Well Wisconsin Radio

The information in this podcast does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. It should not be used as a substitution for healthcare from a licensed healthcare professional. Consult with your healthcare provider for individualized treatment or before beginning any new program.

Interviewer:

Hello, and welcome to Well Wisconsin Radio, a podcast discussing health and wellbeing topics with experts from all around the state of Wisconsin. I’m your host, Deb Ognar, and today my guest is Dr. Cortland Dahl. Cort is a scientist, translator, author, a meditation teacher with a lifelong interest in the science of flourishing. His journey began in the early 1990s when he first learned to meditate. His passion led him on a journey around the world from monasteries in Burma to Zendos in Japan, as well as eight years living in Tibetan refugee settlements in Nepal and India. During his travels, Cort became fluent in Tibetan and became a prolific translator and scholar, receiving a master’s degree in Buddhist studies and publishing 12 volumes of translations. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where he was mentored by the renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Davidson, and received a PhD in mind, brain, and contemplative science, the first ever degree of its kind awarded by the university. He has since published numerous scientific articles, including a new scientific framework for the cultivation of wellbeing published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As part of his PhD dissertation, Cort created the Healthy Minds Program, now a free mobile app that has been downloaded more than a million times and featured by the New York Times, Vogue, Sports Illustrated, and many other publications. More recently, he authored a Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism and Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom reveal a simple path to thriving with Dr. Richard Davidson. He is a frequent public speaker and leads meditation retreats and courses on the science of flourishing around the world. Cort currently serves as executive director of Tergar International, which oversees a global network of meditation centers and is a senior meditation instructor for the community. He’s also a scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds and Chief Contemplative Officer for its affiliated nonprofit, Healthy Minds Innovations. Cort and his wife, Kasumi, divide their time between Madison, Wisconsin and the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, meditating in retreat, and spending time with family.

Interviewer:

Cort, your work really brings together science and experience in a powerful way. I’m so glad you’re here with us today, and I’m excited to get started on this topic of compassion.

Guest:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

Interviewer:

So to begin, maybe a good place to start is with a definition. So what does compassion mean when we talk about it as a mental health tool

Guest:

Simply put, I think we can think about compassion as the motivation to relieve suffering. So… At its core, it’s really a motivational state. It might have a feeling, but that is not essential to it. It’s really the motivation to care, the motivation to help is really at its core of what we mean by compassion. And that’s how we think about it scientifically as well.

Interviewer:

Oh, great. That’s good to level set on that. So building on that, why do you think compassion is important for mental health in today’s world?

Guest:

Well, there are all sorts of reasons, actually. There’s really interesting science, and of course, if you look at the world’s wisdom traditions, you find compassion, kindness, gratitude all over the place as fundamental aspects of human flourishing. So I can think about this … Maybe I’ll tackle this from both a scientific point of view and a little bit more from an experiential point of view. So from a scientific point of view, we can say definitively that the quality of our connections with other people are one of the most vital determinants of not only our mental health, but actually even our physical health. So for example, feeling lonely or isolated or alienated is as toxic for physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And this is from very rigorous large scale epidemiological research with hundreds of thousands of people. So it’s even more toxic than things like a poor diet, being overweight, all the classical things that we think of as being health risks. So this is just hugely important for our mental and physical health, and there’s overwhelming science supporting that. So where does compassion fit into that? Well, compassion is one of the key factors that supports this feeling of connection. When we feel compassion, by definition, we’re feeling a positive connection. And you can even look at this from the point of view of the brain. So for example, I think we’ll probably get into the distinction between things like empathy and compassion, but setting that aside for the moment, when we experience compassion, a whole constellation of brain regions lights up that signals positive feelings, feelings of inspiration, feelings of confidence, basically a whole range of brain regions that support these kind of positive uplifting feelings comes online. So even from the point of view of how our brain is operating, when we feel compassion, it feels good and you can see that reflected in how the brain is functioning in any given moment. So I could go on and on. We could spend the whole hour just talking about the benefits of it, but in short, it’s a vital component of both physical and mental health.

Interviewer:

Wow, that makes a lot of sense. And I think you’ve made some really important points there. I’m curious from a psychological standpoint, what are some of the emotional or mental benefits people actually experience when they do practice compassion?

Guest:

So when you look at compassion, when you think about the actual experience of compassion, and maybe even to boil it down to something very simple that we all know well, and we’ve been on the giving and receiving end many times in our lives, you can just think of this as care. So when you are feeling care, it is a feeling of … Even if it’s in relationship to somebody else’s suffering, when you have that caring response, you are just in this space of deep connection, and it feels nourishing, it feels uplifting. And if you are the one who’s on the giving side of that care, and you, you lift up the hood and you peek under the hood a bit to kind of see what’s going on, what you’ll see is that in that moment of care, we feel as though we’re, we have enough and we are enough that we can share, we can give, we can be there for another person. And this is oftentimes not what’s going on in our lives. Oftentimes, we’re coming to our life, what we do, our relationships, where we spend our time from a point of feeling we don’t have enough, and we’re kind of doing things to get our needs met and to fill up our gas tank, so to speak. So this is just a very different mental and emotional mindset kind of that’s going on beneath the surface. So when we cultivate that, we’re, we’re cultivating not only the ability to be there for others, but we’re also cultivating this feeling that we are enough. In fact, we’re more than enough. We, we’re kind of overflowing such that we can be there and give to another. So this is kind of at its core what’s going on psychologically, which is why it’s such a nourishing state of mind, a nourishing emotional state, and why you can see it’s held such a critical central role in many of the world’s meditative traditions, spiritual traditions, and even philosophical traditions over the millennia.

Interviewer:

Those are powerful benefits, and I imagine many people feel like they aren’t enough, so that’s important to hear also. With that, I think about how people often use compassion. You know, they talk about empathy and kindness and compassion interchangeably. Could you help us understand how those are different and why that distinction matters for our mental health?

Guest:

Yeah, it’s very true. We have a lot of terms that we use in the context of describing our relationships and what’s going on, but they’re usually pretty fuzzy. We kind of, you know, they’re somewhat vague and fuzzy. We know it when it happens, but if you asked us to define it, we’d probably be hard pressed to make clear distinctions. From a scientific point of view, defining our terms is very important because you can’t measure, you can’t study something if you can’t measure it, and you can’t measure it if you haven’t defined it clearly. So scientists perhaps to a somewhat neurotic degree are concerned with really having clear definitions. So let’s, from that, with that caveat, let me just look at some of the terms you laid out there. From a scientific point of view, the way we think about empathy is it is essentially a mental and emotional state in which you are resonating with another’s experience, or even more specifically, what you perceive to be another’s experience. So for example, if we’re hanging out and I see you stub your toe, and I suddenly have a little bit of that ouch feeling myself, it’s like you, your body tenses up a little bit and you’re not having exactly the same experience. You know, in this case, I didn’t actually stub my tone. I don’t have exactly that same painful stimulus. But what’s happening is that mentally and even biologically in the brain and nervous system, we’re almost simulating that response. We’re mimicking that response to some degree. And this is how we’re wired as biologically. We are social creatures, not only mentally and emotionally, but biologically. So we are constantly infecting each other with our experience, with our mental and emotional states and so forth. So in a nutshell, that’s what empathy is. But you can see from that, you could have that empathic response, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you care. So again, if we go to that same example, you stub your toe, I have that ouch response. That could lead in one of two very, very different ways. It could lead into a situation or a mental, emotional experience where I’m kind of dealing with my own response. I feel a little, a little bit of that pain, and suddenly I’m out of the relational space where I’m connected to you and seeing what’s going on with you, and suddenly I’m having my own response and I’m trying to deal with that. So there’s really not a whole lot of care other than maybe care for myself. I’m trying to figure out how to manage my own reaction that I’m having, but I’m out of that space of where it started, which is being connected of what, with what’s going on with you. So that, in scientific terms, is what we call empathic distress. So it starts with this empathy, just the resonance, just feeling what another’s feeling or simulating that experience, but then again, it could lead into this experience of empathic distress. Over time, that can be toxic and it, it puts us, like we actually feel distressed, we feel overwhelmed, we feel stressed out. So you can imagine if that happens a lot over extended periods of time, it becomes very depleting. There, however, is a very different response where we have the same experience, you stub your toe, I see that, I have a little bit of that ouch myself, but instead of the getting collapsed into my own reaction and trying to deal with it, it leads me more towards you and wanting to care. So the feeling is of wanting to help. The orientation, to go back to the definition of compassion, is motivation. I am motivated to do something. I want to take care of you. I want to help if I can. Now, maybe there’s something to do and maybe there isn’t, that’s sort of besides the point, but the motivation is there. So that in scientific terms is what we’re referring to as compassion. Scientists also call this empathic concern. So you have the raw empathy, but that on its own is not enough because as we see, it can very easily lead to this empathic distress. So what, what is more supportive of mental and even physical health is to steer it in the direction of empathic concern, which is the space of compassion. So you can see that these are very different things. There’s been really interesting work done by our colleague, in Germany, a brilliant neuroscientist named Tania Singer, who’s done a lot of neuroscience and shown that these two kinds of experience, the raw empathy and compassion are completely different networks in the brain. They don’t overlap at all. So in, anyway, there’s lots of really interesting science to, to underscore what I’m sharing here.

Interviewer:

I think that distinction is really helpful to understand and to also, you know, know that compassion is more about motivation. So one interesting thing is that many people find it easier to show compassion for others than to themselves. Why is self-compassion so difficult for many of us?

Guest:

Yeah. You know, I teach this stuff a lot. As you said in the, in your very generous intro, I lead meditation retreats and often work with people teaching these things. It’s surprising how difficult self-compassion is. It’s strangely harder for many, many people than bringing compassion certainly to a loved one, even to people who are not your, your close circle. Sometimes we’re like the last person we wanna let in the circle of our, of our own care. And, you know, it’s hard to say exactly why that is. I think a lot of it is just our, our societal conditioning and even perhaps our biological wiring where we are wired to care for others and we receive very little support, much less any training, actually learning how to take care of ourselves. And I think there can be a bit of a, almost like a guilt complex. Like we feel, I don’t know, in some cases that we don’t deserve it, or in some cases we might feel as though it’s somehow selfish if we’re spending time taking care of ourselves. So I think there’s a lot of reasons. Interestingly, there’s not a lot of science showing that is looked into that specific question, but I can certainly tell you from personal experience that it, it is for sure a difficult thing for many, many people. The good news is it’s very much something that’s malleable. I also, as many people have said, it’s difficult. I also can’t remember a single time where somebody’s saying when they’ve tried to do some of the practices to cultivate self-compassion, that they weren’t able to make progress and to work with that dynamic. So it’s hard, but it’s still very much fluid and flexible, I would say.

Interviewer:

I think that’s good news for our listeners, knowing that, you know, it can be practiced. I think that a lot of our listeners will also relate to that. That raises an interesting question. Is self-compassion just as important as compassion for others, or do they serve different roles in our mental health?

Guest:

I would say they are both vitally important, and in some respects, they’re flip side of the same coin. I think it would be very difficult to care for others and at the same time have no compassion for yourself. And, similarly, if you have really genuine compassion for yourself, I think it equally naturally spills out and will inform how you relate to others. So in a way, you could think of it’s just getting in touch with this compassionate movement in your own heart and mind, and ultimately that goes in all directions. It should flow towards yourself and towards others. And if it gets out of balance, which it can, it’s usually because one of those two is being neglected there’s a belief system or something that perhaps has been bypassed that, that needs a little attention. So I would say they’re both vitally important and they, they’re mutually reinforcing.

Interviewer:

So that’s important to know that they reinforce each other.

And now, we’ll take just a quick break to hear about some of Well Wisconsin’s program offerings.

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Interviewer:

And now we’ll head back to the Well Wisconsin Radio interview.

For someone listening who wants to develop more compassion in their lives, where would you suggest they start and then how can people cultivate it intentionally?

Guest:

What people often don’t realize is that these are skills, actually. We tend to experience these moments of deep connection, of deep care. We all know that that feels so nourishing. It certainly does so much for the people in our lives and builds our connections and help the people we care about to also feel nurtured and cared for. But it kind of feels like it just happens sometimes and it doesn’t happen sometimes. You know, sometimes somebody really needs us and we’re not fully there or we’re not at our best and it just kind of happens that way. And other times, we’re, we are. We rise to the occasion. And, you know, so we all know, we’ve all been various places along the spectrum, but if you look at the world’s meditative traditions, what you find is a whole range of practices that indicate that these are actually skills. So in our work at the Center for Healthy Minds, we have a few mantras that we tend to say all the time. One is that wellbeing and flourishing are skills and that things like compassion, which are kind of the ingredients of flourishing wellbeing are kind of the toolbox, so to speak. So these are kind of the, the inner tools that you can develop and cultivate. Another one of those mantras is that it’s much, much easier than you think. It’s not some massive lifestyle change. It’s not even as difficult as going to the gym. We have extensive research, multiple or many now, randomized controlled trials. These are, like, very rigorously designed scientific research studies that are looking at people who train these skills, in some cases, thousands of people, and showing that just minutes a day for a few weeks can make a huge difference. It improves things like stress, anxiety, depression, it improves things like feelings of connectedness, even attention and mindfulness, and that spills over and has all these other benefits to our health and wellbeing, and literally just minutes a day. So in terms of how you get started these days, it’s never, it’s never been easier than it is right now in this world of apps and online resources. So there’s so many ways to get started. You, for example, mentioned in the intro how we’ve developed this program called the Healthy Minds Program. We originally did this just for our own research purposes. It’s completely free. There’s no paywall or anything. It’s, it’s totally powered by the generosity of others. We originally did this just for our research. We never expected this was gonna reach millions of people but it has indeed now been downloaded just more times than we could have ever imagined. And so we have data from hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who have used this that now shows, um, how easy it is to get started. So that’s one way you can do this. There’s a lot of practices in the Healthy Minds app that are focused specifically on compassion. In fact, the app is, is structured around this framework for wellbeing that focuses on four key dimensions, the four being awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. So we call these ACIP for short, ACIP. And connection, of course, is the space of kindness and compassion and things like that. So there’s a whole section of the app that’s just devoted to practices that help us feel more connected to others in our lives. The last thing I, I should say, and this is something that you’ll find in the Healthy Minds app, but also other, there’s other apps and other resources out there as well. You can do every practice as a sitting meditation, but you can also do any practice as what we call an active meditation, meaning you never sit down. You do it while you’re washing the dishes or walking your dog or commuting to work. And the research shows that at least at the early stages, people benefit just as much from those active practices as when they’re doing it in a more focused way, as in sitting down to meditate or something like that. So it’s much easier to get started, I think, than people think and realize, and you can start seeing the benefits right away. Actually, within one week, we can see from our data, even in the first week of doing a few minutes a day, people start reporting feeling some pretty significant differences.

Interviewer:

That’s encouraging because I think it shows that compassion is something that we can intentionally grow and practice and to know that it could take minutes and within a week, we can get those results and feel that I think that’s really encouraging for our listeners.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Interviewer:

So what are some simple ways that people can put compassion into practice in their daily lives, like at work, at home, or even in their communities?

Guest:

Yeah. So there’s so many simple ways. I can tell, to share a few things that, that I do all the time, little daily rituals and practices that I’ve built into my life. The, the one that I probably do most frequently when it comes to compassion, is to just have a little mental reboot before any new activity and to simply think to yourself, may whatever I’m about to do, whoever I’m gonna be with, whatever I’m doing, may this not only benefit me, may I also be of benefit to others? If there’s some way I can be of service to the people I’m interacting with, if they’re experiencing challenges or suffering in some way, can I do a little good in their lives? Can I support them? You don’t even have to stop what you’re doing. It’s almost like a little transition ritual between activities. And it, even if you’re alone, you can just think, “All right, I’m gonna be alone, but may what I’m doing here, even if the activity seems mundane or difficult, may somehow this have a positive impact and ripple out into the world and do some good in the world.” So just having that motivation takes a moment to do. We rarely reflect on why we do the things we do. We’re usually always focused on what we’re gonna do and what, what outcome we want, but rarely do we think about why are we doing what we do. So that, again, it just takes a moment. I do that all the time. In fact, I did it right before we started the recording today. Just though, okay, maybe, you know, I’m, we’re gonna have this conversation. May this, may whoever listens to this, may this bring some inspiration to their lives, may this do some good, may it, may it spark something for them that will really be meaningful for them. And then I find that it takes me out of this place of like what I want and what my needs are. And again, I’m feeling full and hopefully, you know, whatever comes of it actually will be of benefit to others. So-

Interviewer:

Mm-hmm…

Guest:

That’s one simple thing. Another one that, is really helpful is you might think of this as like the precursor to compassion, and it’s a way to very simply get in a space of feeling connected, and that’s where compassion happens spontaneously if, you know, of a situation where somebody’s struggling or needs some help. And this is the skill of appreciation. So our, our minds and brains for biological reasons are wired to have a bit of a negativity bias. The simple fact is that we evolved to survive, not to be happy. And that capacity to survive, oftentimes what helped us survive is that we become exceedingly good at detecting threats. So we are little, our brains are little threat detection machines, and they’re really, really good at that. But our brains are also really, really bad at discerning an emotional threat or just kind of a mundane, stressful situation from something that’s physically threatening. So oftentimes we find our mind and brain and nervous system reacting to things as though we’re being physically threatened when in fact it’s just hearing something stressful in a podcast or a snarky comment at work or something like that, and yet we’re in this fight or flight response, but who are we gonna fight or where are we gonna run away to, right? It’s not the correct response, but our body doesn’t know that. Our body’s responding that way. So that’s totally normal.

Interviewer:

Right.

Guest:

That’s like if your mind is getting anxious or gets reactive or gets focused on the negative, that is not a bug in the system, that is the system. That is our biological heritage, for better or worse. So that can sound depressing, like we’re just cursed to carry around this negativity bias. We also have a very malleable biological system. You’ve all probably heard about things like neuroplasticity, and we can use that to our advantage. So the way we can do that in this case is first just notice that negativity bias. And then you can practice the skill of appreciation, which is simply put choosing with intention to notice something positive. It’s that simple. So right now we’re talking, I can think, “Okay, you know, here Deb is, she’s, she’s chosen to have these incredible conversations. So many people are listening to this. This is so wonderful.” And just right away, like, I, I have a, a much … I have a sense of positive connection with you and you’re, you know, like who you are. So you can do this with anybody in any situation. It takes just a moment.

Interviewer:

Mm-hmm…

Guest:

But it puts you in the space of feeling connected and then in the right situations, if compassion is called for, tends to just naturally arise in that space of connection.

Interviewer:

I really like that. I think those are really practical examples, especially, you know, the mental reboot and showing appreciation. I think those are simple practices that people could do really every day. It sounds like it’s more about awareness too.

Guest:

Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer:

So I’m curious about the bigger picture as well. Do you see a connection between compassion and people finding a sense of purpose in life?

Guest:

Yeah, definitely. So we see this a lot in our work. I mentioned that we’ve done a lot of really rigorous scientific research with people learning these skills. And one of the most inspiring studies we ever did was some work we did during the COVID-19 pandemic. And here in Wisconsin, we did a study with 700 school employees, mostly teachers, all throughout Wisconsin, and we gave them the Healthy Minds app. It was purely digital. It was just, “Hey, here’s this app. Use it if you find it helpful. No support beyond that. ” And this was a time when the whole country, the whole world was, was going into lockdown and quarantine. So I think this was like six months into the pandemic. We’ve probably all repressed the memory of what that was like. It was so terrible.

Interviewer:

Right, right.

Guest:

But everybody, you know, nobody was going out, you know, it was, it was like some weird dystopian movie. And I mean, can you imagine a more stressed out group of people than school teachers six months into that pandemic? I mean, this was, I, I just can’t even imagine the, the Herculean effort that teachers, you know, w- you know, had to undergo at that time. So anyways, we gave them this app and we did the study at that time. And what we found was, I shared some of the findings earlier. They did roughly four to five minutes of practice a day. We had all of these benefits. Actually, every single thing we measured had a significant improvement, everything from stress and anxiety to positive things, as I mentioned. But when we looked at why, like, what was accounting for those differences, like what for example, the reductions in stress and the reductions in anxiety, what were the active ingredients that statistically accounted for those reductions? What we found was that the single biggest predictor was these feelings of connection. Now, this is fascinating, because this is during the pandemic when people were quarantined. So it wasn’t as though they were going out and meeting more people. They weren’t, right? We were all quarantined at this time. But nevertheless, they felt more connected. And one of the things we heard all the time that speaks to the question you asked is that, it’s almost like weird how many times we’ve heard this similar phrase where people say something like, the teachers would say, “This reminded me of why I started teaching in the first place.” And so it was not only this feeling of connection, but that connection was linked to some deeper sense of purpose and not only a sense of purpose, but something that was about the greater good, something that was more than just their personal wellbeing and benefit. They were seeing why they were on the planet, like how they could do good in the world, and in this case, how they could benefit the kids they were serving and the communities that they were serving. And so it not only gave them some inner resources and made them feel more emotionally balanced, but it put them in touch with this reservoir of meaning and purpose in a very, very powerful way. And I think those two are linked, the feeling of connection and compassion and that deeper sense of being of service and doing good in the world. When those two go together, there’s a magical alchemy that happens with that, that is incredibly powerful, both for our, our own mental health and ability to flourish, but also how we actually act in the world. And maybe just to add one little footnote onto this that will just be interesting, is that another mantra of our, coming out of our work is that flourishing is contagious and equally, I think you could say compassion is contagious. So from this same work, we actually replicated this whole study in Wisconsin in Louisville, Kentucky with an even bigger group in a more diverse school system. And we replicated everything we found all these amazing benefits. But in that study, we also looked, we got access to the data from the school itself. The school administrators gave us access to all the student data, for instance. Now keep in mind, there was nothing in this intervention for students.

Interviewer:

Mm-hmm.

Guest:

It wasn’t even, the classroom was not, literally was not even mentioned. When we looked six months later, the students who were in classrooms with teachers who were doing this training compared to students who were in classrooms with teachers in a control group, who didn’t get the app, their standardized test scores improved six months later.

Interviewer:

Wow.

Guest:

So there was nothing for the students. This was purely just the ripple effect of the teachers, you know, doing something that clearly was putting them in touch with these qualities. So again, it goes to the, that question you asked earlier about the relationship between compassion for oneself and compassion for others and how they’re mutually reinforcing. This is basically the scientific evidence that, that flourishing and compassion these things are actually contagious.

Interviewer:

Wow. That’s amazing to hear that it is reciprocal like that. So what I’ve heard here is that compassion does really play a deep role in how people make meaning in their lives and that connection is super important, especially in a time when people are feeling really lonely. So to wrap it up, if listeners remember just one thing about compassion that could improve their mental health, what would you want that to be?

Guest:

I think I’d want people to come away with the understanding of that this is much simpler than you might think, that it’s really just many small steps. It’s not some huge new regimen or routine. It’s just these little moments. And if, in a word, it’s really about intention. Just be intentional and try to inject little moments of care, kindness, appreciation into your routine interactions, and even when you’re alone into how you’re relating to yourself or just your own mental and emotional space, it’s just these little drops that over time, those little drops slowly form a river and, you know, eventually become this powerful force in your life. And I think a lot of times we don’t do things because we’re waiting for some big monumental change or it seems like it’s gotta be some huge thing, but it’s not. It’s actually just a lot of small moments and they really, really add up. And any one of those small moments is, is just right there. They’re just these little steps that we can take wherever we are and whatever we’re doing.

Interviewer:

Yeah. I think that’s a great takeaway, knowing it’s right there at our fingertips. We just have to be aware and intentional about it. So I think that’s a really meaningful way to end our conversation. Cort, thank you again for your time and for sharing your expertise with us today. I really appreciate the insight that you have given our listeners, and I know they’ll gain a lot from this as I have, so I appreciate your time.

Guest:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on for the conversation.

Interviewer:

Thanks for listening to Well Wisconsin Radio. I hope you enjoyed the show. We love hearing from our community, so please take a moment to visit the Well Wisconsin radio card under the benefits tab and your Well Wisconsin portal to share your feedback or suggest a guest for a future episode. You can find our transcripts and previous episodes, all at www.webmdhealthservices.com/wellwisconsinradio. If you’re listening to this podcast on your platform or choice, be sure to subscribe so you can never miss an episode.

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