long-term practice.

- There's a saying in
the Tibetan lore,

Matthieu who's
been in that tradition,

they call it being
happy for no reason.

That is to say your
set point is joyous.

I saw Matthieu go into an MRI

when they were trying
to develop the protocols

that Richard Davidson used.

He was the first subject

but the thing was they
had some glitches

and he stayed in the MRI
for about three hours.

The MRI is a human cigar box.

Some people can't bear it.

He came out after three hours,

sat up very cheery and said,

"Oh, that was like a
little mini retreat".

In other words, it didn't
affect him in the least.

- My brain is nothing special,

different than any
other one except that,

what I've trained in
shows in the brain.

Doesn't matter.

It's not about Buddhist monk.

Please give us a break.

It's about human beings
training their minds

and they have a
very common pattern

for instance compassion,

if you train a long time in
loving kindness and compassion,

when you are asked to do
so you activate your brains

in a very strong way.

And if look at the control
group that did one week,

a little bit, it's
not their fault.

They have not trained their mind

so why should they
get the result?

It's like if you train
in running or whatever,

you know, if you're a beginner,

you're not going
to run a marathon.

So that means it is
the result of the training

not of coming from
here and there,

being a monk or not monk.

This is irrelevant.

You're training the mind.

What the matter the
colour of your dress.

- [Richard Davidson]
Matthieu and other
long-term practitioners

have helped us tremendously
in establishing

what our minds and our
brains are capable of.

We wanted to begin there

because if we tested Matthieu

and other individuals like
him and didn't see very much,

there'd be no point in
evaluating beginners.

And what we saw is
something quite remarkable.

Their brains are
really very, very different.

And what was really amazing

was that these dramatic
differences were present

not simply when these
practitioners are meditating

but also during
their baseline state.

That was the clue that
this is an altered trait.

- So is this one
rolling now, Jules?

- [Julian] They should
both be rolling.

- Both be rolling, okay.

You don't want to see,

I have this lamp like
balanced on my computer.

- You know what,
I can't see it on camera.

So therefore it
doesn't exist.

- Perfect.

- So like I don't know if
this is complete placebo,

but my insomnia
has just disappeared.

- Before you started meditating,

what was your insomnia like?

- Once or twice a week, I would
be going through the night

unable to sleep.

- And your mind racing,

you know thoughts, thoughts,
thoughts, thoughts, thoughts?

Yeah and one of the
simplest things that I give

to my patients who
have clinical insomnia

is a body scan.

So if you think of
the habit loop,

there's the worry thought

that triggers getting
caught up in that anxiety

and then you start looking
at your clock and saying,

"Oh no, I can't sleep"

and then it just
gets worse and worse.

- Exactly.

- I don't know if
that's your case.

- That's exactly it, yeah.
- Yeah.

So what are you
noticing with mindfulness?

Are you able to notice that

and then let go of it

or is it not even coming up?

- Like, I'm really aware.

"Oh my god, I've got all
these anxious thoughts".

And so I'm kind of,

before I'm going to bed, I'm
kind of mitigating my behaviour.

- So how was that placebo?

You're describing an
actual behaviour change,

catching that worry
thinking, not feeding it

and by not feeding it,
not having insomnia.

So you can see a
causal link there.

- [Shannon] What I think is
really important

is that mindfulness does
not cure your illnesses.

But what it does is it helps you

to change your relationship
to the illness.

- Well, and it's also,

I think another important
potential mechanism

is in helping people take
better care of themselves.

Having a healthier diet.

Getting enough sleep.

Getting enough
physical exercise.

All of these things
that are known

to be really important
aspects of being healthy

and that we all struggle
with actually doing.

That's one of the things
that were studying.

How mindfulness training
could be an element

in helping people
change their behaviours

to healthier lifestyles.

- [Judson Brewer] It appears
that these trainings

can help people
change behaviour.

The other thing that we
can say is mechanistically

it seems that mindfulness
is helping

to decouple the
craving and the behaviour.

So that piece we've seen
multiple times as well.

So we've seen replicability
in that as well.

Where we might be able
to start applying this

is to other types of behaviours

where we're seeing similar
types of habit loops,

whether it's smoking
cigarettes, drinking alcohol,

smoking crack cocaine,
using heroin,

eating food or even
going on social media.

That's been shown to activate

the same dopaminergic
reward system

as all these known
drugs of abuse.

So, for example, we got
five times the quit rates

of gold standard treatment
in our smoking programme

when we did a
randomised controlled trial.

And mechanistically
we could see

how the mindfulness training
was decoupling the craving

from the behaviour.

- Sorry Jud, just stop.

You got five times the quit rate

on gold standard treatments?
- Yes.

So when we looked at four months
after we started treatment

with folks, so they got about
four weeks of treatment.

And we looked for months later.

We found that they were
five times more likely

to quit smoking than
gold standard treatment.

- Ah, so, welcome
everybody.

It feels really good to
actually be here in the flesh.

- MBSR is basically,
was a proof of concept

and a kind of model for
how we could catch people

just regular people, no
interest in meditation,

but major suffering

because the people
we were targeting,

those who were falling through
the cracks as I like to say

of the healthcare system.

- [Shannon voiceover] Experiment
notes, day 123.

I've stepped up to 45 minutes
a day for my MBSR course

mostly practising a
body scan technique

and I'm really noticing
a dose effect.

I'm now even more
aware of my mental habits,

the same thoughts happening
again and again

and I'm getting better at
noticing my emotions arising

without automatically
reacting to them.

As intriguing as this is
anecdotally though,

I'm surprised that
there's hardly any evidence

that tells me how
long I should practise for

or even what specific
techniques work best.

One recent study by
Harvard neuroscientists,

did directly compare
the mindfulness in MBSR

with another popular technique,
relaxation meditation.

They split people
into two groups

and taught them
both a body scan.

But while one group was taught
to systematically relax areas

in their body,

the other was taught mindfulness

being aware of each area without
trying to change anything.

Although both groups reported
feeling less stressed,

it turned out this tiny tweak

in the mental training resulted
in noticeable differences

in their brain activity.

In the same way that swimming

and running are both called
exercise and can be good for me,

different meditation techniques
might actually matter.

And I suspect that particular
contemplative practices

will one day be prescribed
to different people

for specific reasons.

When I look through
the current evidence

on high-quality mindfulness
programmes like MBSR,.

they seem to be particularly
effective for chronic pain.

Given that we're in the midst

of an opioid addiction epidemic

on top of all the other
mental health concerns,

this is no small thing.

And I find the idea that
mental training

could be a drug-free
option really interesting.

Can I get a brief explanation

of what it is like to
be in your body today?

- A doctor would describe
my medical diagnosis today

as having incomplete
paraplegia, paralysed bowel,

paralysed bladder,

having chronic neuropathic
and musculoskeletal pain.

So my lived experience of
being in this body today

is I've got pain all the time.

So I was brought up in
New Zealand,

very beautiful, free,
active childhood.

I was very sporty.

Then when I was 16, I was
doing life-saving practice

and I lifted someone out
of the swimming pool.

And it turned out that
I had a condition

called spondylolisthesis

and that my vertebrae
had fractured.

So then in the beginning
of my 17th year in 1977,

I had a spinal fusion operation.

Then when I was 23,

I was in a car and we ploughed
into a telegraph pole.

[ambulance siren wailing]

I'd fractured the middle
of my spine.

So I ended up in a neurosurgical
intensive care ward.

The medical team
made it clear to me

there was not a
medical magical cure.

My spine was a very,
very damaged.

More surgery was wasn't
going to be helpful

and that I needed to learn
to live with it, somehow.

I had, I suppose literally
a dark night of the soul.

So I had part of my mind
saying, "I can't bear this.

I'm going to go crazy."

And another part of
my mind saying,

"But you have to."

And at a certain point,
another voice came in

and said very, very clearly,

"You just have to
live this moment".

And my experience
changed from one of this,

you know, being in a
vice to greater ease.

I still feel that that has been
the most profound moment

of my life and everything
that's followed since then,

all the meditation,
becoming a Buddhist,

founding Breathworks,

is still trying to make
sense of that.

I came across the work of Jon
Kabat-Zinn around that time

and also the work
of Stephen Levine

and what they both
talked about was turning

towards your direct experience

rather than trying to
escape your pain.

- Why does mindfulness
works so effectively

with chronic pain?

- Well, the thing to
understand about pain,

acute or chronic,
but especially chronic,

is that we experience
a sensation

and then there's all the
mental and emotional reaction

to the sensation.

And so with the same stimulus,

the brain fires off more
pain messages.

The person is not making it up.

It's not like a person's
imagining the pain.

The person's experiencing it

but there's an amplifying effect

because of the mental and
emotional reaction to to it.

Now where mindfulness
seems to help

is it helps a person to
gently notice the sensation

but to be less
emotionally reactive to it

and to re-engage the
attention with what's going on

around the person.

- One of the reasons
that we likely evolved

to have a human
attention system

is because the
brain faces

an incredible
computational challenge.

There's far more information
in the environment

than can possibly be processed.

Attention biases,

virtually all of the
information processing.

So for example, if you show
somebody two circles on a page

just on a regular piece of
paper and you say to them,

those are eyes of a face.

Now all of a sudden,

you can get face processing
systems that are engaged.

So it's incredibly powerful

to change the way
information is processed,

even at the earliest stages
in our visual system.

- So when one study looked

at mindfulness
compared to placebo,

but they also did
MRI of the brain

to see which areas of the
brain are active in placebo

and which ones in mindfulness?

The area of the brain
that the mindfulness

was mostly working on
were the areas the brain

that decide whether or not
to let the message through

to the higher centres.

We often do an experiment
with people

when we're teaching
them mindfulness.

And you can set a person down
or a group of people down

and you can just sort of
notice maybe some persistent,

obvious noise, doesn't
have to be loud,

but an obvious noise.

And you sit down and
close your eyes.

Now, I want you to
listen to that noise.

Now, I want you to
block that noise out

so that you can't hear it.

Make that sound go away.

If you can still hear it,

I want you to try even
harder to block it out.

And of course what people notice

is the harder they
try to block it out,

the louder it becomes

whereas in mindfulness,

there's no need to
block anything out.

But if the attention is
going to something else,

the other thing just
recedes into the background.

So it's like the brain
decides what messages

to let through and
which ones not to.

- Welcome to the
class everybody.

Very lovely to see you all.

I have a very
effective life now.

I travel globally.

I teach globally.

I've still got chronic pain.

I'm still disabled.

I've still got a paralysed
bowel and bladder.

My legs don't work properly

but I have a really good life.

My story isn't one
of a miracle cure.

It's a story of healing
rather than cure.

And I think this is
very, very important

because for many, many years,
I felt I was a failure.

Can't manage to earn a living.

Can't manage to
sort my life out.

And I can't cure my pain.

And you know, meditation
isn't going to unfuse my spine

but meditation has enabled
me to profoundly heal

of my response to life as it is

and for me, that's a
much greater miracle

because we've all got
bodies that will age.

We've all got bodies that
things will go wrong.

And if the paradigm is
you're only succeeding,

if you can have a
perfect body at all times

through all stages of life,
we're all going to fail.

So I'm not actually
very interested in cure.

I'm interested in learning
to live with my life,

with whatever arrives in any day

and we can't control
what arrives in our life,

but we can control
how we respond

to what arrives in our life.

[bell chiming]

- So, welcome everybody.

Our last class.

So maybe we'll just
take a moment to arrive.

Just feeling into what
it feels like to be here.

- [Shannon] Today, I'm having
a seven out of ten day
with pain levels.

I'm having an arthritis
flare through my body.

I found the body scan
enormously difficult.

The word that's on the tip
of my tongue is unbearable,

but I was just so
conscious of the exercise

that we did a few weeks ago

where we connected with
the catastrophising story

that happens.

And I you know, you just
mentioned Vidyamala Burch

and it just so happens

that we interviewed Vidyamala

for the project that we're
working at the moment last week

and she talks about
learning to be with

that emotional response
to the pain

which I've never in my
life been taught to do.

So um...

Yeah.

Do you think that in many
ways part of the problem

is that we're not taught
how to suffer?

- Wow.

We're not taught how to suffer.

You know, it's
really interesting.

Maybe, I think in some ways,

we are taught how to suffer

but sometimes it doesn't
necessarily mean

that what we've learned
and what we've been taught

is the most adaptive way.

Mindfulness meditation and
these other interventions

aren't necessarily
about alleviating
suffering completely.

Maybe alleviating
unnecessary suffering

is one way of thinking about it

'cause I think that not only
but I think many people think

that meaning, meaning,

gratitude,

compassion,

good things

also come from suffering
and gives us perspective.

And so I think even this idea

that we should be
free of suffering,

maybe is just not the case.

♪ I blame you Hollywood

♪ For showing me things
you never should ♪

♪ Show a young girl

♪ In this cruel world

♪ 'Cause life's not
a happy ending ♪

♪ Sure there are some

♪ Like Johnny and June

♪ Maybe other people too

♪ Like me and you

- [Shannon voiceover] Experiment
notes, day 143.

MBSR may have finished
but I have no doubt

that the experiences
and friendships

it kindled will stay with me.

And I'm now so aware of just
how powerful my attention is

in every aspect of my life.

Attention is one of my
most precious resources,

but I've never valued it before.

I feel a bit like
Neo in The Matrix

after he's just woken up.

I can see all the forces
around me trying

to hijack my attention.

Despite all the benefits
of new technology,

we now live in a world
full of distractions,

on our streets, in our homes
and at our very fingertips.

Has being distracted
become my default setting?

What would it be like
if I turned it all...

Off?

So here we go,
my first silent retreat.

I'm not scared.

I am maybe trepidatious,
could be the right word.

I've never in my life
been in a situation

where I haven't had
a book to read

or music to listen or
a movie to watch

or people to talk to.

I've never, ever experienced

that kind of
sensory deprivation.

- [interviewer] So what day
will you lose your mind?

- Well, hopefully, I'm
not going to lose my mind.

The good meditation teachers
can recognise the signs

of people who are in distress

and hopefully guide
them out of it

but I'm not going
to lose my mind.

I'm not going to lose my mind.

- When I was doing my
psychiatric internship,

two people the same
year were hospitalised

at my hospital from a 10-day
meditation retreat centre.

So it seemed like
as a responsible
clinical psychologist

something worthy of
following up with.

The variety of the contemplative
experience study

was an interview-based study,

about various difficulties
that can arise

in the context of practice.

The most common reported
category was increases in fear.

You can also see people
who lose all emotional tone

altogether including like
feelings for their children.

And then sense of
self almost always

at least the people that call us

are reporting with some
kind of disturbance

in their sense of self.

They don't feel like
they own their emotions

or their thoughts.

- [Shannon] So that's
depersonalization, right?

- [Willoughby] That's
depersonalization, yeah.

- You know,
I'm partly doing this

because I want to
be a better mother

and a better person, a
better wife, a better friend,

a better daughter,
a better sister.

Like I wanna be a better person

but what you're telling me
is that there are people

who are reporting experiences
of losing those relationships.

- Yes.

I mean, one of the
more encouraging things

about experience-dependent
neuroplasticity,

which is basically the
idea that you get good

at what you practise is
that it's fairly gradual.

You can monitor yourself.

And I think a lot of the
quote-unquote adverse effects

are really about mismatches

between the practises
and the teachers

and the programmes
and people's goals.

You know, they don't want
to lose their sense of self,

but that's what certain
practises are designed to do.

So don't do those practises.

Do ones that cultivate
positive emotions,

you know, there are
practises like that.

Those are some of my favourites.

Going on a retreat can be
a very intense experience.

It's called a retreat.

That makes it
sound like it's a spa

but it's actually
really difficult.

- My agreement with the
organisers of the retreat was

that once other people
started arriving,

I would stop using
the camera in public.

So I think yeah, the
arrival of that car there,

it pretty much symbolises the
arrival of the other people.

So, I guess for now,

it's going to be signing off

and I'll just be using
the diary cam in my room

and maybe during the chats
that I have with Patrick,

the teacher.

From seven o'clock tonight
when we start silence,

until the end of this retreat,

in 10 days time,

it's just going to be me
in the contents of my mind

and I guess that's really
just starting to hit me now.

- The resting state is a topic

of tremendously increased
scientific interest.

So, if you put a person
in an MRI scanner

and instruct them
to simply rest,

we see a pattern of brain
activity that is non-random.

What you actually see is
that there are circuits

which emerge as being more
activated than other circuits

and those circuits have been
called the default mode.

And one of the characteristics
of the default mode

is that it seems to
play some role

in the kind of self
narrative that we have

occurring in our
minds all the time.

And meditation seems to change

that in very interesting ways.

And so the parts of
the default mode that

may be particularly important
for this self narrative

become less strongly connected

to other areas of the brain.

And so what it suggests

is that the self narrative
is not hijacking

the other brain circuits
in the same way

where we can learn
through specific kinds

of meditation practises
like mindfulness

to regard the self
narrative for what it is.

They are thoughts rather
than getting hijacked by them

as if they are reality.

- The posterior cingulate
cortex is actually one

of the hubs of the
default mode network.

It seems to be a marker
of the experiential self

at least that's our hypothesis.

So the idea is there's
something in our experience

that says this is going
to set a boundary

between me and the
rest of the world.

When somebody's meditating,

those boundaries
start to dissolve

and on an experiential level,

we feel this often as
an expanding quality

of our experience.

And if that expansion goes
all the way to infinity,

we start to lose that boundary
between our self and others

and what we found was the
posterior cingulate cortex

gets really quiet

when we're meditating

or being curious or
even being grateful.

- The curriculum of mindfulness
is whatever is arising.

Now, you see that
more on, let's say,

a 10-day retreat because
like there's nothing going on

except in your mind,
there's a lot going on.

So, how are you going
to be in relationship

with whatever's running
through your mind?

And that's where the
liberation comes in,

that's where the
insight arises.

That's when you realise
that you are much bigger

than your narratives and that
changes the brain activity

in these narrative networks,
the default mode network.

And as I alluded to,

I think metaphorically
at least, we need

to do a lot more science
before we can know the degree

to which it's literally true,

we're shifting the default mode

from one of mindlessness and
mind wandering to mindfulness.

- [Shannon] I'm experiencing
these moments

of deep awareness.

How can I possibly
keep this going

in the craziness of the
so-called real world?

- You can't.
- You can't.

- You need all the
conditions to come together.

That's why people
do retreats.

Now, insight is interesting

in that it has
the characteristic

that once you see
something, you've seen it

and that never goes away.
- Okay.

So I'm not going to forget.

- You will forget your insights

but the effect that it has,
"Oh, this is what's going on",

that stays.

I like to call it the
Santa Claus effect.

So when we we're young

and every year this
magical figure turns up

and we always left out
some beer for him

and some cake because
you know by the time

he gets to Australia,
he's pretty tired.

And then one Christmas Eve,

you hear sounds
in the living room.

So you creep out
and have a look.

And there's your father
scoffing the beer and the cake

and you mother laying
out the presents.

But Christmas can
never be the same

because you've seen something

and the world is different now.

Insight works like this.

You forget your insight.

but there's a sense in which
your insight never forgets you.

- Hey.
- Hello.

- How you doing?

Welcome back.

- Thank you.
- How was it?

- It was extraordinary.

You know, what's in my
head right now, don't you?

- No, not all of it.

No, I get where you're
coming from.

- So are we going to see
that on a brain scan?

- Well, should we go
take a look?

- Let's go.

I've been home from the silent
retreat for just over a month

and I can honestly say
I feel amazing.

I feel amazing in my head

and I feel amazing in my body.

I have no symptoms of
my autoimmune disease.

The changes are so
monumental for me

that I can't help but wonder

if this is simply that I feel
differently about my illness

or if there's something
more going on

like under my skin
and in my cells.

Now, I do understand
that it's early days.

But, do you think this
research holds promise

for autoimmune diseases?

- It's a good question Shannon.

I think that mindfulness
and mind-body activities

are helpful to the immune system

regardless of whether it's
being overactive or underactive.

While genetics plays a huge role

when you want to know who's
living well to a hundred,

we think lifestyle plays
a tremendous role

and it's the
interaction of lifestyle

and experience with genetics.

It's not one or the other.

The action is in
the interaction.

- Whether or not mindfulness
actually cures a disease

remains to be seen.

There's some hopeful signs.

A study that Richie
Davidson did actually,,

where advanced meditators
in six hours of meditation

turned off or down
regulated the genes

that create inflammation
in the body.

Whether that's clinically
significant or not,

it's too early to say.

- And that does have important
health implications

because we know that
inflammatory processes

are at the root of
many chronic illnesses,

cardiovascular disease,
arthritis,

asthma and if meditation
can reduce inflammation,

that's a really
important finding.

- That's very exciting though

as somebody with an autoimmune
disease, I have to say.

- We're very interested
to see what would happen

if someone like you with
an autoimmune disease

were to become a very
serious meditator

and track what goes on
during that time genetically

and in terms of symptoms,
of course.

But that hasn't happened yet.

- [Shannon] What I'm
starting to realise is

how frontier this science is.

And that at the end
of my experiment,

I might not have scientific data

to explain my own
transformative experience.

How do I reconcile this?

- That's a hard one,
I don't know.

I mean, I think our assumption,

our default in science is often,

"Oh, we want to know whether

or not mindfulness
meditation works."

Let's hook the person
that's doing the meditation

up to every possible
thing we can think of

and it may be that the effects

are on the person as a whole

and that you may
have best observe those

in that person's life.

So the really cool studies
that I've seen have looked

at cases where they
randomised therapists

in training to either get
Zen meditation practice

or just relaxation.

So they taught the therapist
either to be more present

and more mindful

or just to relax and they
then looked at the clients

and what they found
in this study is that

the clients of the therapists
who got Zen training

got better faster and
stayed better longer.

And so I think for me,

we really need to
think carefully

about where are we
looking for the effects?

Where would we notice this?

If this is working, where
would we observe it?

And it might not necessarily
always be biology.

- [Shannon voiceover] Experiment
notes.

I'm now only starting to realise

what the last 283 days
have been about.

When I sat down to
meditate on day one,

I thought I was making a
film about getting happier.

But I've actually been
learning how to suffer.

I call this being
discomfortable,

comfortable with all of
life's inevitable discomfort.

I'm also coming to
terms with the fact

that I might not find any
black and white answers

and that the scientific
process is actually made up

of shades of grey.

I guess, I'm no longer
under any illusion

that my experiment alone
can possibly answer

my starting question.

Could mindfulness be
part of the solution

for the mental health epidemic?

Can it really ease the
suffering of anyone, anywhere,

in any circumstances?

As an educated white woman,
living in a peaceful country,

I don't know.

I've received a film
grant that allows me

to make one final trip
before the project finishes.

And while there are examples
of mindfulness being used

to help people in situations
far worse than my own,

in prisons, in disadvantaged
schools and communities,

my attention has been
drawn to the Middle East

and to the front line of the
global humanitarian crisis

that has caused more people
to be displaced by conflict

than after World War II.

If there was ever a place to
put mindfulness to the test,

this would be it.

- [Shannon] I am currently in
the Za'atari refugee camp

which is one of the largest
refugee camps in the world.

And it's really one thing to
read about places like this

on the Internet and to see
the images on the television,

but it is a completely
different thing

to actually come here
and see this for myself

and to meet the people

who now call this place home.

- [Shannon] When I met
Om Hamze today,

she is the single
mother of six children.

She told me that this is home

because there is no home
for her to go home to.

I really,

I can't see how
teaching meditation

is actually going to
change anything.

- There's no doubt that when
you have tens of millions

or even millions or even
hundreds of thousands of people

that are forcibly displaced,

there are governmental and
non-governmental organisations

that leap in to provide
assistance and care

and they have to deal with
all sorts of things like,

you know, housing, food, water

and later education,
all sorts of legal

and immigration, residency
issues and status.

And those things are really
important, there's no doubt,

they're critical but then,
you have those same hundreds

of thousands of people who
endured unimaginable pain

and experience of trauma
and ongoing chronic stress

of uncertainty about
what this means

and we can't see those scars.

And in terms of access
to mental health care,

it's just a tiny, tiny
fraction of the millions

who need care receive any care

and among those that
receive some care,

the truth is we don't
have a good understanding

of what they need.

- [Jim Gordon] So what happens
is people are living

with all this anger,

all this fear, all this
worry about the future

and if you wait these
patterns of extreme stress

become fixed, fixed in
physiology and biology,

fixed psychologically,
people's fear and anxiety

and depression,
fixed in behaviour.

So the best time to
work with people

is when the trauma is
actually happening.

- [Shannon voiceover] Experiment
notes, day 328.

There are over 75,000
people in the Za'atari camp

and 70 million displaced people

in similar situations worldwide.

What I just can't get
out of my head

is that only a tiny
minority are even in camps

and being supported by
organisations like the UNHCR.

Across the border in Israel,

in the ghettos
of South Tel Aviv,

there are thousands
of asylum seekers

with the highest
rates of trauma

and other mental health issues

ever recorded in a
community sample.

In the face of all of this,

how can mindfulness
possibly be anything more

than just a band-aid solution

for people who are
bleeding out on the inside?

I found a team of researchers

from the University of Haifa

who are asking the
same question.

What makes you think that
mindfulness could help?

- So it's a good,
it's a fair question.

Here in Israel, we've
been studying the refugees

that have come here,
asylum seekers from Eritrea

and from Sudan mostly.

And when we began,

we needed to identify
intervention approaches,

that there's evidence already,

that they're effective
for stress-related

and trauma-related symptoms,

that are low cost.

You have to be
able to deliver them

by like people in the
community, paraprofessionals.

You can't have a psychiatrist,

one or two or three or even
twenty treating a hundred

and fifty thousand
refugees in a refugee camp.

You can't do that.

And mindfulness
interventions, not a panacea.

But meet each and every
one of those criteria

and so we had a number
of good reasons to think

that it could actually work.

- My name is Mogos and I was
born in Dekemhare, Eritrea.

I left in 2009. The political
situation of Eritrea

it's one party, one president
almost for 28 years.

And there is no election.

There is no free press.

Your future is very dark

because you are
like their property.

You are not safe.

- So you left?
- Yeah.

There was someone, a smuggler,
it's all the same.

We paid him money.

They treat you very badly.

They only care about the money.

It's not that they
care about you.

For example, on the desert
you don't have water.

They put some
petrol into the water.

In order, not you to drink.

And everyone is screaming,
crying, vomiting

and most of it I
tried to forget it

because it's very bad memories.

But sometimes,

on the border

and on the Gulf.

And the Suez Gulf, I
remember it sometimes

because it was very
hard on the the sea.

So I remember it sometimes.

- [Amit Bernstein] Up to 70 or
80 percent of a given
East African population

in Israel has either survived
torture or witnessed torture.

Half of the population
has either suffered

or witnessed sexual
assault for example.

It's extraordinary high numbers.

In some of our samples,

these are community samples
not treatment seekers.

We're talking about rates of
post-traumatic stress symptoms,

elevated symptoms between
like 55 to 80 percent

and the consequences for them
in anxiety and depression,

not to mention the
consequences for generations

of that kind of damage to
human psyches, so yeah,

we have to act now.

- Things like psychological
stress, trauma, abuse

will actually not just change
us in terms of the brain

but will actually change the
way our DNA expresses itself.

So for example,
Holocaust survivors

and in very precise ways the
experience of that trauma

changes the DNA in ways that
are different for people

who experience, say child
abuse or other forms of trauma,

but those changes are
passed on directly

through the DNA not just
through the brain change

but through the DNA
into the offspring

leaving them more at risk
of mental health problems.

So it's not just about
helping somebody now.

Everything we do to
help somebody now

is also an investment
in the wellbeing

of future generations or when
we traumatise somebody now,

it's not just that
person that suffers,

it's the offspring as well.

- So yeah, we developed
what we're describing now

as a mindful trauma
recovery intervention

or program for refugees.

And we are now in the midst
of a randomised control study

of that intervention.

- Refugees here, we're
facing a lot of problems,

especially with the deportation.

It is the mind
that gets me crazy,

that gets me to be depressed

because all the time
think, think, thinking,

I'm addicted to it.

I don't know how to stop it.

When I stop it, I got peace.

When I not know how to stop it,

I got crazy or I get depressed.

It's like after you meditate,

you become like new person.

You start to ask
yourself, is that me,

that I'm walking on the street

like I had no problem.

And then after so many
hours so you get back,

where you have been,
it's obvious. But for some

more minutes, you become
someone very new.

I hope so, it
will be distributed

to all of the people and then to

become part of
the refugee system.

- So our first groups have
finished the intervention

and the feedback has
been pretty amazing.

People, men and women,
saying things like,

I relate to my experience
in a totally new way.

I didn't know
I was on autopilot.

And the preliminary
data is promising.

Compared to controls, we're
seeing an almost 50 percent drop

in stress and
trauma-related symptoms

after the nine
week intervention,

which means that it looks
like this intervention works,

for even the most vulnerable

and traumatised
people on the planet.

It's pretty amazing, it's
pretty amazing.

- [Shannon] This is incredible
for me, I have to say

because like you've
got so many worries

like meditation is
almost like a luxury.

- It's like a medicine for me.

Maybe a luxury for you,
it's like a medicine for me.

It's a different way of
interpretation for it.

I use it like a medicine.

♪ We could be the healing

♪ When you're
feeling all alone ♪

♪ We could be the reason

♪ To find the strength
to carry on ♪

♪ In the world
that's so divided ♪

♪ We shall overcome

♪ We can be the healing

♪ We can be the
flower in the gun ♪

♪ We can be the healing

♪ We can be the
flower in the gun ♪

- [Shannon] That's it, the
last EEG for the whole project.

We're done.

I don't know if these
little nodules

sitting on top of
my skull are able

to actually measure
those changes,

but I can tell you that

my experience is
different, yeah.

After more than
100 scientific tests,

365 days and 453 hours
of meditation practice,

I now know the results of my
year long self-experiment.

Using an EEG, we did seven
scans to test my attention

and working memory.

Whilst there were clear
differences between

my resting state and
meditating state,

there was too much noise in
the data to see any trends.

My conclusion?

You just can't meditate
away the impacts

of things like sleep
deprivation, jet lag or the flu

but my brain did change.

The MRI scans showed
structural changes

in a number of key regions

including the fact that while
most brains start shrinking

when we reach out early 20s,

areas in my brain that
relate to self-awareness,

memory and dealing with emotions
did the opposite and grew.

- What is very interesting is
that in the right hippocampus,

in your brain, there's an
increase in hippocampal volume

and quite a substantial one.

The hippocampus is used for
the modulation of emotions.

And so for instance,

those people who have depression

tend to have a
small hippocampus.

So it's an important structure.

- In terms of my experience
of what has been changing

as a result of the
meditation practice,

it's my emotion regulation.

So what you're saying is that,

that subjective experience

is being reflected there.

- That's right.
- In my brain.

- It's consistent with
what we see here.

- [Shannon voiceover] The
frontier of mindfulness science

is whether or not doing
something with our mind

could have downstream
effects throughout our body

and the answer is yes

but where and why?

That's where it
gets interesting.

My blood tests showed
that my autoimmune disease

hasn't vanished and
whilst there were trends

in my immune function,
inflammation and stress markers,

this experiment didn't occur
in a sterile laboratory.

The ups and downs of life

created a lot of
noise in the data.

At a cellular level when
we looked at my telomeres

which are the caps
on the end of my DNA,

the last sample showed
that they may have grown

which is interesting
because shorter telomeres

are associated with a
host of chronic illnesses

and while it's tempting
to sell this as good news,

we actually used three
different measuring techniques

on each sample and they all
showed different results,

which tells me that it's very
early days for this science.

As for the more than 17,000
genes that were analysed,

the blueprint of our body
that we often think

of as fixed and unchangeable.

Well, maybe it's not.

- There was something
which came up.

Out of the seventeen thousand
three hundred or so genes

that we looked at,

this was the one that
showed the biggest change.

The thing which I found
absolutely fascinating

is that this one happens
to be a master regulator

of inflammatory processes

on which you're showing
this greatest change

throughout your
mindfulness process.

- That big dip there.

That's the first sample after
I did the silent retreat.

- That's correct.

- And is that, that's
showing that that gene

is effectively switching off?

- It's being what we
call down-regulated.

That's right, it's
being turned down.

So if I was going to
do another experiment,

I'd certainly be saying well,

let's keep a careful
eye on this gene.

Because it did show some change.

The change isn't
what we would call

statistically significant,

but I think there's an
interesting trend there.

- [Shannon voiceover] But for
all the objective

biological markers I've thrown
at this project,

I now realise there's only
one measurement

that matters to me,

how I feel.

- If your subjective
experience of your life

is that this is
good for you,

do you need something,
someone else to tell you,

"Yes, it's good for you".

- No, I don't--

- That's the point of
subjective wellbeing research

is that it actually, the
subjective is so valid.

In fact, you could argue
it's the only valid tool.

If the person themselves

is having a better
experience of their life,

well, then that's
actually all we need.

- [Shannon voiceover] Over the
course of the year,

my subjective wellbeing
score went from 69.4

or just below average to 93,

well above the average
person's happiness

and wellbeing set point.

As I head out of the lab
and into the real world,

I can't help but wonder how
different my life would be

if I'd been taught this
skill at a much younger age.

And what the impact would be
for my children's generation

on things like education,
healthcare and politics

if more people learned to notice
deeply and respond wisely.

Now, I don't think
for one second

that mindfulness will solve
all of the world's problems,

but it is a simple skill

that helps us to understand
how our minds work

and that changes everything.

I started this
looking for something

that I could do
every day to protect,

nurture and nourish my mind.

It's now day 543 of
what was supposed

to be a year-long experiment,

but I don't think of
this as my year

of living mindfully anymore.

It's simply living mindfully,
every day,

for the rest of my life.

♪