The Neuroscience Of Meditation - Steven Laureys - #318

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Steven Laureys. He's a neurologist, professor of neurology and director at Coma Science Group and an author. We're talking about the neuroscience of meditation. Meditation and mindfulness practice has gained a lot of popularity over the last few decades, but the effects are inherently difficult to observe because they're internal. Thankfully, Steven is one of the leading clinicians and researchers in the field of neurology and has scanned the brains of some of the world's heavyweight meditators. So today, expect to learn what structural changes occur in the brain after consistent meditation practice, why meditation impacts happiness, what Steven learned from the happiest man alive, what neuroscience can tell us about happiness from deep sea divers and much more. One of the problems that we encounter with meditation is that the trait changes, the long term effects to your day to day existence. They take a while to accumulate. You need to actually get some time under tension doing the practice to be able to see that change in your daily experience and inevitably that causes people to lose faith or motivation with their daily practice. Thankfully, seeing the physical changes in the brain from someone who gets to look at these things on a screen like Steven hopefully should give those of you who are maybe wobbling with your meditation practice a big kick up the arse that this is one of the most important things that you can do to benefit your mental health. And Steven has his lovely Belgian accent. So yeah, enjoy that. But now it is time for the wise and wonderful Steven Laureys.
Why are you studying something as fluffy as meditation as a neuroscientist?

**Steven Laureys** (2:00)
It's a very good first question. Actually, I never ever thought I would be giving a podcast interview like this one on a subject that I considered indeed as fluffy, esoteric, whatever. Definitely not evidence-based. I remember a journalist as a medical doctor specializing in the study of consciousness and the damaged brain. I did my PhD thesis and that was in 2000 Shortly after, a journalist asked me, well, what do you think about mindfulness? I remember at the time that's the scientist in me checking quickly, well, what's been published and I wasn't convinced. So I really, a lot has happened since then. And here I am now as a neurologist prescribing meditation in my consultation as a scientist studying what's happening in the mind of these guys who are experts in meditation. Also personally, I think I enjoyed the benefits, even if definitely I'm not a Zen master at all.

**Chris Williamson** (3:12)
Why? Why? What's drawn you to this interest?

**Steven Laureys** (3:16)
Well, as is often the case, I think, and I also see it in the patients I see in the outpatient clinic. It was a personal crisis. So we, the details are in the book, but very shortly, 2012, I suddenly was dead, alone, with the three young kids, and not feeling well, feeling anxious about how I would deal with that, feeling also guilty, how could this happen? You have this little voice in your head, probably sounds familiar, and so, of course, you can't change the past, and you're worrying about the future, and then other things are happening. I was smoking a lot. I was drinking. The psychiatrist prescribed me sleeping pills, antidepressants, and it was clear that this wasn't the inspiring dad I wanted to be. So I started doing yoga, but then it was meeting a Buddhist monk in Paris where I gave a TEDx 2013 about my area of expertise, which is the damaged brain and changes in consciousness and Mathieu Ricard, translator of the Dalai Lama, talked about his area of expertise, meditation, compassion, and I still don't know why, but very quickly we got along well and he said, well, obviously he felt I wasn't well and said, come with me, I'm going on this retreat.
And that was the first retreat organized by Mind and Life Europe, a beautiful German monastery. And that was for me in New World. And so I said to him, well, you come to my lab in Belgium, Liège as a guinea pig. And so it happened. And yeah, a new area of research started.

**Chris Williamson** (5:24)
What does the quote, it is not reality that matters, it is the way you experience reality mean to you?

**Steven Laureys** (5:34)
It's, of course, it's true, right? Yet the challenge is to really, you know, somehow learn to, you need to realize that indeed it's your mind giving you these perceptions, thoughts, emotions. That's what's really important. And so I, of course, knew that as a neurologist, seeing all these families who lost their loved one. And so our expertise is traumatic brain injuries. So from one moment to the other, life is different.