three years ago I found myself at the
top of a Himalayan mountain with a bunch
of brainwave sensing equipment in my
backpack
searching for meditating monks so it's
times like this that you have to take a
step back from life and ask yourself how
exactly did I end up here my story
started in neuroscience labs in the
United States studying how the brain
changes during meditation both
structurally and functionally and one
natural question might be why is it that
we might expect the brain to change
during meditation and what is meditation
so it turns out the brain changes over
both the short and the long term through
repeated activities so for example if
you take brand skin brain scans of
people who are just learning to juggle
and you look at them over the course of
weeks and months you can actually see
areas of the brain for example areas
that precede motion change over these
over the course of training so that
whole concept is kind of called neural
plasticity and that's actually the basis
for how meditation works as well so what
is meditation meditation is basically
the repeated bringing back of attention
to a particular object so that might be
paying attention to your breath and the
sensation of your breath going in and
out of your nostrils or it could even be
a feeling for example the feeling of
compassion you can try it yourself as
you're sitting here what does it feel
like somatically in your own body to
feel compassion to feel kindness that
can actually be a meditation and it
turns out that sort of sounds like
hippie dippie stuff but actually studies
have looked at monks Tibetan monks who
have more than 10,000 hours of practice
in this type of meditation compassion
meditation and we can see here is that
their brains are dramatically different
during this course of meditation so what
you're seeing is before the red line the
monk is simply resting
and then after the red line the monk is
asked to meditate on the idea of
compassion and you can see that the
brainwaves look completely different
this is stuff that has not been seen in
Western science before and it's the
result of neuroplasticity and kind of
repeated training it's really amazing
stuff so you might think that these
changes are kind of relegated to people
like monks people who go off into the
mountains and practice meditation for
years and years but that's actually not
the case this is a really exciting study
that was done just a few years ago that
looked at people that had never done
meditation before so they enrolled them
in an eight-week course just 30 minutes
on average of meditation every day and
it turns out that areas in their brain
actually change areas associated with
sense of self and empathy so this is
kind of a sign that all of us are
actually able to change our brains
through something as simple as
meditation but what does it actually
mean for your brain to change what what
does that actually mean in our day to
day lives it turns out that there have
been hundreds of studies looking at
mindfulness and meditation and it turns
out that there are incredible benefits
that you can kind of actualize in your
own life through meditation
some of those include an increased
ability to pay attention an increased
ability to have empathy with other
people to look at someone's face and to
understand what they're feeling more
than that and maybe more exciting is
that meditation seems to leave people
with a sense of increased well-being and
happiness and that's something that we
all we all are looking for in life and
so it's it's really exciting to see
these studies kind of validate this this
very simple practice that we can all do
more than that meditation allows you to
combat things and offer and kind of get
relief from things like anxiety and
stress and for that reason it's now
offered in more than 250 hospitals
across the United States and elsewhere
for things like stress reduction and
lowering of high blood pressure and
other things associated with stress so
as a researcher and a scientists we
study things from the third-person
perspective
and I through studying meditation gained
a real appreciation for what mental
training can do to change your change
your mind and also change your life but
there's a difference between between
knowing something intellectually and
actually feeling it actually living it
and I was completely stressed you know
although we were studying these monks
who were so calm and happy I didn't feel
that way and I came to a point in my
life where I decided that if I really
believe that meditation could make my
life better it could make me healthier
could make me happier then I had to
learn it I had to do it and so I put my
job and I started a journey through the
Himalayan mountains for almost nine
months searching for these monks that
we'd studied in the lab going from
ashram to ashram and monastery to
monastery seeking out their wisdom about
how to meditate and of course old habits
die hard so I took along a bunch of
brain sensing equipment with me and I
got back to see what the brains look
like and so these are some of the people
that I met these are amazing people and
I'm just incredibly grateful that they
were willing to put on this weird device
number one but also to be open about
their practice and how how to meditate
really this gentleman I met in North
India and when I met him at an ashram
there he had like five or six kids
crawling all over him like he was a
human jungle gym just a very kind person
and as I got to know him and after we
meditated together he mentioned casually
in conversation that he had meditated
alone in a cave for like six years just
like crazy stuff you don't hear this at
dinner conversation very often really
interesting people this monk I met on
the dock which is a very isolated region
in northern India in the desert
Himalayas and it's actually very
difficult to get to this region for a
long time it was only accessible for a
few months of the year during which
these high-altitude roads actually go in
are unfrozen usually for most of the
year it's covered by glaciers and so
is incredibly isolated place has a lot
of monasteries and a lot of months live
there and this is one of the monks who I
met and I could tell you stories for
hours about these people incredibly kind
but I hope that as you as you look at
them you can get an intuitive sense for
what a lot of meditation actually does
to two people these people are just
really really nice and it shows on their
face so in the end we collected
brainwaves meditating brainwaves for
more than 30 monks and long-term
meditators and we use that to find a
signature for what meditation looks like
in the brain but not only that we also
looked at novice meditators high-powered
lawyers startup CEOs and we put we put
the headset on our girlfriend's as well
although they were a little skeptical of
the whole project and in the end we came
back to India and some friends and I
decided that we should try to find a way
to take everything that we've learned
about meditation and brain waves and put
it on our smartphones that we carry
around with us everywhere and so we
created something called brain bond
which is essentially a brainwave sensing
headset that sends your brainwaves via
bluetooth to a smartphone and then the
smartphone can act as sort of a very
intuitive meditation instructor who
knows what you're thinking even before
you do and can guide you through the
meditation so this is just a short
example that we put together last year
to show you what you can do with this
kind of technology so one thing that
beginning meditators often run into is
that you're sitting there you're trying
to meditate on compassion or your breath
and your mind starts to wander you're
thinking about what you have to do
tomorrow what you didn't do today and
you're not in the moment which is which
is the idea behind meditation to keep
your attention sustained
notice what's happening relax and gently
reconnect with your breath so we can
actually detect in real-time with a
sensor your level of mindfulness and as
your mind starts to wander we can give
you gentle audio feedback use to bring
you back to your meditation and
hopefully the idea is that this
technology can make it easier to both
learn and sustain the meditation
practice so that's that's really amazing
stuff and and it seems that this tool
brain bond and a whole bunch of tools
which are now coming out in the same
space are all part of this new wave
called awareness technologies and
awareness tech is really interesting
because it's the synthesis between east
and west
it's the bringing together of sort of
the material external world and the
internal world an ancient philosopher a
rather more modern philosopher in India
named babay Kannada once said that and
I'll paraphrase the more that you try to
understand the universe either by
looking outward or by looking inward and
more that those two worlds actually come
together and awareness technology is the
fulfillment of that promise because it
uses external technology to open a
window into the true final frontier
which is the human mind so you can argue
that meditation is actually the world's
first awareness technology and we know
now through scientific studies that
meditation has all kinds of health
benefits it can make you healthier and
it can also make you happier but that's
actually not the most exciting part
about where this technology
what you're seeing on the screen or
we're seeing just moments ago is a
visualization of the world's Facebook
connections ties between friends between
family members between loved ones and as
you can see there are no boundaries
between countries and we're all
connected in some way
we know from psychological research that
happiness can spread through these
networks almost like a cold from one
person to the next and so the true
revolutionary aspect of where technology
is not only to make ourselves happier
but to in turn spread that to maybe five
friends who interns fret to five more
and through this process we were able to
actually maybe in some small way make
the world a little bit happier and a
little bit more peaceful and I think
that's an idea we're spreading thank you