Your Workout Could Train Your Mind, Too

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richie Davidson explore how exercising your body can also become a way to train your mind. We asked Richie why exercise supports neuroplasticity, and why a more changeable brain isn’t necessarily a happier one. We also discuss what makes a workout meditation, and share how we bring these practices into our own biking, walking, and yoga routines.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards:

Upcoming Events:

* From Doing to Being: Effortless Meditation & the Lost Art of Doing Less with Dr. Cortland Dahl and Kasumi Kato, October 9–11 at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. This is an independent Omega Institute program and is not affiliated with Dharma Lab. Learn more / register

* Quiet the Restless Mind — November: A gifted online week from Dharma Lab and ServiceSpace, November 15–21, exploring how to meet everyday stress, distraction, and overwhelm with greater clarity and ease. Bringing together ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience, the week features leading contemplatives and researchers including Robert Sapolsky, Laurie Santos, Mingyur Rinpoche, Judson Brewer, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Picard, Cortland Dahl, and Richard Davidson.

Learn more / register

In This Episode:

00:00 Intro - Is your workout really meditation?01:15 Training body and mind together03:05 Is exercise really meditation?07:51 Why intention matters11:29 Flow versus meditation13:19 Exercise and neuroplasticity16:19 Should you meditate during or after exercise?20:25 Can movement make meditation easier?24:14 How Richie practices while cycling27:26 Cort’s practice: Yoga, jogging, and attention32:12 Interval training for the mind33:32 What the research tells us so far

Written transcript for those who prefer to read:

00:00 Intro - Is your workout really meditation?

Richie: What I often hear when I give public talks, people often raise their hand and say, my jog is my meditation, or my bicycle ride is my meditation. And my response to that is always, well, maybe, but not necessarily.

Cort: It’s not just that your mind was a little more clear or a little more peaceful while you were exercising. In fact, actually that I would say is not at all the deciding point about whether it would or would not be meditation, but rather it’s that you’re doing something very intentional with your mind. You’re training your mind very consciously and very intentionally. So the promise of this all is that you basically can train your mind at the exact same time you’re exercising your body. And not only do you get the benefits of each of those individually, there’s at least the potential that there’s a synergistic benefit that’s greater than the sum of the parts.

01:15 Training body and mind together

Cort: Welcome everyone. I am Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with my dear friend and Dharma brother, Dr. Richard Davidson, who of course we all call Richie, one of the most eminent and respected neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re going to discuss how we can train our minds in the same way that we train our bodies, and especially that we can do this at the same time. So there’s some really interesting science here, but before we get there, I just want to share my own personal experience, which is

I’ve been meditating for more than 30, well, more than well over three decades, probably about 35 years or so. And of course, sitting meditation is super important for me. But I noticed at a certain point that bringing meditation into my exercise routine actually has been incredibly powerful. And in some respects, I feel like some of the best meditations I have are when I’m jogging, for example. In the early days, I did yoga every day. I was

Kind of very diligently had a yoga routine up until my son was born, and that kind of fell by the wayside. But I was really doing, I was really meditating as part of my exercise routine. And it wasn’t necessarily a replacement for my formal practice, but it was really, really powerful. And I could tell in my own experience that there was some synergy between the physical movement and pairing that up with doing a very intentional training of the mind. So this is a very exciting area of science. I know we’re both passionate about this as one of the frontiers of kind of modern science in this area. But Richie, why don’t why don’t I just turn it over to you to share whether your your kind of opening thoughts or your own experience, and then we can kind of go back and forth both to share a little bit about the scientific promise of this, but also how we actually do it and how we personally do it in our own lives.

03:05 Is exercise really meditation?

Richie: Yeah. So thank you, Cort, and it’s great to be here together talking about this on this beautiful Sunday morning in Madison. so yeah and I’ve been meditating pretty much every single day for more than fifty years.

And I too have been really interested in exploring the relationship between meditation and physical exercise. and before we talk about the science, I think there’s a bunch of th other things to share, some of which just are personal and and

To begin with, I too have figured out ways of combining them for me that are really important and personally very meaningful. But before we get to that, I I wanna begin with what I often hear when I give public talks. Sometimes when we give public talks together, people often raise their hand and say, My jog is my meditation or my bicycle ride is my meditation. and my response to that is always, well, maybe, but not necessarily. and so I think it’s really important to make that very clear. And when we talk about meditation, we’re really talking about the intentional use of our mind in ways that promote human flourishing and if you go into exercise and your mind is all over the place and you’re not intentionally deploying your mind in that way then maybe it’s not so much that your exercise is your meditation and so i think that some people slip into that in a in a bit too cavalier a way. And so one of my aspirations is that in the next few minutes together we really can explore that and we can explore when your exercise might be reasonably thought of as your meditation and when it might not be. And so let me just share something personal that I do regularly. I’m a very avid bicycle rider, and particularly in the beautiful warm weather, I ride outside. And before I ride, I do something that I do before I meditate in the same kind of way, which is I and I do this, I really don’t take any extra time. So, you know, I ride a road bike and it requires you know putting on clothes and putting on special bicycle shoes. So there’s a lot of opportunity to reflect as I’m just engaging in the preparation activities for my bike ride. And during those periods I simply reflect on how riding my bike is beneficial to my health.

But it’s not just beneficial for me, but being healthy and having vitality is beneficial for all of those I interact with, for my work, for my for what I do in the world. and it takes on a a kind of

Sense of altruism or pro-sociality, that I’m doing it not just for myself. And what happens then is I mostly I ride alone. Maybe one day a week I ride with others, but the other times I ride alone. And particularly when I’m riding alone, I find that that reflection recycles spontaneously as I ride. And I come back to it many times.

And it just really energizes me, like I’m riding for humanity. I mean, it sounds a little corny, but you know, I do genuinely reflect on that as I’m riding And although I don’t have any evidence to suggest that it’s beneficial, it feels beneficial to me. and first of all, it motivates me to engage in these activities, which I think is.

good thing. know, I’m convinced that it does have other benefits as well, which we can explore later and may even change the biological effects of the exercise when it’s done in that kind of way. And so this is just one example of many of how these can be combined.

07:51 Why intention matters

Cort: Yeah, so so much to pick up on what you just said. we definitely, and maybe at the end of this, we can talk a little bit more about personally how we do this in our practice. So you gave one a great example of how you’ve linked these two. I should just say from the outset also that that Richie is kind of a legend in Madison for for his bike riding. I know people who ride with you, Richie, and pretty much everybody talk like can’t keep up with you. Like so so there’s a clearly

Whatever’s going on in your mind is you know, paired up with some very rigorous physical training. So it’s not as though you need to be I mean, you can do it while you’re in nice leisurely walk in the in the park, but you can do it with very, very intense exercise. In fact, I think for me as well, oftentimes it’s when it’s it’s most interesting actually, when you’re doing something quite vigorous and intense. But in any case, you can do it with any form of movement or exercise.

But one thing I wanted to pick up on goes back to this question that you raised and that we often get asked about this idea of exercise, you know, the the the person who says jogging is my meditation, or similarly people say, being out in nature is my meditation. And you and I, of course, have fielded this question so many times and responded so many times, as you said, together and and alone. But what you just said, I think l sheds some light on that, because in your case, you can see.

Perfectly that one of the key ingredients is intention. It’s not just that your mind was a little more clear or a little more peaceful while you were exercising. In fact, actually, that that I would say is not at all the deciding point about whether it would or would not be meditation, but rather it’s that you’re doing something very intentional with your mind, you’re training your mind.

very consciously and very intentionally. And in this respect, I would say it’s actually very similar to physical exercise. So for example, if I’m doing chores in my house, I’m going up and down my stairs, I’m, you know, moving around. You know, you could say that I’m doing a lot of the movements that are probably very good for my physical health, but I wouldn’t necessarily think of it that way. I wouldn’t, I mean, you’re certainly doing things that are beneficial for health, but

I wouldn’t in a normal day think, I did my exercise routine because I did chores for half an hour. In some respects, even though we rarely consciously think of it, exercise similarly needs intention. It’s something that we’re doing consciously, and we’re not just doing it for no reason, we’re doing it because we think it’s going to benefit our physical health. So it’s it’s really about flourishing and well-being, but in terms of our physical health. So again, it’s those two things. You’re doing it intentionally.

And you’re doing something with a clear outcome in mind related to your own well-being or physical health with meditation, it’s the same thing, except you’re just training your mind. And the outcome is mental well-being and emotional well-being and flourishing. And, you know, again, we might not think of this, but those two things together, it seems to me, are what creates, you know, a formal meditative practice versus you just felt better or you felt different while you’re doing it. So, anyways, you I felt like what you just shared.

just captures that perfectly. It was it was conscious and intentional and it’s very clearly linked to something that’s meaningful to you and that’s tied to your own vision for yourself and even of humanity of what it means to flourish. Would would you agree with that?

11:29 Flow versus meditation

Richie: Yeah, totally, totally. I think that yeah, and and when many people I think say that jogging is my meditation, you know, they have a flow experience during jogging, where they’re really merged with the activity in which they’re engaged, they’re totally present, but their mind is really not being deployed intentionally. it’s more of a passive kind of process and

You know, we’ve talked about this in another episode of Dharma Lab, but their flow can occur with or without meta awareness. and in a paper that

We wrote together number of years ago, we coined a term called experiential fusion, which is the kind of flow that occurs without meta-awareness, where you’re just you’re absorbed in an activity. and that is not necessarily meditation.

Cort: Yeah, absolutely. So we can get more into this, I think, especially with our own experience. Maybe we could talk a little bit about why you would want to do this. I mean, clearly we both have done this and have just naturally found it beneficial. But maybe we can tackle this from a a few different angles. I think there’s some interesting biological angles, even looking at things like neuroplasticity potentially, other biological capacities. But what do you think the potential benefits are?

relative to just doing one or the other independently, or just one or the other and not doing the other, like you just exercise and don’t meditate, or you just meditate and don’t exercise. What would you say? Do we

Richie: Mm-hmm.

Cort: is there a scientific case to be made for why you would do this?

13:19 Exercise and neuroplasticity

Richie: Yeah, so here the the science I think is really important. and

Exercise, physical exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, is probably the most empirically well-validated non-pharmacological strategy for increasing neuroplasticity. Having said that, neuroplasticity in and of itself is neutral with respect to our well-being. If we increase neuroplasticity and our minds are filled with toxic thoughts and beliefs or we’re in a a really toxic environment, it will actually make things worse because it will improve our learning of those toxic influences by increasing neuroplasticity. And sometimes I have this image, probably this is less the case today, but there was a time

When a lot of people in the US at least went to gyms and they were working out furiously on exercise machines and watching all this crap on television. And it was filling their minds, you know, with all this junk. And at the same time, they were increasing their neuroplasticity. And what a really concerning combination that is. It’s really a prescription for.

negativity. And so the opportunity to combine the exercise induced increase in neuroplasticity with something wholesome and positive and virtuous and intentional for our mind, that’s a winning combination. and I sure

Cort: Can I can I ask you, can I can I ask just to drill a little deeper on that before we move on? I’m curious with the so by increasing neuroplasticity, I think most people are probably familiar with that term, but essentially it’s just saying saying by exercising, it’s a strategy to make your brain more malleable. It’s gonna be more receptive to change, or it will change more easily. Is that a, you know, a simple way to say it?

Richie: Yes, it’ll it’ll change more easily. Th there are specific molecules. For example, a molecule that’s known as BDNF, it stands for brain derived neurotropic factor, and it’s a molecule that promotes increased neuroplasticity in the brain. And increased neuroplasticity is increased malleability of of the brain to form new connections as well as to grow new neurons and BDNF promotes both of those processes and exercise will increase BDNF in the brain.

16:19 Should you meditate during or after exercise?

Cort: So if you with the question I wanted to ask is there’s the the change, say like the capacity, the neuroplastic potential, I guess you could say. How much of that is happening in the session itself, like when you are actively exercising, versus it then is initiated and it’s for some period after, you know, it’s for a few hours or a few days or for for a few weeks. Like, does it carry out over, or is there some potency that’s actually in the session, like when you are actively exercising, that it’s even more enhanced. I I’ve always wondered that and haven’t heard anything.

Richie: I always wonder that too. the the I don’t think the answer is at all definitively known. and in part it’s due to the limitations in studies in humans. And yeah.

Cort: So how you would actually study that? I mean it would be hard to s you

Richie: Exactly how you would measure it. So there may be some things that change immediately, and other factors which are more prolonged over some period of time and what the right sort of combination is. So if you’re doing meditation and exercise, is it better to do them together? Is it better to do one before the other? If you do one before the other, what’s the optimal spacing between the two. We have no idea, absolutely no idea from a a scientific perspective. And, you know, I’ve often talked about the science of contemplative aerobics, but there I mean that’s an aspirational goal. It doesn’t yet exist, but these are the kinds of questions that I think need to be explored.

And we do have more tools today than we’ve ever had before to really begin a serious exploration of this.

Cort: The brain essentially becomes more malleable. You’re putting your own brain in a more receptive, malleable state through exercising, through these neuroplastic capacities that our brains possess. But it’s kind of like if you were taking steroids and then you just sat on your couch eating chips all day. You know, it’s like you’re you’re increasing some capacity for your physical, for physical changes to happen, but then you’re surrounding yourself with toxic influences, obviously.

those changes are not going to be good. and so I’m curious on the other side, is there any evidence that meditation or mental strategies also increase neuroplasticity? Is there any do we have any science on that side?

Richie: There’s a teeny bit.

I I would say a teeny bit. There’s there are a few studies that have found that meditation increases some of the molecules that promote plasticity, like BDNF. But that that really hasn’t been studied at on a large enough scale to be confident in the findings. also BDNF that we can measure in the blood, in the peripheral blood, does not necessarily reflect what’s going on in the brain.

and this is a limitation of human studies.

one of the ways this has been addressed is to look at changes directly in the brain to see if there are increases, for example, in the size of different structures that may be associated with neuroplastic changes. And this will be the subject of another Dharma Lab discussion. but those are also complicated and questionable in terms of what they’re really showing and they’re not immediate. You know, you have to put a person in an MRI scanner at and they’re they’re obviously not going to be exercising while they’re in the MRI scanner. So there are many limitations to existing methods and the work is really at an early stage now.

20:25 Can movement make meditation easier?

Cort: You know, one other thing, w you know, going back to the the benefits. So one of these benefits is clearly these neuroplastic changes and that you’re essentially imbuing or immersing your mind in more positive mental and emotional states when it’s in this more receptive biological capacity. So you’re kind of harnessing your brain’s power and you’re just ensuring that you’re kind of creating the right influences. So those changes that happen are going to be positive versus negative or neutral, which, you know, if you

Or just doom scrolling on your phone all the time, or as you said, watching, you know, news, you know, listening to a news podcast or something. Another thing that I noticed in just in many years, both when I first started meditating and even now, is there’s something about the fact that you’re doing physical activity. oftentimes there’s a change in your surroundings if you’re biking or you’re walking or you’re jogging.

Even if you’re sitting still, like I remember doing yoga, your your physical posture is changing all the time. There’s something about that that just makes sort of the mind kind of naturally is shifting and calming. And I just have found it in a way easier to drop into certain meditative practices compared to just sitting perfectly still for long periods of time. And I think there’s a benefit to sitting still. There’s other benefits that come from that. In some respects, it’s probably because it’s harder.

That some of the benefit comes. You’re just face

Richie: Yes.

Cort: to face with your own mind and there’s no escape hatch. And that that, although it’s hard, is actually probably very beneficial. But I just remember easing into a yoga pose or jogging, and sort of, you know, I’m guessing that the default mode network in my brain is probably also naturally deactivating a little bit. And so it’s almost like it’s just a little bit easier when you link up a meditative practice.

with something like that. I don’t know if there’s my guess is there’s not a lot of science to suggest that, but I’m curious what your thoughts are.

Richie: Yeah, I mean I think it’s interesting. and I certainly have experienced that at times. I also think it’s likely something that varies across individuals. I think there are people who have experiences like your describing, Cort, but I suspect it may be different for other people. I think this is a case where one size really is not likely to fit all.

and also we know, you know, just like there are many, many different kinds of meditation, there are many, many different kinds of sports or physical activity. and so that may be an important variable here as well.

Cort: So the promise of this all is that you basically can train your mind at the exact same time you’re exercising your body. And not only do you get the benefits of each of those individually, there’s at least the potential that there’s a synergistic benefit that’s greater than the sum of the parts. Not to mention the fact that it’s just easier in the sense that you’re you’re already exercising or we want to exercise, and you’re just piggybacking, I think to use a term we often use. You’re piggybacking one wholesome positive activity on another.

Maybe we could round this out just by going back to some of the the how we practice. you mentioned motivation, and that’s something I do as well. It’s my guess is we’re gonna have a lot of similarities in the way we do this, but that idea of forming an altruistic inspiring motivation that’s that kind of makes you think of the greater good and then linking what you’re doing in a way that normally would not happen to what you’re doing. What do you do when you’re biking? Aside from r remembering that from time to time.

What what things come up? Do you do any practices like when you’re just there pedaling away and

24:14 How Richie practices while cycling

Richie: Yeah, it that’s it it’s really interesting. I’ve you know, reflected a lot about that. first it is the case that when I do this intention setting beforehand and set the motivation, it helps in having it naturally and spontaneously recycle as I’m riding The other thing though is that

I ride a road bike. I do like to ride fast and I never ride with with headphones in. You know, I’m I’m riding with my senses totally open. you know, in part it’s for safety. you know, I wanna be I wanna be able to listen if there’s a car coming or you know, I ride on the road a lot because I like to climb hills and and you don’t get that on bike paths. so you know I’m riding with it with my senses really open and

I actually find when I’m riding that I’m just really attentive to what’s going on. And I I don’t have a lot of spontaneous thought. I mean I have some, but I’m really attentive to what’s going on and

You know, my awareness is mostly pretty the aperture is pretty broad, and then it narrows when there are certain things happening. and I’m very aware of sort of the the opening and the constriction of that aperture. So, you know, when I’m when I’m riding on a on a road that is straight and you know in the two miles from my house I’m in beautiful farm country and it’s broad vistas and that’s conducive to this kind of panoramic awareness. but then you know there are times when I have to cross a very busy road and then you know I’m really focused on what’s going on. I my awareness is is contracted

I mean just yesterday I was bike riding and coming back from a a longish ride around 30 miles and I was riding through the University Arboretum on the way back to my house. this was around six o’clock at night, really beautiful time, and there were two deer in the road.

right in the road of the arboretum, a mom and a little baby, and I slow down and and just really took this in

And you know, just had this moment of appreciation that here, you know, are multiple species appreciating this beautiful place and cohabitating together. so all of those things are going on, but it’s really driven by sort of what’s happening right in front of me.

Cort: Hmm.

Richie: Yeah.

27:26 Cort’s practice: Yoga, jogging, and attention

Cort: Yeah,

I’ve I’ve had a very I would say that actually this has been a huge part of my personal practice and even my life as a whole. And it’s changed a lot actually over the years. So when I first started meditating back in the early 1990s, as I said, I was doing yoga. I I wanted to do some kind of physical training. And remember at the time I was debating between doing Aikido, which is a Japanese martial arts or yoga yoga. And yoga was just more convenient to me. There was a yoga place near.

Where I was living, which was in Minneapolis at the time. And at that time, the way I did this was very, very simple, but incredibly helpful and powerful, which is I viewed the physical movements really more as a meditative practice than anything else. I wasn’t really doing it as much for the physical exercise. And I would relax and do a pose. I would do yoga and and still do when I do yoga very, very slowly. I’m not one of these super, you know, flow.

Constantly moving, I would relax into poses. And then I would just rest my awareness on different parts of my body. And that was really it. So it was either just feeling the sensations that were going on. And of course, in yoga, you’re stretching and there’s a lot of strong sensations. I think the fact that they were strong made it easier to meditate because those strong sensations naturally grab attention rather than you’re putting it on something like the neutral, something neutral like the breath where, you know, your mind isn’t naturally going there.

Or in some cases, you’re trying to synchronize your breathing and the movement, in which case it felt like there was a natural, it just felt like very natural and easy to just rest awareness in my body. And that was all I was doing. But if I look at how much of the time of these sessions I was able to stay with that as a conscious practice versus my formal meditation, which were usually about

Mindful breathing, you know, just paying attention to my breath. I think I was much more present and aware during those yoga sessions. So that was kind of how I started out. And I think that was perfect for me at the time. I still do that. It’s still part of what I do. But now I would say actually it’s very different. And I do something very, very specific and intentional, especially when I’m walking or jogging. And I don’t even know where I developed this. but

What I do is I will pick something off in the distance and I’ll just note it. It’ll be, you know, an you know, a street sign or a big tree. It could really could be anything, just something that’s very visible and that’s a suitable level off in the distance. Usually something that would take me a minute or two to get to. And and then I will say, for until I get there, I will do something very specific with my mind. So sometimes

It’s just resting in open, effortless awareness. And I’m just in this very expansive state. And I’ll just jog. And it’s hard to even describe this, but when you do that, I’m sure you have it with biking. It’s like you’re jogging in space or something. I mean, it’s like you just have this very open, expansive view. Sometimes I’ll then, you know, I get to that tree and then I’ll reboot and I’ll pick another thing off in the distance. And then I’ll say, okay, now I’m in my body and I’ll just feel my feet hitting the ground or you know, the feeling of my breath. So I’ll actually cycle in no really predetermined way through all sorts of different practices. But the one thing that I always do is it’s shifting from some kind of light focus, where it’s on my body or the sounds around me or what I’m seeing, to something that’s very effortless and more open and expansive. And I’ll kind of sort of go in and out of that.

And then at a certain point, sometimes my mind just feels like it’s in this flow. And then sometimes I might just drop that for a while and it’s I’m just doing my thing. But I find that intentionality and kind of rebooting it versus I’m just gonna practice for an hour or half an hour or however long I’m exercising. The rebooting of it and shifting shifting of it actually for me I found really helpful. And it’s just interesting. It keeps it kind of like a light, playful thing. So, anyways, that’s how I.

currently practice in addition to the motivation piece that I also do of setting that that intention and coming back to that throughout.

Richie: Yeah, I mean it’s very similar to my experience ‘cause it for me the shifting of the aperture is something that I you know, I I play with and it’s it varies over you know, over time. so within if I’m riding my bike for, you know, an hour and a half, I’ll do that a lot over the course of

The hour and a half period.

32:12 Interval training for the mind

Cort: Actually, a great strategy I’ve found for many activities. I do it driving, for example. I mean, right now, as you know, Richie, I’m I’m up in the boundary waters of northern Minnesota. So I drive seven hours to get here. You can do it with driving. Like I’ll pick a street, like a sign way off in the distance, and then do the same thing. I’ve also found even if you’re watching a movie or TV, I do it sometimes with the edits. Like you have a scene where they they they will have a cut and just like, I’ll

So though usually we don’t notice those edits, but they’re actually a great little reboot for the mind. So I do it that way. even reading, you know, reading like a page or you know, a certain amount. So, anyways, those like little transitions I found are like great little entry points where it’s just like a reminder to come back to whatever. And then everything becomes practice as we talk about everywhere all the time. Anything anything can work. Exactly. I mean it is. Actually, I’ve I’ve had that thought.

Richie: Right. It’s like interval training for the mind. Yeah. Yeah.

Cort: So many times. I bet you anything, if you had an interval training paradigm for meditation, I bet you anything that would be more effective than like a just sit down for 20 minutes and try to be mindful of your breath. I’ve I’ve that has been in my mind forever. In fact, we should let’s note that. Let’s let’s do that study. That would be so cool.

Richie: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. I agree. Okay.

33:32 What the research tells us so far

Cort: So we’re I think maybe we can close it out here. We didn’t really talk about any of the actual research that has happened. And there is an emerging field of research specifically on this. Anything you want to say about that, just as a one of the frontiers of this whole field that we’re involved with?

Richie: Yeah,

I mean first it’s important to note that there is a little bit of research, but it really is quite little. there are a few studies that have explored the potential synergistic effect of exercise plus meditation, in producing beneficial outcomes. And the you know, the general finding is that there is some added benefit. So that if you look at both together, it’s better than either alone. But the the the research is pretty skimpy and it uses very small sample sizes and as we know

This has been a big problem in meditation research in general. And so I think the jury is still out. And as we discussed earlier, there are many fundamental questions that have yet to be seriously tackled in this kind of research. So I think, you know, one of the great things is that there are many more people paying attention to this, and over the next few years, I’m confident there’ll be more.

serious evidence in the scientific literature.

Cort: Yeah, it’s very exciting. And and for I think many of you listening have probably used the Healthy Minds app. And so you’ll know that all the the many practices you can do as an active practice as well as a sitting meditation. And this is yet another Dharma lab episode that we need to do, but there’s a lot of emerging research that those active practices are just as beneficial as at least at the early stages as formal sitting meditation. So this is clearly one one powerful way that you can do that. So

I have a feeling, Richie, we are gonna talk about this again. It’s something we’re both interested in and obviously things we do ourselves. so thank you everyone for tuning in and thank you, Richie, again for another wonderful discussion. So we’ll see you all in the next episode of Dharma Lab.

Richie: Thank you.