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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 1
How the Brain Processes Stress
People often experience some amount of stress
during the day. And any amount of stress can
leave us feeling overwhelmed and drained.
Here, Rick Hanson explains the dangers of high
stress levels and ways to train the brain to
better handle stress.
Dr. Hanson: “Mother Nature has endowed us
with another setting in the brain – the ‘Whoa’
setting – which is where we experience in our
core that one or more of our fundamental needs
of safety, satisfaction, and connection is not
met.
Then the brain fires up into its fight/flight stress
response mode, or it goes into an intense freeze
mode – the red zone.
In the red zone, which is not meant to be
sustainable at all – it is a brief burst – the body
burns resources faster than it takes them in.
Bodily systems are really disturbed; there is a
fundamental sense of deficit and disturbance,
and long-term building projects like
strengthening the immune system are put on
hold.
A QuickStart Guide: Keys to Changing the Brain
with Rick Hanson, PhD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD; Ron Siegel, PsyD; and Kelly McGonigal, PhD
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 2
In terms of avoiding, approaching, and
attaching, the mind is colored with a sense of
fear, frustration, and heartache.
Red zone experiences are normal, but as Robert
Sapolsky talks about in his great book, Why
Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, most red-zone spikes of
stress in the wild end quickly – one way or
another.
Then the animals go back to long periods of
green zone recovery – refueling, renewing, and
repairing.
That becomes a problem with modern life. Most
of us, at least, in the developed world, are
happy, with some unfortunate exceptions. We
are not spending our days running and
screaming in terror from charging lions – we
don’t have severe spikes of red zone stress.
But on the other hand, we are exposed to mild
to moderate chronic stress, with very little time
for recovery – which is a complete violation of
the evolutionary model” (on p. 8-9 in the Part 1
Transcript).
Developing a Positive Mindset
Bad days and negative experiences are
sometimes just a part of life. But according to
Rick Hanson, we don’t have to let them ruin our
mood entirely. Here, he shares his two-step
process for shifting your brain’s perspective
from negative to positive.
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 3
Dr. Hanson: “The neural psychology of learning
shows us that this is a two-stage process.
Quickly here, it moves from one, activation, to
two, installation.
In other words, we need to have a positive,
useful mental state – typically an experience of
the inner strength itself or some factor of it.
If you want to develop mindfulness, you want to
have more moments in which you are mindful.
If you want to develop gratitude as an
orientation to life in general, you have more
moments in which you are grateful.
So now we have that activated mental state, but
we need to install it as a lasting neural state:
activation and installation.
Once we have that neural trait growing inside us
as an inner strength, it fosters states of it, which
then give us new opportunities to install it as a
positive trait.
By the way, this process of going from state to
trait to state to state, works positively and
negatively.
In other words, negative states rapidly become
negative neural traits, which then foster more
negative mental states.
The brain is in fact biased toward that process of
negative learning, and relatively poor at and
weak at the process of positive learning – even
though positive states are the primary source of
positive traits.
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 4
So that is what I have gotten very focused on,
because most positive states are just wasted on
the brain.
They are momentarily pleasant, but if they don’t
transfer those short-term memory buffers to
long-term storage, there is no lasting value” (on
p. 10-11 in the Part 1 Transcript).
Having More Positive
Experiences
According to Rick Hanson, the brain tends to
remember more negative moments than
positive ones. But he says, we can cultivate
certain inner strengths to become better at
installing positive experiences. Here he gives us
a four-step strategy for getting the positive
memories to sink into the brain.
Dr. Hanson: This acronym covers the activation
and installation process. Then, as I hope we will
talk about, you can use it for those specific inner
strengths or qualities of mind and heart that you
want to cultivate in yourself or in other people
because those are the strengths that are really
going to do the most good.
The H in HEAL stands for Have. You have the
positive experience in the first place – either
because you noticed one you are already having
or because you actually create one.
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 5
Now, you have it going. It is activated. But if you
don’t install it, it is going to be wasted on your
brain.
Then you go to E, Enrich: you can enrich the
experience. Borrowing or turning to the famous
saying in neuroscience that “Neurons that fire
together wire together” – you want to get a lot
of neurons firing together so that they start
wiring together.
There are five well-known factors in the
neuropsychology of learning that promote
installation – that promote emotional
psychological change as well as other kinds of
learning.
These are the five factors (and you can do one
or more of them).
Duration – the longer you stay with the
experience, the more it will sink in.
Intensity – the more intense you have the
experience, maybe it is an emotion, maybe it is a
body state, maybe it is an inclination of
commitment, maybe it is an insight into your
own psychology – but whatever it is, the more
intense it is, the more there will be the
formation of neural structure.
Multimodality is the third factor. The more that
you bring experiences down into your body and
have them be emotionally rich, maybe even
enact the experience, like sitting up a little
straighter to support an experience of
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 6
determination or inner strength – the more
neural structure they will build.
Novelty is the fourth factor – the brain is a big
novelty detector. A lot of research shows that
when we relate to things that are new, that
heightens learning.
Personal Relevance is the last factor – “Why
does this matter to me? Why is it salient for
me?”
Those are the factors of Enriching. You can do
one or more of them and build up any one of
them.
The third aspect, or step, of the HEAL process is
A for Absorb. This is where we prime memory
systems – we sensitize them to really turbo-
charge the installation process, by intending and
sensing that the experience is going into us.
Maybe we visualize it sinking in, like water into a
sponge. With children, we will talk about putting
a jewel in the treasure chest of the heart. This is
just a kind of giving oneself over to the
experience – letting it land inside. Those are
aspects of absorbing.
The last step in the process is L for Link, and it is
the optional one. It holds simultaneously in
awareness some positive experience with some
negative material – painful thoughts or feelings
or memories that this positive material is a
natural antidote for.
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 7
Through holding it in the mind, since neurons
that fire together wire together, the positive
material will gradually associate with the
negative material, soothing, easing, and
eventually even replacing it.
It probably it all sounds a bit complicated – but
it really boils down to four words: have it –
enjoy it and especially enjoy because that is
when the installation occurs (on p. 12-13 in the
Part 1 Transcript).
Novelty and Neuroplasticity
Many people rely on having a daily routine. But
this might not always be best for the brain. Rick
Hanson explains why it’s important to focus on
varying our experiences, and why it can be
critical for neuroplasticity.
Dr. Hanson: “Novelty promotes neuroplasticity
– the capacity of the brain to be changed by its
experiences. And we have heightened learning
for what is novel.
To bring it down to earth, if a person is having a
fairly familiar positive experience like, ‘Oh, that
coffee tastes good,’ or they are touching
someone they care about – maybe their
intimate partner, or they are experiencing a
little gratitude, or maybe they are doing some
meditative practice and it is getting more
peaceful – it is easy to take those experiences
for granted.
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 8
But if instead, we see them, as the poet put it,
‘Through the eyes of a child;’ or to use the Zen
idea of beginner’s mind, then we bring that
beginner’s mind to what it feels like to relax
while breathing or to feel grateful for the
blessings in our life.
If we bring that beginner’s mind—and therefore
a sense of novelty and freshness to the
experience—it will build more neural
structure” (on p. 18 in the Part 1 Transcript).
Letting Go of the Negative
Rick Hanson explains three practices for
engaging the mind and letting go of the
negative.
Dr. Hanson: Negative experiences obviously are
an essential part of life – I think of the Buddha’s
Four Noble Truths, which are utterly
psychological.
The first truth is, “There is suffering.” To my way
of thinking about it, Ruth, I use a framework
that has helped me tremendously, personally
and professionally, to think about the three
ways to engage the mind. In effect, there are
three ways to practice and engage the mind.
The first way is to simply be with what is there,
witness it, feel the feelings, experience the
experience, maybe investigate it, maybe feel
down to where it’s softer and younger; certainly
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 9
try to hold it in a big space of spacious
awareness.
We are not trying to change it directly. It might
shift as a result of being witnessed rather than
identified with, but we are not deliberately
trying to change it in the moment.
The second way to engage the mind is to
deliberately try to release what is negative – in
other words, try to help tension drain out of the
body, for example, or to argue against negative,
foolish thoughts, or release unwholesome
desires like getting buzzed every night . . . That is
the second way to engage the mind.
The third way to engage the mind is to cultivate
the positive – to “grow flowers,” as it were.
If you think of the mind as a garden, we can
witness it, pull weeds, or plant flowers – or, in
six words, we can let be – let go – let in.
That gives us a natural framework, and an
appropriate one, for how to deal with negative
experiences.
In the first place, we want to witness them – we
can just be with them.
We try to hold them in spacious awareness;
maybe we try to bring to bear other factors that
help us feel our negative feelings, like self-
compassion or mindfulness or a sense of inner
allies with us.
At some point, it feels right – like the “Goldilocks
point” – not too tall, not too short, not too hot,
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 10
not too cold – the just right place – when it feels
like it is time to move on, “I am not suppressing
the emotion but it is time to help it move on out
of Dodge.”
Then we move on to the releasing phase –
reducing the negative in various ways – draining
tension out of the body, venting, turning it over
to God, or whatever it is – we let it go as best we
can.
In the third phase, when it feels right, we try to
replace what we have released with some
positive alternative.
The cycle that I have gone through might take
half a minute with some familiar negative
material like maybe just a momentary irritation
or something that didn’t go well, or maybe
something from the past that is well understood
– “Oh that was my critical stepfather; that’s my
little inner critic yammering away. I know what
you sound like, dude – I’m not going to listen to
you anymore.”
From all that, we can move on fairly quickly.
On the other hand, sometimes it takes a year or
more, like grief over a serious loss, to move out
of the being with way of relating to the negative,
to then shifting into helping it release, and then
eventually replacing it with something positive.
(on p. 18-20 in the Part 1 Transcript).
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 11
The Importance of Evolution for
Neuroplasticity
A lot has happened to the brain over the past
600 million years, and it can be hard to keep
track. But, according to Rick Hanson, it’s
important to understand how the brain has
evolved. Here, Kelly McGonigal elaborates on
Rick’s view, and discusses how evolution can
help us better understand brain change.
Dr. McGonigal: “I think one of the most
interesting and important things that Rick talked
about was how evolution operates on the brain
– that it doesn’t basically take an ‘old brain’ and
completely overhaul and give you a ‘new and
improved brain,’ but that evolution is more like
getting upgrades that will increase the flexibility
and diversity of human responses.
But, you know, evolution doesn’t get rid of what
he would refer to as the ‘lizard brain’ and the
other aspects of the brain that seem more
primitive.
And that is really important for people to
understand – that there is no way to
fundamentally remove some of the experiences
we have that feel maybe irrational or emotional
– things like stress or anxiety, things like social
conflict.
These are things that are part of what it means
to be human, and evolution has given us also
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 12
diversity and flexibility about which systems are
dominant and our choice of responses.
And that gives us a lot of, I think, common
humanity and self-compassion.
And even to be able to recognize which system
might be dominant – what mode you might be
operating from, and to recognize that as a
fundamental human need, that evolution has
maintained because it is important to our well-
being.
And I think this just goes a long way in helping
people not feel like there is something
fundamentally wrong with them because they
have these experiences that we sometimes
devalue or are looking to escape or evolve away
from” (on p. 4 in the Part 2: TalkBack
Transcript).
Balancing the Brain for
More Happiness
Rick Hanson discussed the idea of rewiring your
brain for greater happiness. Specifically, he
mentions the need to balance between our
recognizing and embracing mental states. Kelly
McGonigal shares why she believes this idea of
balancing is so important.
Dr. McGonigal: “One of the things that Rick
talked about that I think is incredibly insightful
and important is that when you are in a red-light
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 13
state, it is often because a need is unmet and
something happened that triggered the felt
sense of that need being unmet – whether a
lack of safety or a lack of getting your basic
needs met for rewards or mastery or flow, or a
sense of disconnection or social conflict.
And he says that the antidote to that will be
balancing the positive state with embracing the
unmet need. And then, look for strategies that
allow you to connect the essence of that need,
even while you are experiencing pain around
the fact that it is unmet or that it has been
triggered in you.
One of the examples that he gives is that if you
are feeling lonely or disconnected or rejected,
that practicing loving has the same effect as the
experience of being loved, and that when you
are experiencing that need being unmet, you
don’t necessarily need to go out and find people
to prove that they love you, but to choose an
attitude of love or be able to commit an act of
love will meet the need in the same way
biologically and psychologically.
I think this is a true act of self-compassion he is
talking about here – how when we are suffering
from a sense of not having these basic needs
met, it is a tremendous act of courage as well as
self-compassion to say, ‘I’m going to honor this
need rather than deny it or reject it or try to
meet it in an unhealthy way, and I’m going to
actually really dive into what it would mean to
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 14
meet this need in a way that is possible in this
moment,’ or see how it’s already met” (on p. 6-7
in the Part 2: TalkBack Transcript).
Getting Rid of Fear
According to Rick Hanson, ‘taking in the good’ is
so helpful for overcoming the brain’s negative
bias. Here, Ron Siegel shares his ideas on the
importance of taking in the good, and gives
another way to go about changing perspective.
Dr. Siegel: “Rick has famously said that the mind
is like Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for
good ones – the bad ones stick and the good
ones slip away.
And this makes perfect sense, evolutionarily,
because it would be a real disaster for us in
terms of passing on our DNA if we were to
mistake a lion for a beige rock – but mistaking a
beige rock for a lion we can do time and again
and still survive.
Simply noticing that this is the case is very, very
helpful – you know, that we are all, like Mark
Twain famously said near the end of his life
when he said, ‘I’m an old man now. I’ve lived a
long and difficult life filled with so many
misfortunes – most of which never happened.’
You know, when I read that, I thought, ‘Oh, yes,
well it sounds like he’s been living in my mind’ –
this is how it works.
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 15
So simply seeing this phenomena, simply seeing
that the mind is going to default to expecting
the worst; the mind is going to default toward
remembering the bad things, the trauma, and
tending to forget about the good ones – simply
keeping this in mind I think is our greatest asset
because then we don’t believe in the cognitions
as much.
Then, when the fearful thought comes up that,
‘It’s going to be a disaster,’ or, ‘Once again I’m
going to be hurt’ and all of that, we can have
another voice that says, ‘Oh, yes – there’s that
old tape. Yes, there I am being Mark Twain
again; there I am playing out my evolutionary
fate to avoid getting eaten by a lion.’
I think the other thing that is very, very helpful
that when we do find ourselves involved in this
kind of negativity, to think, ‘What exactly is it
that I am fearing or trying to ward off here? Is it
that I am desperately trying to preserve my rank
in the primate troop? Is it that I am desperately
trying to make sure that I don’t experience some
bodily discomfort? Is it that I’m afraid of some
fantasy I have of what death is like? What is it
that I am so afraid of here?’
And I think that often, if we do that with some
care and some detail, we notice that, you know,
we are afraid of experiencing an unpleasant
cognition, an unpleasant affect, an unpleasant
body sensation – and that all of these things
that we fear are actually tolerable if we see
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 16
them for what they are rather than get caught
up in their symbolic meanings and their
narrative.
So I think that also helps us to not get so stuck in
the negative” (on p. 7-8 in the Part 2: TalkBack
Transcript).
Recognizing a Reactive Brain
Rick Hanson compared the brain’s reactive and
responsive models to a red and a green zone.
Here, he explains why it’s so important to keep
the brain out of the red zone, and how we can
train the brain to stay in the green zone more
often.
Dr. Hanson: “One of the most powerful things
that I read in the research was that being upset
feels bad because it is bad for us; in other
words, the red zone feels bad. It feels bad to be
angry, or anxious, or sad, or ashamed, or
stressed in general. So one thing we can do is
recognize that that is a signal developed in us
over six hundred million years of evolution of
the nervous system, that is Mother Nature’s
flashing red light: ‘Danger, Will Robinson! Get
out of the red zone as fast as you can.’
So that is one thing, to actually pay attention to
the discomfort, the upset, the unease in the red
zone, and take it seriously, rather than doing
what many of us have done –to kind of plod
stoically through life, flogging that little, what
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 17
Mary Oliver calls ‘Soft animal of the body,’ to
keep it going, rather than really listening to its
signals.
You know, the distress and discomfort of the red
zone is an inner signal planted by Mother
Nature to get out of this zone as fast as you can.
Her plan is for animals to spend a little bit of
time in the red zone and get out of it quickly –
so chronic stress is really bad for us.
The second thing I think is to really build up
green-zone experiences. Because if you
gradually grow green zone experiences inside
yourself and you really help them sink in, you
will be increasingly able to handle challenges
without going into the red zone. There is no end
of challenges in this life, obviously, including old
age, disease, and death. It is how we meet those
challenges that really determines whether we
experience stress and the related wear and tear
in the body or not.
So one of the wonderful things is to appreciate
how repeatedly internalizing everyday green
zone experiences – a moment of calm, a
moment of pleasure, a moment of ease, a
moment of connection with your cat or your
friend – is the best possible way, actually, to
build up the neural substrates of the green zone
so that you can deal with challenges, without
‘going red’ with them” (from Part 3: Next Week
in Your Practice).
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 18
Applying the Positive
Rick Hanson talked a lot about developing a
positive mindset and why it is so important to
do that. Here, Bill O’Hanlon gives an easy way to
approach each day with more positivity.
Mr. O’Hanlon: “One of the most powerful things
that I read in the research was that be“I was
talking about gratitude, and someone said, ‘I’m
a psychology professional and I have my
students do an exercise I call “Twenty-five
gratitudes before breakfast.”’ And I said, ‘I
would never get to breakfast if you gave me
twenty-five!’ He said, ‘No – they’re simple ones;
you know: I get up. I switch on the light and it
comes on. And I get up and turn on a tap and
water comes out. I have a roof over my head.’
And I thought, ‘Oh, I could do twenty-five of
those.’
The things we take for granted – which is one of
the things the brain does: once it is there a lot,
we get used to it; we don’t notice the good, as
Rick said. We are not taking it in – partly
because we don’t notice it. And it is those
things: if you just went through a hurricane or
the lights are out and you don’t have any heat,
you don’t really appreciate that until it goes
away.
But if you can deliberately orient yourself to
what you have that you have taken for granted,
that is a really good thing that sometimes even
kings and emperors five hundred years ago
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Keys to Changing the Brain Rick Hanson, PhD - QuickStart - pg. 19
didn’t have. I have this amazing Skype thing that
we’re talking on, that I can talk to you in a
different part of the country. That’s incredible!
Twenty-five gratitudes before breakfast – and
you can make it five, you can make it three, you
can make it ten or whatever you want – you do
need to get up and have breakfast eventually!
But I think that is a great habit to get into, and it
sets the tone for the day. As Rick said, you start
to reorient your neurology, your brain, your
attention to the good rather than just the
negative – and that gives you some resilience,
even when the negative comes during the
day” (from Part 3: Next Week in Your Practice).
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