Mapping Mind Chatter & how to deal with it | Clara Laureys & Steven Laureys | TEDxUHasselt

Transcriber: Julia Wachowicz Reviewer: Elizabeth Zielinska (Music) Do you know that feeling?

You’re trying to fall asleep, and your mind goes into overdrive.

You just cannot stop thinking.

Yes, I definitely do.

And there’s a solution for that mind chatter.

And that is meditation.

And that’s what we want to share with you today.

As a comedian, sociologist, and content creator, I overthink a lot.

I think about what people are going to think about me.

I think about my new projects, ideas.

You might be thinking, what the hell is she wearing on her face?

This is a mustache I use in my Instagram videos to make fun of macho behaviors, among other things.

Let me take it off.

I have something else on my forehead.

This is my father's 'mustache'.

He is a neurologist, brain scientist, and he’ll explain this to you.

Thanks Clara.

My passion is understanding the human mind using all possible neurotechnology to quantify, measure, map our emotions, our perceptions, our thoughts.

Thoughts, I have a lot of them right now, but also when I’m trying to sleep or just to focus.

Let me show you what’s going on in my mind.

I’m hungry - is my hair straightened?

The broccoli grows in the ground.

Is that meeting tomorrow?

I forgot to turn off the oven.

I didn’t call my grandma.

I’m out of coffee.

Are my eyes blue?

Why do people call French fries, French fries?

We don’t get emails.

My sock itches.

What about climate change?

I forgot to ask. Smells good.

Why does cilantro taste so bad?

Maybe I should be a chef.

I think I’m sad... I have to buy broccoli.

Wait, am I sad? I should get a cat.

S**t - it’s 3:00 o'clock.

Whoa!

Yeah.

Well, let me show you what’s going on in your brain.

So, what we see here, all these colours, artificial colours, represent Clara’s electrical brain activity.

There’s quite a lot going on.

We see them jumping from red to blue, green.

So, this is the tool, measuring EEG, electroencephalography, to visualize that mind chatter.

The algorithms we use here are similar to what permits us to have a piece of music and extract, this is the piano, this is the guitar, these are the vocals. So...

we’re looking at Clara’s brain chatter.

And that chatter in my mind is a great tool in my everyday job as a creator - I use it a lot.

But sometimes, it seems I can't switch it off and that can make me anxious. And when I'm anxious, I cannot sleep.

And if I don't sleep I get even more anxious.

It's just a crazy spiral.

So, I'm not going to lie, sometimes, I'm just thinking about taking a Xanax to make it go away.

Well, I know that from the patients I see, my consultation is a clinical neurology.

They would come to me because they have sleeping problems, anxiety and they want me to prescribe a pill, and that's OK.

We have these drugs, but it's not the first or the only thing we should do.

And actually, studies have shown that the effect of meditation can be as big as the effect of medication.

And that's exactly what we would like to show with this experiment.

So, I would propose everybody here, those people online, we just take a break.

Two minutes of breathing meditation, just focusing on the anchor of our breathing.

I will just focus on the breathing, and if I have thoughts or chatter coming in, I'll observe it, let it go, and bring back the attention to the breathing.

Perfect. Please have a seat.

I invite you to sit comfortably straight.

We're going to do this together.

You can put both feet, anchor them on the ground.

Put your hands on your legs.

Just follow my voice.

We will breathe and keep the attention to the breathing.

You can close your eyes now.

And whenever there's a thought coming up, you just let it go by without judgment.

We inhale through the nose, (Inhales) exhale through the mouth.

(Exhales) Wonderful.

In...

and now a bit longer out.

(Exhales) Perfect.

You can put a hand on your belly.

And when you inhale, you have a big belly.

(Inhales) (Exhales) Tight belly.

Tight belly.

(Exhales) (Whispers) It can help to count - one, (Inhales) and let it go.

(Exhales) Doing great here - two.

(Inhales) (Whispers) Then, a bit longer bout.

(Exhales) Three.

(Inhales) (Exhales) And the last one.

(Inhales) Letting go.

(Exhales) (Whispers) Wonderful.

We can open the eyes.

Reconnect to the here and now, and have a look.

OK. To be honest with you guys, I really needed this right now, so it's great.

What do we see here?

There's a change, right?

We have that initial wild monkey mind thought jumping from one to the other, that continuous stream of consciousness, and then something happens.

We see that this focused attention to breathing calms the mind.

We have these blue colours, the stability, and there's something else happening.

Every time we exhale, (Exhales) we stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is a kind of break.

My heart pressure goes down, the heart rate, stress hormones, cortisol.

That's the opposite from the auto-sympathetic system that activates when there is a potential danger, like a wild tiger.

I need to run away or to fight it.

Well, I don't get to deal a lot with tigers, but I can somehow relate.

When I get a call from a colleague, or when I check my Instagram, or even when I choose the wrong line at the grocery store.

I know it sounds trivial, but it can make me really stressed.

Maybe I can take it off, please.

I think you can.

(Whispers) OK. Thank you so much.

We live in a connected society where technology shapes our everyday social interactions.

With a simple cell phone, you are connected to the whole world.

It’s triggering when your phone vibrates or beeps, your mind goes, 'Who is it?'.

My brother, my boss, some comments on my social media?

And there it is - the tiger.

Your body reacts with a stress response.

The thoughts are growing.

The chatter is on.

Meditation, far from any disturbance, offers you a break from that tiger - the stress.

That stress, when it's too much, too long, can be neurotoxic.

And that's what we've seen.

We've been studying experts of mind control.

These Buddhist monks, you see them here.

Matthieu Ricard, the translator of the Dalai Lama, came to the lab.

Many others.

This device permits me to take it with me when I'm in the Himalayas, in India.

You see all these exceptional people like Lama Zopa.

He had a retreat, a silent retreat, three years three months.

Well, for us, that's an extraordinary opportunity to see the power of the mind.

You did a great job, Clara, but you're not yet a Zen master, of course.

Well, that's nice and impressive, but I am not a Buddhist.

We don't have the same lifestyles.

No, I agree, we started with those Buddhist monks, and we see here the brain of Matthieu Ricard, the rock star of Buddhism, because starting with the extreme, permitted us to see, how meditation changes those thousands of billions of brain connections.

So, what we call neuroplasticity.

Here we look inside of his brain.

You see these branches and it's true for them.

But also with you and I, we've started to meditate.

Already, after eight weeks, with a program like mindfulness based stress reduction, we can visualize those effects in the function, and the structure of the brain.

Well, I did this mindfulness based stress reduction program and it was amazing.

But still I don’t have 40 minutes a day to meditate.

No, that’s, I think, a challenge to adapt this to our reality, where my view on this is...

we can do meditation basically anytime, anywhere where we just did.

It is a very simple exercise.

And maybe we shouldn't put the bar too high and just do what we can.

That's the message in my books, and the no-nonsense meditation book summarizing, like the past two decades of research and how I've translated it as a physician, and also how it personally changed me as a father of five.

For many people, meditation is nonsense, and that's what I thought, too.

I disagree, and here would like to show what we study in a very different bunch of people.

These are top athletes, Olympic champions.

We had the opportunity to study the brain of people like Guillaume Néry.

He’s the world champion in freediving.

Came to the lab; holding his breath for eight minutes, don't try that at home.

What we saw in his brain is very similar to what we see in these Buddhist monks.

So, they know, if they want to be at their best, it's not just and only the physical training.

It also happens up there.

So, if meditation is good for them, it's probably also having added value for each, and every one of us.

Studies show the impact of screens and social media on our mental health.

As we have seen and experienced today, meditation can help us and calm the chatter in our minds, or at least give it a try.

Take care.

(Applause)