You Were Born to Flourish. Here's the Science That Proves It. | Dr. Richard Davidson & Dr. Cortland Dahl – EP 803

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1:19There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. The therapist you want takes your insurance on Grow. Grow accepts over 125 insurance plans. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com slash book now today to get started. That's growtherapy.com slash book now. growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Today on PassionStruck, world-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson issued a warning about modern culture that stopped me in my tracks.

2:05and revealed the direct mission given to him by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Take a listen to this. He has given me a very direct assignment, and my assignment from him is this. He has asked me to please take the practices from his tradition, study them using tools of modern neuroscience, clients, modify them in ways that allow a wider range of people to practice them. This really, I take to be my assignment for the remainder of my time on the planet. Hey, it's your friend, John, and welcome to PassionStruck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today.

2:57Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough. If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

3:26Hey friends, I'm so glad you're here for another episode of Passion Struck. This is episode 803, and we're continuing our new series, The Adaptive Brain, how your mind learns, changes, and heals. In our last episode, Dr. Daniel Amen reminded us of something profoundly hopeful. We're not stuck with the brain we have. Every experience, every relationship, and every habit is shaping the person we're becoming. But that naturally raises an even bigger question. If our brains are constantly changing, what are they changing toward? For many of us, life can begin to feel like one endless self-improvement project.

4:10We're always trying to fix something, become less anxious, more productive, more resilient, more successful. fault. We're constantly chasing the next version of ourselves, believing that flourishing is something we'll finally earn once we've accomplished enough or healed enough. But what if we've misunderstood flourishing altogether? What if flourishing isn't something we create? What if it's something we uncover? That's the remarkable idea at the heart of today's conversation. By the end of this episode, you'll discover why awareness, connection, insight, and purpose are not traits reserved for extraordinary people, but capacities every one of us is born with.

4:58You'll learn why feeling truly seen may matter more than the size of your social network, how simple moments of awareness can reshape your brain over time, and why flourishing isn't about becoming someone different. It's about nurturing the best of who you've always been. Joining me today are two pioneers who have spent decades exploring one of neuroscience's most profound questions. What allows human beings to truly flourish? Dr. Richard Davidson is one of the world's leading neuroscientists whose groundbreaking research has transformed our understanding of emotional well-being, meditation, and neuroplasticity.

5:39Dr. Cortland Dahl is a neuroscientist, researcher, and longtime contemplative practitioner whose work bridges ancient wisdom and modern science, helping translate decades of research into practical skills anyone can cultivate. Together, they're the authors of the new book, Born to Flourish, a book that makes a compelling scientific case that flourishing isn't something we achieve. It's something we're born with and learn to nurture. But here's what stayed with me long after we stopped recording. This wasn't really a conversation about meditation. It wasn't even a conversation about neuroscience.

6:16It was a conversation about human nature. So much of our culture begins with what's wrong with us. Richard and Cortland begin somewhere entirely different. They argue that beneath all of our conditioning and life's inevitable hardships lies something fundamentally good, an innate capacity for awareness, connection, insight, and purpose that has been with us from the very beginning in a world that often convinces us we're defined by what's missing. I found that message not only scientifically compelling, but deeply hopeful. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr.

6:58Cortland Dahl. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin. Midi knows that just when you thought you had your body all figured out, bam, perimenopause. Suddenly, your hormones are raging like it's puberty round two. You're waking up at 3 a.m. and dealing with mood swings that have mood swings. Your ears are itchy, your jeans don't fit, you need an industrial-sized fan to cool down, and you've suddenly forgotten the word for microwave. Most women in perimenopause don't know that they are, even though it can last for 10 years.

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8:12I'm absolutely thrilled today to welcome Richie Davidson and Court Dahl to Passionstruck. How are you gentlemen today? Very well. Thanks for having us. Great. Yeah, doing very well. So, Court, I'm going to open this up with you. I'm interested in how did the two of you first meet? And at what point did you realize your two different backgrounds, Richie from decades of neuroscience and you from deep contemplative practice could produce something neither of you could have written alone? It's a great story. We met, I believe, in maybe 2008, somewhere around there. And it was at a conference in Zurich, Switzerland, that was hosted by an organization called the Mind and Life Institute, which Richie has played a pivotal role in and is part of hosting dialogues between scientists and meditators and contemplatives.

9:03And I was there with a Tibetan Lama named Mingyur Peshe, who I think you've had on your podcast. I'd been living in Asia, living in Tibetan refugee settlements for many years at that point, almost a decade. and Richie, of course, was really in the middle of just doing some of the most important early work on the scientific study of meditation. And we had a lot of mutual contacts. We knew many people in common, so we were in the same circles. And it was just one of those meetings where we just had a very clear and obvious connection. And I still remember Richie saying, well, I was thinking about going back to academic work and doing a PhD.

9:47And Richie, I still remember very vividly saying, well, why don't you come to UW-Madison? And at that point, UW-Madison didn't have a very robust Buddhist studies program, which is what I was very immersed in at the time. And I thought, why would I go to Madison with all due respect? But I ended up going and visiting, and it just became clear we had some important work to do. And just our personal relationship was just such a wonderful connection. Certainly for me, that was just obvious that we needed to find a way to deepen that connection and see what would happen. Richie, I understand you've had a very long relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

10:24And it's interesting to me, the people I've had on this show who have met him, whether it's Gretchen Rubin, Susan Cain, Dan Harris, David Vago, all tell me that during their meetings with him, he gives them all a mission for them to partake in for the benefit of society. And I was wondering, did he ever give you a similar mission? Yes, very much. Thank you for asking about it. I first met the Dalai Lama in 1992, and he's played a very pivotal role in my life. When he was traveling around the world before COVID, I was typically seeing him three or four times a year. More recently, I see him once or twice a year, and he has given me a very direct assignment.

11:14And my assignment from him is this. He has asked me to please take the practices from his tradition, study them using tools of modern neuroscience, modify them in ways that allow a wider range of people to practice them. And if our scientific findings show that they are valuable, to disseminate them widely. I take to be my assignment for the remainder of my time on the planet. It's really why I'm here, and why we do the work we're doing. And it has fueled the relationship and work that Court and I have done together. And it's been a huge inspiration and blessing to have that be my life's purpose.

12:10Man, I love that. And Court, did you receive a similar message? well I didn't meet his holiness the Dalai Lama till many years certainly after Ritchie did in fact it was through the connection with Ritchie that I first met him but I had been actually started my interest in this whole area began in the early 1990s and I would say it didn't it wasn't sparked by my interactions with him although he certainly has been a great inspiration I think for me, and I think this is, I'm sure Richie, you would say the same. I started meditating. I got interested in these kind of the science of the mind and scientific research in this area.

12:54And my own personal interest all coincided in the early 90s. And I was just struggling at the time. and the practices I learned, the ideas that I was exposed to so radically changed my life that I knew back then in the early nineties, that this was going to be what my life would be about. And I didn't know what form or shape that would take, but I had a sense of confidence and certainty and inspiration that, okay, this is what I'm on the planet to do. I have no idea what the implications are in terms of a career path, but this is something the world needs. It's helped me And I want to help share that and make sure everybody knows this, these ideas and practices are available.

13:35Thank you for sharing that. Richie, a lot of my own personal work has been around the science of mattering. And one thing that I've really looked at closely is the mattering instinct that we all have the second that we're born. And so when I saw the title of your book, the first word that jumped off the page to me was the word born and born to flourish, because I think it makes a very different claim than most books that I've seen in this space. Most begin with what's broken about us, but yours begins with what has always been whole, which to me resonated with this idea of the mattering instinct.

14:19Was born, the word born, the most important word in the title for you guys? Well, I'm not sure it was the most important, but it was certainly chosen very intentionally. It was chosen because of the recognition that our capacity to flourish and the key ingredients that humans have that enable them to cultivate the skills of flourishing are inborn. This is part of who we are as human beings. And this is not just an assertion. This is not just a belief, but it's a fact. There is robust scientific evidence that supports this, which we review in our book. I think this is really super important because when we meditate, for example, meditate on qualities like kindness or compassion, we're not trying to create something from nothing.

15:23But rather, you can genuinely think of it as recognizing our true nature, because this is our nature. It is our nature to be kind. It is our nature to be pro-social, to be cooperative. That is our nature. And that is how we are born. And the data really show that. And yes, we can learn lots of negative things that can get in the way, but our core nature is one of what we might call basic goodness. The title Born to Flourish was really chosen very intentionally to reflect that. Richie, thank you so much for sharing that. And Court, it's interesting to me, you don't open the book with neuroscience or meditation.

16:12You begin with someone walking through the woods, suddenly noticing sunlight through the trees and a brief moment, everything becomes quiet. Why start with such an ordinary moment? It really goes back to what Richie was just talking about, which is that we often, when we think about happiness or flourishing or any of these things, we can think of the peak experiences of life, like the big moments where it's obvious that we're happy and things are going well. And we wanted to make the point that flourishing is much more than happiness. It certainly includes happiness, but it can include very ordinary moments where we just feel like we're at our best in a normal daily routine, or even actually stressful moments.

16:53It could be a difficult moment, but somehow it brings out the best in us. And we wanted to capture the key ingredients that are not there only when things are just perfect. And it's one of these great experiences, but the kinds of things that we can carry with us through all of life's ups and downs. So that was really one of the key points. And we really wanted to drive that home from the beginning, that this is just real life. Just how can we get in touch with these qualities that help us in these daily situations? Maybe really think of the work of Dacher Keltner and what he calls moral beauty, and that it's oftentimes we experience our flourishing the most when we're in service of others or doing something ordinary, not in the great grand doors that we expect, like seeing the Grand Canyon or looking at a masterpiece.

17:39So it really resonated with me. Yeah, absolutely. Richie, I recently spoke with Jon Kabat-Zinn and something he said has stayed with me, which is awareness isn't something we acquire, it's something we learn to inhabit because it's always been ours. Your book seems to make a remarkably similar claim about flourishing. Are you arguing that flourishing isn't something we create, but something we uncover? Basically, that is what we're arguing because the key constituents of flourishing are part of our nature. And what flourishing is about is cultivating these qualities that each of us is born with, that we're given.

18:23And the way we think about it is very much the way scientists think about language. Every human being is born with the capacity for language, but in order for that capacity to be expressed, it needs to be nurtured. And the key ingredients of flourishing are very similar. We all have them, but they require nurturing for us to really express them fully. And so that is a lot of what our book is about. and related to something Quart was just describing, another important principle of this is that it's easier than we think because it is part of who we are. That enables us to really tap into this actually quite easily.

19:14We don't have to fight with our minds to do it. We can do it in a very organic, natural way. I want to explore that more in depth, But first, Court, I want to ask you about orphanages. I have a book coming out later this year called The Mattering Effect. And in it, ironically, I profile Oksana Masters, the Paralympian, who spent the earliest years of her life in a Ukrainian orphanage before she was adopted. And as I was reading your discussion on the Romanian orphan studies, I couldn't help thinking about her because while the settings were different, they reveal the same fundamental truth. Early deprivation doesn't just affect a child's circumstances.

19:56It shapes their developing brain and their sense of safety, connection, and self. How should we think about the relationship between early adversity, neuroplasticity, and the capability for humans to recover from that? This is a very rich area to explore and discuss. And Richie certainly will have a lot to say on this as well. But I think there's two points. One is that there are really important influences and there are windows of development, certainly when we're very young, when we're infants in the very early years of our development and then later in our teenage years as well. The brain and our nervous system is always changing throughout our life, but there are windows in which there's, you could say, a kind of a heightened rate of change and plasticity, you might say.

20:45So these are really important times and there are many influences that will shape what happens in those periods. And the fact that we are social creatures by nature and our brains and nervous systems are wired for the sense of connection, what happens in our relationships, whether they're nurturing stable environments and relationships, or they're very unstable or not nurturing or not supportive, that can have a profound effect. The thing to note, though, is that does not necessarily dictate how things are going to turn out. It certainly will influence the trajectory of our lives, but there is capacity for change throughout our lives.

21:23So even if you have a lot of adversity early on, that almost certainly will affect the rest of your life. And yet there are things we can do throughout our lives that can shift that, can continue to shift that in a more positive direction. I'm a textbook case for plasticity. I had incredible social anxiety. I had a phobia of public speaking, I would have been in a complete emotional tailspin right now if this had been when I was 18 or 19. And now I feel zero nervousness. Like it's just completely different. So even those tendencies and predispositions we have, that doesn't mean we're locked in.

22:00That's not so to speak, but it certainly plays an important part in our life and shapes to a large degree what happens. Richie, would you like to add anything? Sometimes people will say that early deprivation, for example, in Romanian orphanages or other horrific early life experiences scar a person for life. And our research, as well as the research of many others, indeed does indicate that there are changes that are produced in the brain, changes both in the functioning of the brain as well as in brain structure. But, and this is an important but, the extent to which those changes are permanent or enduring or unmodifiable is absolutely unknown.

22:51and there sometimes some people have a knee-jerk reaction in assuming that those kind of early adverse experiences will necessarily impair a person for life. And in science, it's very difficult to prove the null hypothesis that change cannot happen. And whenever someone says that, I will ask them, really, what's the evidence for that? And indeed, there have been studies, including some things that we've collaborated on, where if interventions are very intensive interventions, change can indeed happen. And so I think that it's very important for us not to prematurely dismiss the possibility of change occurring, even in the face of horrific adversity.

23:47We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Dr. Richie Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl. As you're listening today, I'd like you to think about one simple question. What if flourishing isn't something you have to earn? Richie and Cortland reminded us that flourishing isn't reserved for life's biggest achievements. It's cultivated in the ordinary moments, the choices we make, and the relationships we nurture, and the way we show up for ourselves and for one another. This idea resonates deeply with something I've been researching for my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, coming this October.

24:21In it, I explore what I call the great erasure. The quiet way modern life can make us feel invisible, valued more for what we produce than who we are. But the good news is the opposite is also true. Small moments of genuine connection, recognition, and compassion remind us that we matter. and those moments of the power to create ripples that extend far beyond what we can see. If you'd like to continue exploring these ideas, every episode in our Adaptive Brain series includes a companion workbook inside the Ignited Life on Substack, designed to help you turn these conversations into daily practices.

24:58You'll find links to both in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for today's sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

25:19you're listening to passion struck on the passion struck network. Now let's get back to my conversation with Dr. Richardson and Dr. Dahl. I think that is so true. And it reminds me of a discussion I had with Mingor Rinpoche court, who I know you work with very closely. And he was talking to me about how he was experiencing childhood panic attacks and that those panic attacks became one of his greatest teachers. And I understand reading the book that you end up not only interviewing Mingle Rinpoche, but also studying him and doing scans. How did someone like him and his early childhood experiences reshape your understanding, not only of the human brain, but of flourishing?

26:07I certainly could speak to this, but really this was Richie's work. Mingyur Mbache was a subject of some of the earliest research. So maybe, Richie, I'm happy to share as well, but this is the early stories of how this whole field of research got started. So maybe, Richie, if you want to speak to that, I'm happy to. I'm happy to say a few words. Mingi Rinpoche was the second long-term practitioner we had in our center. The first one was Mathieu Ricard, who is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and actually has a PhD in molecular biology, molecular genetics. A very unusual man and helped to be a bridge between the realm of contemplative practice and science.

26:50and Munger Rinpoche was the second long-term practitioner we had in our center and he came to our center in 2002 and he's been to our center many times and has extremely generously offered his time and he's probably been in an MRI scanner more than any Buddhist monk on the planet and we've learned an enormous amount from him. First of all, it's just important to appreciate that being in an MRI scanner is not the typical place you would go to meditate. And in order to be able to meditate in such an environment, it helps to have a lot of experience. Mingyur Rinpoche has an enormous amount of experience.

27:37It's humbling to recognize how much lifetime experience he's had At the time that he first came to see us, he had, we estimated approximately 62 ,000 hours of lifetime practice. You can go do the arithmetic at home, but that's a very big number. And he was able to go into the scanner and to meditate in these unusual circumstances. And we saw very early on that his brain was different than the brains of people who were of his age and gender that were not meditating. And that was the first clue that there was really there. And one of the first things we did is we recorded the electrical activity of his brain and we saw these gamma oscillations, which are very high amplitude oscillations, that typically in a brain like my brain would occur maybe for a quarter of a second or a half a second periodically when there was an insight or just a momentary sort of glimpse of a different way of being.

28:54And with Migyar Rinpoche, it just went on for minutes, tens of minutes, really. If we kept the EEG recording on, it would probably go on for hours. And this is indeed his baseline state. And that was one of the powerful discoveries. So it wasn't just that these oscillations were elevated during meditation. That did occur. But when we compared his baseline state when he was not formally meditating to the baseline state of age and gender match controls, there was a prevalence of these unusual oscillations that were really remarkable. They had never been seen before in the human brain in this way.