冥想如何起作用及基于科学的有效冥想

他们还问了人们：你现在正在做什么？

And they also asked them, what are you doing right now?

因此，他们在寻找人们正在做的事情与他们的感受之间的匹配或不匹配。

So they were looking for the match or mismatch between what people were doing and what they were feeling.

他们本质上试图探究人们在想什么，并且也对此进行了探讨。

They were essentially trying to probe what people were thinking about and they also addressed that.

他们制作了一种类似气泡图的东西，气泡越大，就代表有越多的回答涉及某个特定主题。

And they came up with a kind of a bubble chart, if you will, where the bigger the bubble, the more answers came back about one particular thing.

他们评估了人们在那一刻是否快乐或不快乐、是否悲伤或不悲伤，以及是否专注于正在做的事情。

And they assessed whether or not people were happy or not in that moment or sad or not, whether or not they were focused on what they were doing or not.

这个图表中有许多气泡，所以我不会逐一读出所有内容，但从数据中得出的重要结论是——再次强调，这是一个非常庞大的数据集——人们无论在做什么，思绪都经常飘走。

There are a lot of bubbles in this chart, so I'm not going to read them all, but the important points that came from the data, and again, there's a very large dataset was that, and here again, I'm paraphrasing, first people's minds wandered frequently regardless of what they were doing.

在几乎一半的样本中，人们通常在想别的事情，但结果发现，这里只有一个小小的气泡远远地悬在地平线上。

In nearly half of the samples taken, people were generally thinking about something else, except it turns out there's just one little bubble sitting way far out on the horizon here.

人们声称——我倾向于相信他们——当他们在被iPhone提醒的那一刻正在做爱时，他们会非常专注。

People claimed, and I'm inclined to believe them, that they tend to be very focused on making love if they were making love in the moment where they were pinged on their iPhone.

现在，为什么他们的iPhone当时就在身边，我不知道，这个细节在研究的描述中没有提及，但所有其他活动——如梳妆打扮、自我护理、听新闻、看电视、放松、工作等等——在这些活动中，人们都表示自己的思绪经常飘走。

Now, why their iPhone was there with them at that moment, I don't know, that wasn't included in this description of the study, but all the other activities, grooming and self care, listening to the news, watching television, relaxing, working, etcetera, etcetera, during all those activities, people claim that their mind wandered a lot.

然后他们当然也评估了人们的情绪，以及在不同活动下，他们的思维和情绪是否与当前行为相匹配。

And then they also assessed of course their mood and how those people felt at any given moment, depending on what they were doing and how well their mind and their emotions matched what they were doing.

他们在这里提到的第二点是，当人们思绪飘忽时，幸福感比思绪集中时更低。

And what they say here is second, they revealed that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not.

这一点在所有活动中都成立。

And this was true during all activities.

第三点，人们当时在想什么，比他们正在做什么更能预测他们的幸福感。

And then third, what people were thinking at a given moment was far better a predictor of their happiness than what they were doing.

这很有趣，我认为这与许多人的亲身经历相符。

So this is interesting and I think matches a lot of people's experience.

事实上，我认为当你听到这项研究时，很多人可能会说：‘这还用说吗？’比如，如果你在工作，但又不喜欢这份工作，同时还在想一些不愉快的事，那当然不会开心。

In fact, I think as you hear about this study, many of you will probably just say, well, duh, I mean, if you're working and you don't like your work and you're thinking about something bad that happened, well, then of course you're not going to be happy.

但这项研究的关键在于，人们当时所想的并不一定非得是不愉快的事情。

But the key point of this study is that it did not necessarily have to be the case that people were thinking about something unpleasant.

事实上，当人们在工作时，即使他们在想一些愉快的事情，也会感到不快乐。

In fact, if people were working and they were thinking about something else that was pleasant, that also made them feel unhappy.

换句话说，当一个人正在从事某项活动时，如果心思却飘到了别处，这种不匹配会导致他们感到更不快乐。

In other words, the mismatch between being in an activity and having our mind elsewhere led people to report themselves as feeling more unhappy in that moment.

当你综合来看，你会发现人们常常无法专注于当前正在做的事情，而这正是不快乐的重要来源，即使他们的思绪是快乐、愉悦的。

And when you total this up, what you find is that people are often not present to what they are doing and that is a great source of unhappiness, even if their thoughts are those of happy, joyful thoughts.

这很有趣，我认为这与我们大多数人听到或被教导的观点相悖，那就是：要多想好事，尽量压抑负面想法，保持良好的内心状态，构建积极的叙事。

So this is interesting, and I think runs counter to what most of us have heard or have been taught, which is, you know, think good thoughts, you know, try and suppress bad thoughts, have a good internal landscape, you know, create a good narrative.

这些当然都对，但同样重要，甚至更重要的是，要具备全身心投入当下所做之事的能力。

That is all true, but equally, if not more important is to have the ability to be fully engaged in what you are doing at a given moment.

这才是幸福感最强的预测因素。

That is the strongest predictor of being happy.

之后还有几项研究对此进行了跟进，但我认为，这篇论文最后一段的结论完美地概括了这一点。

And there were several other studies that followed up on this, but their conclusion that they put in the final short paragraph of this paper, I think really captures it beautifully.

他们说，我直接引用原文：‘总之，人类的心灵总是游离不定，而一个游离不定的心灵，就是一个不快乐的心灵。’

They say, and here I'm quoting directly, In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

能够思考当下并未发生的事情——我补充了‘当下’这个词——这是一种认知上的成就，但伴随着情感上的代价。

The ability to think about what is not happening in a moment, I added the in a moment part, is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.

因此，我知道我并非唯一一个认为这篇名为《游离的心灵是不快乐的心灵》的论文至关重要的人，我们将在节目笔记的链接中提供这篇论文，因为它对于理解为何冥想练习如此重要至关重要，因为冥想本质上是调整你在内感受与外感受连续体上的位置，以更好地觉察你此时此刻的体验。

So I know I'm not alone in believing that this paper, A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind, and we will provide a link to this paper in the show note captions, is absolutely key in understanding why a meditation practice is so important because a meditation practice is really about adjusting your place along that interoceptive, exteroceptive continuum to what you happen to be experiencing in that moment.

尽管大多数人将冥想理解为闭眼、专注于内在、第三眼、呼吸等，持续数分钟甚至一小时或更久，但也存在其他形式的冥想，其中外感受占主导地位，你主动关注皮肤之外或超越内在体验的事物，这同样是冥想。

And while most people think of a meditative practice as focusing on what's going on internally with your eyes closed, third eye center, focusing on your breathing, etcetera, for any number of minutes or maybe even an hour or longer, there are other forms of meditation in which your exteroception dominates, in which you are actively focusing on things outside or beyond the confines of your skin and internal landscape, and that too is meditation.

如果我们认真对待基林斯沃思和吉尔伯特的研究成果——《游离的心灵是不快乐的心灵》——我知道还有许多其他实验室已经反复通过他们的研究结果支持了这一观点，这意味着冥想并不一定是一种与日常生活脱节的练习。

And if we are to take the work of Killingsworth and Gilbert, this A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind seriously, and I know a number of other laboratories have and have supported this research with their findings again and again and again, what this means is that meditating is not necessarily a practice that we do divorced from the rest of life.

尤其是正念冥想，即全然投入于当下正在做的事情，是获得幸福和改善情绪的关键之一，即使你正在做的事情并不愉快。

Meditation and mindfulness in particular, being present to what we are doing in a given moment is one of the essential keys to happiness and improved mood, even if what we are doing is unpleasant.

因此，我们引出了一种工具，这种工具每个人都可以使用，无论你是否倾向于以内感受为主导？

So that brings us to a tool and it's a tool that any and all of us can use, whether or not you tend to be interoceptively dominant, right?

也就是说，你更关注身体感受，还是以外感受为主导。

That you tend to pay more attention to your bodily sensations or exteroceptively dominant.

再次说明，如果你不确定这个问题的答案，可以做一个简单的测试。

And again, if you don't know the answer to that question, there's a simple test that you can do.

你可以坐下或躺下，闭上眼睛，问问自己或评估一下，你的注意力是否容易飘向外界的事物，对吧？

You can just sit down or lie down, close your eyes, and you can ask yourself or assess whether or not your attention tends to fleet to things outside of you, right?

比如汽车鸣笛或驶过、房间里的人，或者你是否能轻易地专注于内在感受，而完全忽略外界的感官刺激和皮肤之外的事物。

Cars honking or going by, people in the room, or whether or not you tend to be able to focus on your internal landscape to the exclusion of extra reception and attention to things outside the confines of your skin easily.

当然，这会因情境和环境而异，甚至取决于你休息得好不好等等，但这正是关键所在。

Now, of course, this will depend on context and situation, even how well rested you are, etcetera, but that's exactly the point.

每次你决定开始冥想练习时，都应当做这样的检查。

This is the sort of thing you want to do every time you decide to do a meditation practice.

事实上，我建议你用这种方式来决定在任何时刻该进行哪种冥想。

In fact, I would suggest that you use this to determine what meditation you do at any given moment.

假设你是一个经常冥想的人，或者你从未冥想过但想培养冥想习惯。

So let's say you are somebody who is a regular meditator, or let's say you're somebody who's never meditated and you'd like to develop a meditation practice.

我建议你在当下测试一下，自己是更偏向内在感知主导，还是外在感知主导。

I suggest that you do a test of whether or not you are more interoceptively dominant or exteroceptively dominant in that moment.

再次强调，这并不是一种人格特质。

Again, this is not a personality trait.

这是一个关于你当下所处状态的问题。

This is a question about where you happen to be in a moment.

比如说，你正在飞机上，或者在车里。

So let's say you're on a plane or you're in the car.

如果你在开车，请不要闭上眼睛，这很明显，但请以安全的方式进行——停车，闭上眼睛，评估自己是否能主要关注内在状态，还是注意力和感知会被拉向外部，转向外感受。

If you're in the car, please don't close your eyes while driving, that's sort of obvious, but do this in a safe way, please, but stop, close your eyes, and assess whether or not you can access and focus your attention primarily on your internal state or whether or not your attention and perception gets pulled to something external, to exteroception.

同样，这会因环境和你的个人情况而有所不同。

And again, that will vary depending on circumstance and who you are.

然后我建议你睁开眼睛，尝试将注意力集中在外部事物上，观察并评估你能否将自己的感知与皮肤表面或内部的感官体验分离开来。

Then I suggest opening your eyes and trying to focus your attention to something external to you and seeing or evaluating the extent to which you can divorce your perception from sensations that occur at the level of your skin or internally.

我应该说明，目前没有技术手段——至少据我所知，除非你身处一台fMRI机器中，而你正在做这项练习——但除非你恰好参与这样的实验，而大多数人并不在其中，否则没有任何技术能告诉你，比如你此刻是内感受占主导还是外感受占主导，或者比例是75比25之类的。

Now, I should say that there's no technology, at least not that I'm aware of, absence of fMRI machine, in which case you are inside an fMRI machine while you do this, but unless you are in that experiment and most of us aren't, there's no technology that can tell you, for instance, whether or not you are interoceptively dominant or exteroceptively dominant and whether or not the ratio is 75 to 25 or what have you at any given moment.

你必须主观地评估这一点。

You have to assess this subjectively.

然而，如果你坐下后发现，自己能平均分配注意力于内在和外在感受之间，或者当你试图向内专注时却被外在感受拉走，又或者当你试图向外专注时却被拉向内在，那么这将决定你此刻应该进行哪种冥想。

However, if you sit down for instance and you notice that you can equally split your attention between internal sensations and external sensations, or whether or not you find yourself pulled into external sensations when you're trying to focus inward, or you find yourself pulled inward when you're trying to focus outward, well, that will dictate the sort of meditation that you perhaps ought to perform in that moment.

让我举个例子说明你该如何做。

Let me give an example of how you would do this.

你会以某种方式停下来，比如坐下或躺下，闭上眼睛，评估自己是否能基本排除对外部事件的注意力。

You would stop in some way, so sit or lie down, close your eyes and evaluate whether or not you can essentially rule out or eliminate attention to all outside events.

大多数人无法完全做到这一点，但试着将注意力集中在呼吸上，或者通常的第三眼区域，也就是眉心正后方的一个点。

Most people won't be able to do that entirely, but try and focus your attention for instance, on your breathing or the typical third eye center, you know, focusing at a spot right behind your forehead.

如果你觉得能相当好地做到这一点，完全忽略周围发生的事情，那么一个重要的问题就出现了：你应该通过某种冥想方式来增强这种内感受觉察，还是应该以睁眼的方式，将注意力集中在你所在环境中的某个特定部分，比如一棵树，甚至是一个物体、植物或其他你身边的物品，来培养和增强你的外感受觉察？

If you feel you can do that reasonably well to the exclusion of what's happening around you, well then an important question arises, should you meditate in a way to enhance that interoceptive awareness or rather should you meditate in a way, for instance, with your eyes open and your attention on a particular portion of the landscape you're in like a tree or maybe even an object or a plant or something else in your immediate environment to try and cultivate or enhance your exteroceptive awareness.

这由你决定，但我的倾向是，你应该对抗自己的默认状态。

That's up to you, but my bias would be one in which you work against your default state.

同样，你的默认模式网络在内感受与外感受连续体上的落点，会导致更多的走神。

Again, the default mode network is where you land on this interoceptive, exteroceptive continuum is going to lead to more mind wandering.

而当你鼓励，甚至可以说稍微强迫自己，将注意力锚定在身体内部或外部时，并根据你较难做到的那一方做出选择，你就是在主动训练神经回路。

Whereas when you encourage or we could even say force yourself a little bit to anchor your attention to either inside your body or outside your body, and you make that decision according to what you are doing less easily, well, then you are actively training up the neural circuits.

你正在激活所谓的神经可塑性，即大脑根据经验改变的能力。

You are engaging so called neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change in response to experience.

你正在有意识地在这条连续体上进行转变。

You are deliberately engaging a shift along that continuum.

为了说得更清楚些，我的意思是这样，让我举个例子。

To make this crystal clear, what I mean is this, let me give an example.

如果我坐下来，想进行三分钟的冥想，有充分证据表明，即使是三分钟的冥想，也能对多种方面有益，包括提升专注力和缓解焦虑。

If I were to sit down and I want to do some meditation, let's just say three minutes of meditation, there's good evidence that even three minutes of meditation can be beneficial for a variety of things, including enhanced focus and enhanced anxiety management.

假设我坐下来，发现我能很好地将注意力集中在皮肤和内脏层面的内在感受上。

Let's say I sit down and I notice that I can really focus inward on what's happening at the level of my skin and my internal organs.

而且我能完全排除外界的干扰。

And I can rule out everything.

也许这是因为房间很安静，或者只是因为我的大脑此刻处于特别擅长这种状态，又或者这本来就是我的天赋。

Maybe that's because the room is quiet or maybe it's just because my brain is in a state that I'm particularly good at that at that moment, or maybe it's just a natural ability.

那么，我会选择一种三分钟的冥想练习，刻意增强对外部事物的觉察，因为我希望——也认为大多数人也希望——自己具备一种适应性机制，能够在这条连续体上自如切换，而不是默认选择当下最容易的那个状态。

Well, then I would opt for a three minute meditation practice in which I deliberately exterocept that I build up the circuitry to focus on something external to me because I want, and I think most people would like to have an adaptive mechanism within them so that they can slide along that continuum and they don't default to whatever happens to be easiest for them in that moment.

现在，如果我坐下来试图关注内在感受，却不断被外界事物分心，比如睁开眼睛、觉得需要去拿手机，或留意房间里的声音，那么我会主动进行一种冥想练习——这个例子是三分钟，但也可能更长——刻意将注意力集中在皮肤边界以内和身体内部的体验上。

Now, if I were to sit down and try and focus on what's going on internally and I kept getting distracted by things happening outside of me, opening my eyes or feeling like I need to reach for my phone or paying attention to the sounds in the room, well, then I would actively engage a meditation practice, in this case, a three minute example, but it could be longer, where I'm deliberately trying to focus my perception on events at the level of the confines of my skin and internally.

我为什么这么说？

Why do I say this?

我喜欢在孩子说这太难了、或者某件事很有挑战性时，或者成年人说这真的很艰难时，使用‘ anytime ’这个说法。

Well, I love to use the phrase anytime with kids, when they say this is really hard or something's challenging or adults will say that's really tough.

正如我的研究生导师常说的，这意味着你正在学习。

Well, as my graduate advisor used to say, that means you're learning.

如果某件事很容易，如果你能轻松完成任何活动或思考等，那么你的神经回路就完全没有改变的理由。

If something were easy, if you can perform any activity or thought, etcetera, well, then there is absolutely zero reason for your neural circuits to change.

正是这种阻力，正是这种困难的感觉，激活了细胞层面的多种机制，使你有可能改变自己的神经回路。

It's the friction, it's the feeling that something is hard that turns on the enormous variety of mechanisms at the level of cells, etcetera, that allow you to potentially change your neural circuitry.

因此，挑战和不适是向你的大脑和身体发出的信号，表明某些事情需要改变。

So challenge and discomfort is the signal to your brain and body that something needs to change.

所以我鼓励你去尝试那些不是你默认模式的冥想练习，也就是说，逆着你当下内感受或外感受的倾向而行。

So I'm encouraging you to embark on meditative practices that are not your default, okay, to essentially go against the grain of where your interoceptive bias or your exteroceptive bias happens to be at a given moment.

而且，这一点会不断变化。

And again, this will change.

对你们中的一些人来说，这种状态会在一天中发生变化：早上你非常擅长进行内感受偏向的冥想，但到了下午就不行了。

For some of you, this will change across the day where early in the day you are very, very good at doing an interoceptive biased meditation and later in the day you aren't.

实际上，基于我所研究的数据——我们稍后还会探讨更多相关论文——以及我的实验室也在积极研究这一领域，我认为冥想练习可以变得更加高效，也就是说，如果我们不走捷径，而是逆着大脑在某一刻的自然倾向行事，它就能引发更多的神经可塑性，更显著地改变大脑状态和神经回路。

I actually believe based on the data that I've covered and we'll get into a few more papers about this, and my lab is actively working on this as well, that a meditative practice can be made far more effective, that is it can invoke more neuroplasticity, more shift in brain states and brain circuitry, if we do not take the easy path, that is we go against the grain of what our brain would naturally do in a given moment.

所以，如果你身处拥挤的机场，发现周围的一切都令人分心，那正是进行内感受聚焦冥想的绝佳时机。

So if you're in a crowded airport and you're finding that everything's very distracting, well, then that would be a great time to do some interoceptive focused meditation.

而如果你过度沉浸在自己的思绪中，不断反复回想过去和现在的事情，甚至陷入强迫性思维，那恰恰是进行短暂外部焦点冥想的最佳时机。

Whereas if you are really in your head, you know, you're looping thoughts about the past and present, maybe you're even in obsessive thought, well, that would be a terrific time, an ideal time really to do a short meditation focused on something external to you.

无论你是专注于内感受偏向还是外感受偏向，你都在对抗——或者更准确地说，你在抵制你的默认模式网络。

In both cases, whether or not you're focused on interoceptive bias or exteroceptive bias, you are going against, or I should say you're pushing back against your default mode network.

我认为，如果你主动抑制自己倾向于内感受或外感受的偏好，这将更有效得多，也就是说，你能够更显著、更有益地减少或改变默认模式网络的活动。

I would argue it's going to be far more effective, that is you're going to reduce or shift the activity of that default mode network far more and in a far more beneficial way if you actively try and suppress your bias toward being more interoceptive or exteroceptive.

我认为，这不仅对当下你所体验到的即时变化——其他人称之为状态改变——非常有益，因为这确实就是状态改变。

Now, I think that's immensely beneficial both for the immediate changes that you experience, what others have called a state change, because that's what it is.

而且它还能像我们前面提到的那样，带来更多的神经可塑性，改变支撑你默认模式网络的大脑回路，从而引发所谓的特质改变。

And it also can lead to, as we referred to earlier, more neuroplasticity, more changes in the brain circuits that underlie your default mode network and lead to what are called trait changes.

我想明确说明，我并不是第一个提出这种状态与特质区分的人。

And I want to be very clear that I am not the first to make this state versus trait distinction.

这一区分是在一本非常出色的书中首次提出的。

That's a distinction that was raised in a really wonderful book.

事实上，我非常强烈推荐这本书。

In fact, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

这本书名为《科学揭示冥想如何改变你的思维、大脑和身体》。

The book is Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.

这本书由丹尼尔·戈尔曼和理查德·戴维森合著，他们在众多著作和TED演讲中对冥想进行了卓越的研究。

This is a book by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson, who've done terrific work in many writings and many TED Talks, etcetera, about meditation.

我认为，大约在2016年到2017年期间，这本书准确地捕捉到了我所认为的冥想科学中最核心的要素，以及其大量历史背景。

I would say that circa 2016, 2017, this book really captured what I believe to be the most essential elements of the science of meditation and a lot of the history of it as well.

今天，我们主要聚焦于这本书所涵盖的许多内容，同时也探讨自2017年以来发生的大量新进展。

Today, we're focusing on much of what's covered in this book, but also a lot of things that have happened, excuse me, since 2017.

事实上，我接下来要讨论的大多数论文都是在2017年之后发表的。

In fact, most of the papers that I'm going to talk about are papers that were published after 2017.

但同样，有一本很好的书明确区分了状态变化和特质变化，其中特质变化是更持久的。

But again, there's a wonderful book where they very clearly distinguish between state changes and trait changes, trait changes being the more long lasting ones.

我对这本书以及后续文献的理解是，当你坐下来冥想时，最有效的方法是进行内感受和外感受偏向评估，问问自己你是更关注内在还是外在，然后选择与你当前状态相反的冥想方式——如果你偏向内在，就引导你更多关注外部；如果你更关注周围环境，就引导你更多关注内在。

My read of this book and the literature that follows is again, that when you sit down to meditate, it is going to be most effective to do that interoceptive, extraoceptive bias assessment, ask yourself whether or not you are more in your head or outside your head, if you will, and then to do a meditation practice that runs counter to where you happen to be at, that is that pushes you more externally if you're in your head, and if you're more focused on what's going on around you, pushes you more internally.

我认为大多数人对如何进行内感受偏向的冥想都很熟悉。

Now, I think most people are familiar with how to do an interoceptive biased meditation.

同样，这包括设定一个计时器。

Again, that would be setting a timer.

也许你甚至不设计时器，只是坐下或躺下，闭上眼睛，专注于眉心后方的第三眼区域，或者专注于呼吸或身体感觉。

Maybe you don't even set a timer, you just sit or lie down, close your eyes, focus on that third eye center behind your forehead, or focus on your breathing or your bodily sensations.

这很常见，也经常被讨论。

That's typical and often discussed.

外感受导向的冥想，则是选择一个位于身体之外的聚焦点，比如在室内时可以是墙上的一个点、一盆植物，或是远处的地平线。你会发现，当你集中视觉注意力于该点时，视觉系统会略微疲劳。

Exteroceptive based meditations, you pick a focal point outside or beyond the confines of your skin, so that could be for instance, a point on the wall if you are indoors, could be a plant, it could be a point on the horizon far away, what you will find is that your visual system will fatigue a little bit when you concentrate your visual focus at that location.

我想提醒你，眨眼是完全正常且必要的，所以你应该眨眼，可以放松面部，也可以改变表情。

I want to remind you that it is perfectly okay and in fact necessary to blink, so you should blink, you can relax your face, you can change your expression.

没有规则说你不能做这些事。

There is no rule that says that you can't do those things.

这不仅仅是盯着空间中的某个点并睁大眼睛。

This is not just beaming a particular location in space and holding your eyelids open.

我经常被指责不怎么眨眼，但那是其他原因。

I've been accused many times of not blinking very often, that's for other reasons.

这与我回忆想说的话的方式有关。

It's part of the way I access memory about what I want to say.

我没有使用提词器，所以我是从脑海中的一种内在图像中提取内容。

I don't use a prompter here, so I'm accessing from a sort of internal image in my head.

我的记忆就是这样运作的。

That's how my memory works.

但无论如何，如果你要做外向型偏向的冥想，完全没有理由一直盯着那个点不放。

But in any case, if you're going to do an extra oceptive bias meditation, there is absolutely no reason why you wouldn't look away from that location every once in a while.

同样地，如果你闭着眼睛专注于内在想法和呼吸，偶尔你的思绪也会偏离呼吸或第三眼中心。

In the same way that if you're focused on internal thoughts with your eyes closed and focused on your breathing, every once in a while, your thoughts will skip away from that breathing or from your third eye center.

事实上，这一点在《改变特质》这本书中有讨论，也被许多人提及：任何冥想练习的关键要素之一，无论它是内感知导向还是外感知导向，都在于它是一种真正的练习。

In fact, and this is discussed in the book, Alter Traits, but by many other people as well, one of the key elements of any meditative practice, whether or not it's interoceptively focused or exteroceptively focused, is that it's really practice.

你将自己拉回专注或感知某一特定事物的次数越多，换句话说，你的思绪越频繁地游离又重新被拉回，这种练习实际上就越有效。

The more number of times that you have to yank yourself back into attending or perceiving one specific thing, in other words, the more times your mind wanders and you bring it back, actually the more effective that practice is.

再次强调，如果你能以激光般的精准度专注于某一点，而你的思绪从不偏离，也无需将它拉回，那么就不存在神经可塑性，因为你的神经系统会认为它已经完美运行，无需改变。

Again, if you can just focus on one location with laser precision and your mind never darts away from that and you don't have to bring it back, well, then there's no neuroplasticity, nothing needs to change because your nervous system will effectively know it's performing perfectly.

所以，如果你在尝试冥想时发现自己的思绪总是飘走，请记住：每次你把自己拉回来，重新聚焦于某个外部位置，或回到呼吸、第三眼中心，这些时刻都是提升自己的机会。

So if you're somebody who tries to do meditation, you find that your mind just wanders, just remember every time you scruff yourself and pull yourself back to focusing on some location externally or focus back on your breath or your third eye center, each one of those are just opportunities to do better.

它们对进步过程至关重要。

They are essential to the improvement process.

把它们想象成一级级提升专注力的阶梯。

Think about them as ascending a staircase of refocusing.

每次重新聚焦，你都在向上迈进一步，一级台阶，又一级台阶，再一级台阶。

Every time you refocus, you're going up one more level, another stair, another stair, another stair.

我认为这能帮助你摆脱那种自我批评的思维模式，比如‘我什么都无法专注’。

And I think that will move you away from the kind of judgmental process of thinking, oh, like I can't focus on anything.

很快，你会注意到，重新聚焦的过程会变得如此迅速，以至于你甚至察觉不到它。

Pretty soon, what you'll notice is that the refocusing process will happen so quickly that you don't even perceive it.

而且，这一点在神经影像数据中也得到了验证。

And again, this is something that's born out in the neuroimaging data.

很多人以为自己能像激光一样精准地集中注意力，但实际上，他们更擅长的是随着时间推移更快、更一致地重新聚焦。

A lot of people think that they can focus with laser precision, but actually what they are better at doing is refocusing more quickly and consistently over time.

在日本有一项经典研究，对象是不同冥想水平的人，包括从未冥想过的人，以及拥有数百甚至数千小时冥想经验的专家。研究中，这些人反复聆听20个重复的相同音调，结果发现，经验丰富的冥想者能够真正专注于全部20个音调——这一点通过脑成像得到了证实；而大多数人则会减弱或习惯化这个音调，到第十或第十一个音调时，他们的注意力早已转移到别处了。

There's a classic study about this in very experienced meditators that was done in Japan where they had people with varying levels of meditation ability, so some who had never meditated, others who were really expert meditators with many hundreds, if not thousands of hours of meditation under their belt, and they had those people listen to 20 tones repeated over and over, the same tone, and they found that the expert meditators could really focus, and they did this by brain imaging, they could really focus on all 20 tones, whereas most people kind of attenuate or what's called habituate to the tone so that by the tenth or eleventh tone, their mind is really going to something else.

这固然很棒，但它仅仅告诉我们，经验丰富的冥想者注意力更好，但更现代的神经影像研究显示，他们的专注力并非体现在长时间停留在一个极其狭窄的注意力范围内。

Now, that's wonderful, but that really just tells us that expert meditators have better focus, but it turns out that the more modern neuroimaging studies have shown that they don't have better focus such that they're staying in a very narrow trench of focus.

他们真正做的是反复、更快、更快、更快地退出专注又重新进入专注。

What they're doing is they're exiting focus and going back in more quickly, more quickly, more quickly over and over again.

因此，不要只考虑你的专注能力，而要关注你的重新聚焦能力——你需要重新聚焦的次数越多，训练效果就越好。

So rather than think about your ability to focus, think about your ability to refocus and the more number of times you have to refocus, the better training you're getting.

之前我提到过，进行三分钟的内感受偏向或外感受偏向的冥想。

So earlier I mentioned doing this interoceptive biased or extraoceptive biased meditation for three minutes.

我为什么说三分钟呢？

Why did I say three minutes?

因为对大多数人来说，每天坚持三分钟似乎是合理的时间。

Well, three minutes seems like a reasonable number for most people to do consistently, once a day.

事实上，有一些研究探讨了一分钟、三分钟、十分钟和六十分钟的冥想。

And in fact, there some studies of one minute meditations and three minute meditations and ten and sixty.

我的实验室一直在研究每天五分钟的冥想，这显然有好处，但我认为也很明显的是，到了三分钟时，许多益处已经开始显现。

My laboratory has been studying a five minute a day meditation and that clearly has benefits, but I think it's also clear that by three minutes, many of the benefits are starting to arrive.

因此，虽然我并没有指向任何一个具体的数据点，但非常清楚的是，如果你能持续地强迫自己将注意力导向你的内在状态或外部事物，就会获得巨大的益处；而且，如果你特别关注的是你当下本会默认忽略的那部分体验——无论是内在还是外在的——这种益处会更加显著。

And so while I'm not pointing to any one particular data point here, it's very clear that forcing oneself to direct one's perception, that is your attention, to your internal state or to something external to you is immensely beneficial if you do it consistently and is again, especially beneficial if you're focusing your attention on the portion of your experience, either internal or external to you, that is not the one that you would default to in that moment.

有些人甚至将这一点推向极端，认为你完全可以照常度过一天，只是偶尔做一次只用一次呼吸的冥想。

And some people have taken this to the extreme to say that, you know, you can even just move about your day and then every once in a while, just do a one breath meditation.

老实说，当我纵观所有数据时，似乎为了获得冥想练习的大部分益处，具体时长其实并不重要。

To be honest, when I look at the whole of the data, it seems as if it doesn't really matter in order to derive most of the benefits of a meditation practice.

我非常推崇一些新兴的冥想应用，尤其是我一直在使用的一款，我开始用它是因为我父亲非常喜欢，他现在做的是相当长时间的冥想。

Now, I'm a big fan of some of the newer meditation apps that are out there, one in particular that I've been using and that actually I started using because my dad is a big fan of it and he does now fairly long meditations.

他至少每隔一天就会冥想十分钟到二十分钟，经常是每天都会。

He's doing about ten or twenty minutes at least every other day and often every day.

他劝我试试萨姆·哈里斯推出的‘清醒’应用。

And he convinced me to check out the Waking Up app that Sam Harris has put out.

我看了下，觉得部分内容在付费墙后面，但你可以访问大部分内容，或者至少先试用一下，无需付费。

I looked at it, I think some of it sits behind a paywall, but you can access much of it or at least do a trial and try it out without having to get behind that paywall.

我应该说明一下，他们并不是这个播客的赞助商，但我还是决定使用‘清醒’应用。

They're not a sponsor of this podcast, I should mention, but I decided to use the Waking Up app.

我觉得它非常棒。

I think it's terrific.

我觉得它棒的一个原因是，萨姆在每次冥想前都会提供简短的说明，告诉你冥想的作用以及特定冥想能为你带来什么。

And I think one of the reasons it's terrific is that Sam includes short descriptions of what meditation is doing and what a specific meditation can do for you just prior to doing that meditation.

所以这些冥想可以非常简短。

So those meditations can be quite brief.

有些只有一分钟，有些两分钟，有些则更长，甚至长很多。

Some of them are a minute long, two minutes long, some are longer or even quite a bit longer.

我认为这个应用包含了一系列丰富的冥想内容，涵盖了冥想可能涉及的广泛可能性，而根据我对Waking Up应用的体验，它让我养成了最持续的冥想习惯。

That app, I think, includes a variety of meditations that really encompasses the huge range of possibilities that are possible with meditation and that, at least by my experience of the Waking Up app, has led to my most consistent meditation practice.

当然，我非常希望邀请萨姆作为嘉宾来到播客中，我们可以深入探讨Waking Up应用背后的理念，以及他对从冥想到自由意志和意识等话题的看法——我知道他在这些深刻而略显抽象的讨论中非常活跃。

And of course, I would love to get Sam on the podcast as a guest so we could talk about the sort of underpinnings of the Waking Up app and his views on everything from meditation to, I know he's big in the discussion about free will and consciousness, some of the very deep and somewhat abstract discussions.

我真心希望在不久的将来能邀请萨姆来做客我们的播客。

Really hope to get Sam on the podcast at a time not too far from now.

与此同时，我们从未见过面，但我绝对热爱Waking Up应用，萨姆，我知道我父亲也用得很开心，我相信你们中很多人已经在使用它了。

Meanwhile, we've never met in person, but I absolutely love the Waking Up app, Sam, and I know my father does as well, and I know many of you already use it.

如果你还没试过，我真心推荐你去体验一下。

If you haven't tried it already, I really do encourage you to check it out.

我想简单谈一谈第三眼这个概念，因为它其实相当有趣。

I want to talk just briefly about this third eye center business, because it turns out to be pretty interesting.

第三眼实际上是一个被赋予给另一个神经结构的名称，或者更准确地说，是一个纯粹的神经结构——松果体。

The third eye is actually a name that's been given to another neural structure, or I should say structure, because it's strictly neural, and that's the pineal gland.

这个结构有着一段有趣的历史。

And this has an interesting history.

我保证，我这里说的并不是与冥想无关的离题话题。

I promise I'm not taking off on a tangent here that isn't relevant to meditation.

当然，你有一个大脑，大脑的左右两侧通常会对称地呈现相同的事物。

So you have a brain of course, and on both sides of your brain, you tend to have mirror symmetric representations of the same things.

我这话是什么意思呢？

What do I mean by that?

比如，你的右脑有前额叶皮层，左脑也有前额叶皮层，它们实际上承担着略有不同的功能。

Well, you have a prefrontal cortex on the right, you have a prefrontal cortex on the left, and they actually do slightly different things.

语言有时会偏向一侧，但总体而言，大脑每一侧的每一个结构，在另一侧都有对应的相同结构。

Language is sometimes lateralized to one side, but in general, for every structure that you have on one side of the brain, you have the same structure on the opposite side of the brain.

但有一个明显的例外，那就是松果体。

There's one clear exception to that and that's the pineal gland.

松果体是分泌褪黑素的腺体，夜晚天黑时，它会分泌褪黑素，让你感到困倦，帮助你入睡，但并不帮你维持睡眠。

The pineal gland is the gland that makes melatonin, which at night when it gets dark secretes melatonin and that melatonin makes you sleepy, helps you fall asleep but not stay asleep.

笛卡尔，也就是那位哲学家，曾断言松果体是灵魂的居所，因为它是大脑中唯一一个不是成对出现、而是位于正中央的结构。

Descartes, right, the philosopher Descartes asserted that the pineal was the seat of the soul because it was the one structure in the brain that he saw was not on both sides of the brain, it was only one of them and in the middle.

现在，我不知道它是不是灵魂的居所，我没有资格做这样的判断。

Now, I don't know if it's the seat of the soul or not, I'm not in a position to make assessments like that.

但我们对松果体了解多少呢？

But what do we know about the pineal?

正如我提到的，松果体参与褪黑素的释放。

The pineal, as I mentioned, is involved in releasing melatonin.

它还做其他几件事，但也因为几个原因被视为第三只眼。

It does a few other things as well, but it is also considered the third eye for a couple of reasons.

一是它对光有反应，尽管在人类身上不是直接的。

One is that it responds to light, although in humans, not directly.

在鸟类、蜥蜴和蛇类中，它们的头骨要么很薄，或者你可能不信，头顶上有两个孔洞，让光线可以直接进入。

So in birds and lizards and snakes, they actually either have a thin skull or believe it or not, two holes in the top of their skull that allow light to go directly in.

如果你观察蛇的头部，光线可以通过这些孔洞直接进入大脑，激活松果体以抑制褪黑素，从而调控它们的清醒与睡眠节律。

If you look at the head of a snake, light can go directly into their brain through these holes and activate the pineal to suppress melatonin and control their wakefulness sleep rhythms.

在鸟类中，它们的头骨没有孔洞，但头骨非常薄，你可能不信，光线仍能穿透许多鸟类的薄颅骨，传递关于一天中时间和一年中季节的信息，并转化为如松果体释放褪黑素等激素信号。

In birds, they don't have holes in their skull, but they have very thin skulls and believe it or not, light can penetrate the thinness of the skull in many birds and communicates information about time of day and even time of year, and that's translating to hormonal signals such as melatonin release from the pineal.

因此，松果体被称为第三只眼，因为它是一个位于大脑内部、对光敏感的器官。

And so the pineal has been called the third eye because it's a light sensitive organ inside the brain.

在人类身上，松果体位于极深极深的内部，光线根本无法到达那里。

In humans, the pineal sits deep, deep, deep to the surface and light cannot get in there.

事实上，如果光线能进入你的大脑，除非你参与了某种专门为此目的的实验，或者正在接受神经外科手术之类的情况，否则就意味着你出现了严重的问题。

In fact, if light can get into your brain, unless you are part of a specific experiment where that's the intention or you're having neurosurgery or something of that sort, then you've got serious issues happening.

松果体位于深处，靠近所谓的第四脑室，它绝对不应该直接接触光线。

That pineal sits deep, deep, deep near what's called the fourth ventricle and it absolutely should not see light directly.

所以，认为松果体是人类的第三只眼，这种说法是不正确的。

So the idea that the pineal is the third eye in humans is not true.

这根本就是不对的。

It just isn't true.

因此，每当有人声称松果体是你的第三只眼时，他们所指的并不是人们在冥想时所说的那个第三眼中心。

So anytime someone says, Oh, the pineal is your third eye, that's not the third eye center that people are referring to when they talk about meditation.

你会看到许多不同形式的艺术作品，其中描绘了一个人的脸，眼睛闭着或有时睁开，额头上会有一个实实在在的第三只眼，就像独眼巨人的眼睛一样。

Now you'll see a number of different forms of art where somebody will, there'll be a picture of a face and the eyes will be closed or sometimes open, there'll be literally a third eye, like a cyclops eye in the middle of the forehead.

几千年来，人们一直认为它是意识的所在地。

That has been proposed for many thousands of years to be quote unquote the seat of our consciousness.

这很有趣，因为额头后方的这个区域实际上是前额叶皮层，我们通过损伤研究和刺激研究得知，如果切除这个脑区，人们会变得非常反射性。

Now that's interesting because that real estate behind the forehead actually turns out to be the prefrontal cortex, which we know from lesion studies and stimulation studies, if you remove that brain area, people become very reflexive.

他们不再有意识地思考。

They are not thinking intentionally.

他们不会变得有目的性。

They don't become deliberate.

事实上，这是一个有点诡异的结果：如果你抑制或关闭前额叶皮层，然后让人玩射击游戏，他们的命中率会飙升。

In fact, and this is kind of an eerie result, but if you inactivate, you turn off the prefrontal cortex and you give somebody the opportunity to play a shooting game for instance, their accuracy goes through the roof.

他们会变得几乎像一台机器。

They become essentially like a machine.

他们看到刺激，就会开枪。

They see a stimulus, they shoot at.

他们看到刺激，就会朝它开枪。

They see a stimulus, they shoot at it.

他们的准确率极高，但区分敌友的能力却完全消失了。

Their accuracy is exceptional, but their ability to distinguish between enemy and friend completely disappears.

因此，他们变成了一个极其高效的运动系统，或者更准确地说，是感觉运动机器，但他们对是非的判断能力完全消失了。

So they become at a highly effective motor, or I should say sensory motor machine, but their assessment and their judgment about right or wrong completely disappears.

对于那些前额叶受损的人，情况也是如此。

This is also true for people that have prefrontal damage.

他们常常表现出不适当的行为，或难以抑制某些行为等。

They often will have inappropriate behavior or a hard time suppressing behaviors, etcetera.

因此，第三只眼作为意识和意图的中心，这一概念与我们对神经科学和神经学的了解总体上是一致的，但其中还有一层更重要的意义，我认为这对你们所有人尤其重要，它超越了任何关于古老传统、松针、鸟类、蛇类或头顶坑洞的说法。

So the third eye center as the seat of consciousness and our intention is something that makes sense generally with what we know about the neuroscience and neurology, but there's something more to it that I think is especially important for all of you that goes beyond anything about ancient traditions or pine needles or birds or snakes and pits in the top of the head.

这就是它的含义。

And here's what it is.

大脑本身，也就是脑组织，并不含有任何感觉神经元。

The brain itself, meaning the brain tissue does not have any sensory neurons.

我这话是什么意思？

What do I mean by that?

如果我摸我的手背，我能感觉到。

Well, if I touch the top of my hand, I can feel that.

如果我想感知自己的心跳，只要用心，我就能感觉到。

If I want to sense my heartbeat, if I work at it, I can feel that.

如果我想感知胃部的内在状态——是饱了还是饿了，是酸胀还是疼痛，或者感觉舒适，等等，我都能感知到。

If I want to sense how I feel internally at the level of my stomach, is it full, is it empty, am I hungry, is it acidic, does it ache or does it feel pleasant, etcetera, I can sense that.

这是因为我们的皮肤和身体内部都有感觉神经元。

And that's because we have sensory neurons on our skin and in our body, etcetera.

我们的眼睛里也有感觉神经元，使我们能够感知外部世界。

We also have sensory neurons in our eyes that let us perceive things externally.

我们的大脑表面没有感觉神经元。

We have no sensory neurons on our brain.

这就是为什么你可以打开颅骨，在病人完全清醒的状态下进行脑部手术，用工具在里面探查，而无需对大脑本身使用麻醉剂。

This is one of the reasons why you can remove the skull and do brain surgery on somebody who's wide awake and be poking around in there and they don't need any anesthetic on the brain itself.

他们需要对切口部位进行麻醉，但不需要对大脑麻醉，因为大脑本身没有痛觉。

They need anesthetic for the incision site, but they don't need anesthetic on the brain because it has no feeling.

你有情绪，但没有感觉。

You have emotions, but there's no feeling.

通常情况下，我们感知并关注着自己所感受到的外部或内部信息，比如视觉和听觉（外感受），以及触觉等（内感受）。

So normally we are perceiving and paying attention to what we are sensing either externally, sights and sounds, again, exteroception or internally interoception, touch, etcetera.

但当我们把感知和注意力集中在身体表面之外——比如眉心后方几厘米或几英寸的地方——我们实际上是把这种注意力的聚光灯投射到了一个没有任何感觉的区域。

But by focusing our perception and our attention, not on our bodily surface like a body scan, but to a point a couple centimeters or inches behind our forehead, we essentially are bringing that attentional, that perceptual spotlight to a location in which there is no sensation.

那里什么感觉都没有。

There's nothing to feel there.

当我们闭上眼睛，专注于这个所谓的第三只眼中心——坦白说，那就是前额叶皮层——时，就会发生别的事情。

And when we do that by closing our eyes and focusing on that third eye center, which is the prefrontal cortex to be quite honest, when we do that, something else happens.

当我们在那里不去思考或感知任何感觉（因为那里根本没有感觉）时，我们的想法、情绪和记忆就会像蘑菇一样冒出来。

And what happens is when we are not thinking about and perceiving our sensations because there are none there, our thoughts and our emotions and our memories sort of mushroom up.

更准确地说，它们会像喷泉一样涌出，并在我们的感知中变得更加突出。

Better way to put it would be that they geyser up and take on more prominence in our perception.

我的意思是，通常情况下，比如我并不会去想我和这把椅子的接触点，但当我说话时，我确实和椅子接触着，那些神经元也在放电。

What I mean by this is that normally, you know, I'm not thinking about the contact point between me and this chair, but as I'm speaking, I'm in contact with the chair and those neurons are firing.

但如果我把精力和注意力集中在它们身上，它们同样会活跃，只是我的感知会更多地转向它们。

But if I focus my energy and attention on them, they're going to fire the same, but more of my perception goes there.

同样，我一直在思考，你也是，我一直在感知、回忆，并对未来充满期待，但当我把注意力集中在那个没有任何感觉的器官——也就是我的大脑时，想法、情绪和记忆（情绪指的是情感层面的感受）就会在我的意识和感知中变得愈发突出。

Similarly, I'm thinking things all the time, you are too, and I'm perceiving things all the time and I'm remembering things all the time and I'm anticipating things all the time about the future, but by focusing my attention on the one organ for which I have no sensation, that is my brain, well then thoughts, feelings, and memories, feelings meaning emotional feelings, start to grow in their prominence, in my awareness and in my perception.

因此，当你坐下来进行冥想练习时，如果这是一种闭上眼睛或专注于第三眼中心、专注于大脑的冥想方式，而不是关注身体表面或外部事物，那么你的思绪就会像浪潮一样涌来，几乎令人不堪重负。

And so this is why when you sit down to a meditative practice, if it's a meditative practice where you close your eyes or you're focused on that third eye center, where you're focused on your brain, as opposed to your bodily surface or something external to you, the thoughts seem to come by in waves and they can almost be overwhelming.

正如人们常说的，要只是静坐旁观思绪飘过，这非常困难，因为思绪实在太多了。

It's very hard to, as it's often described, just sit back and watch your thoughts go by because there are so many of them.

实际上，停止思考最好的方法是将注意力高度集中在外部事物上，或者专注于感官体验。

Actually, the best way to stop thinking is to really focus on something external or to focus on sensation.

这与其说是思考，不如说是感知感官，明白吗？

That's less thinking than it is perceiving senses, okay?

所以我不想让这个话题变得太抽象。

So I don't want this to get too abstract.

当人们谈论第三眼中心时，他们指的不是松果体，而是前额叶皮层。

When people talk about the third eye center, they're not talking about the pineal, they're talking about prefrontal cortex.

当你将注意力集中到大脑中负责引导注意力的区域时，那里没有任何可感知的东西。

And when you direct your own attention to the very area of your brain that directs attention, there's nothing to sense there.

对你而言，唯一会变得明显的是感受、情绪、想法和记忆。

The only things that will become present to you are feelings, emotions, is, thoughts, and memories.

它们往往以一种看似非常混乱的方式出现。

And they will often arrive in what seems to be a very disorganized fashion.

它们以某种混乱的方式出现的原因是，通常我们并不会以这种方式感知事物。

And the reason they arrive in somewhat disorganized fashion is because normally we just don't perceive things that way.

通常，我们会将注意力——也就是感知——分散到多个事物上，包括我们的感觉和想法。

Normally we are splitting our attention, our perception that is, to multiple things, our sensation and our thoughts.

当我们把全部感知都投入到想法中时，就会看到它们是多么混乱、飘忽不定，事实上又是多么随机和侵入性。

When we put all of our perception into our thoughts, we see how disorganized, how wandering they are and how, in fact, how random and intrusive those can be.

再次强调，随机且侵入性。

Again, random and intrusive.

之前我们讨论过的那篇论文中提到，研究人员曾问人们：你在做什么？你感觉如何？你有多快乐或不快乐？他们发现，大多数人常常陷在自己的思绪里。

And much of what we talked about in that paper earlier, the one where they asked people, what are you doing and what are you feeling and how happy or how unhappy you are, what they discovered was that most people are sort of in their head a lot.

他们并没有真正关注自己正在做的事情，这让我得出一个观点——至少基于这些数据，包括那篇论文——大多数人存在内感受偏向。

They're not really present to what they're doing, which leads me to the statement that I believe, at least based on the data, that paper included, that most people have an interoceptive bias.

他们更关注内在发生的事情，而不是外部正在发生的情况。

They're focused more on what's going on internally than they are focused on what's happening externally.

当然也有相反情况的人，但我认为这是一个问题，因为我们经常听到需要进行冥想练习，以帮助我们向内聚焦，因为我们被生活中的各种压力所牵制等等。

There are certainly people who for the opposite is true, but I think that this is an issue because we hear so often about the need to do a meditation practice that allows us to focus inward and that we're getting yanked around by all the stressors of life, etcetera, etcetera.

我们确实被生活中的各种压力和要求牵制着。

And we are, we're getting yanked around by all the stressors and demands of life.

但当我们这样做的时候，往往会非常关注自己内部发生的事情。

But as we do that, we tend to be very focused on what's happening with us.

数据明确表明，正念和觉察能够提升一个人的在场感和幸福感，但我们甚至可以说，正念和觉察不仅包括关注自身，还包括关注我们周围环境中的外部事物——比如他人在说什么、在做什么——同样能显著增强我们的幸福感和整体福祉。

The data clearly point to the fact that being mindful and being aware can enhance one's level of presence and happiness, but we can go so far as to say that being mindful and aware of what's happening, not just with us, but external to us in our immediate environment, that includes what other people are saying and doing, that also can really enhance our sense of well-being and happiness.

至少数据支持这一观点。

At least that's what the data point to.

让我们简要回顾一下到目前为止的讨论内容。

Let's briefly recap where we've been so far.

我们之前简单讨论过冥想时激活的大脑网络，包括前额叶皮层、前扣带回和岛叶。

We've talked a little bit about the brain networks that are activated during meditation, which include prefrontal cortex, ACC, the insula.

我们还讨论了内感受和外感受之间的区别，以及评估自己在这条连续体上所处位置的重要性。

We also talked about the difference between interoception and exteroception and the importance of assessing where you are along that continuum.

我应该提到，当然，你完全可能处于这条连续体的正中间。

And I should mention, of course, that you can be right in the middle of that continuum.

你可能坐下来开始冥想时，发现自己既能很好地关注外部事物，也能关注内在感受，这种情况下，我建议你选择一种偏向外感受或内感受的冥想方式。

You might sit down to do meditation and find that you are smack dab in the middle of being able to attend to things outside of you, but also attending to things inside of you, in which case I suggest doing a meditation that is either exteroceptive biased or interoceptive biased.

但正如我之前提到的，如果你发现自己更多地沉浸在思绪或身体感受中，那么建议你进行偏向外感受的冥想，以强化相关的神经回路。

But as I mentioned earlier, if you find that you are more in your head or in your body, well then focus on an exteroceptive biased meditation to build up that set of circuits.

而如果你在某一时刻更偏向于外感受，那么我鼓励你进行偏向内感受的冥想练习。

Whereas if you are more exteroceptively focused at any given moment, well, then I encourage you to do an interoceptively focused meditation practice.

正如我之前提到的，还有一个关于冥想时长的问题。

And as I mentioned earlier, there's this issue of how long to do a practice.

关于这些数据有很多不同说法，但之前我们邀请嘉宾做客时曾介绍过一些练习，比如博士推荐的十三分钟冥想。

There are a lot of different data on these, but some of the practices we've covered on this podcast before when we had guests, for instance, highlighted the thirteen minute meditation that Doctor.

纽约大学的温迪·苏兹基推广了这种方法。

Wendy Suzuki from New York University's laboratory has popularized.

他们之所以推广，是因为有一篇非常出色的文章，我们会提供链接，该文章显示，每天进行十三分钟的传统第三眼内感受偏向冥想——专注于呼吸和直接位于前额后方的部位，或两者兼顾，连续八周（该研究中为八周，也可能更短）能显著改善情绪、提升睡眠质量、增强认知能力与专注力、改善记忆，研究中对大量具体指标进行了评估。

And they popularized it because they have a wonderful paper that we will provide a link to, which shows that a daily thirteen minute meditation, which is of the traditional third eye interoceptively biased, focus on breathing and focus on that location directly behind one's forehead or both, that meditation done daily for about eight weeks, maybe shorter, but in that study, eight weeks, greatly improved mood, improved ability to sleep, improved cognitive ability and focus, memory, a huge number of metrics were looked at very specifically.

这是一个非常棒的方法。

So that's a terrific one.

你可能会问自己，是否必须完成完整的十三分钟？

And you may be asking yourself, do you need to do the full thirteen minutes?

五分钟或三分钟可以吗？

Could you get away with five minutes or three minutes?

我的实验室已经证明，每天五分钟的冥想在减轻压力、改善睡眠等方面具有益处。

Well, my laboratory has shown benefits in stress reduction, improvement in sleep, etcetera, with a five minute a day meditation.

然而，在试图确定你应该冥想多长时间时，我会问自己几个问题。

However, in trying to establish how long you should meditate, I would ask yourself a couple of questions.

首先，你能坚持执行的冥想方式是什么？

First of all, what is a practice that you can do consistently?

所谓持续，并不一定意味着每天都要做。

And by consistently, that doesn't necessarily mean every day.

如果你诚实地回答关于持续性的问题，发现你每周只能进行一次冥想，那么我会建议你适当延长每次的时间，比如十分钟、十五分钟，甚至三十分钟。

If you answer the question about consistency honestly and you find that you can only do one meditation session per week, well, then I would encourage you to go a little bit longer, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, maybe even thirty minutes.

再次强调，无论你是在关注内在感知还是外在感知，你都必须在冥想过程中反复重新集中注意力。

Again, understanding that you're going to have to refocus repeatedly throughout that meditation, regardless of whether or not you're focusing on internal perceptions external perceptions.

然而，如果你每天都能抽出五到十分钟或十五分钟，并且每天都进行冥想，那么你在冥想时长上就拥有更多的灵活性。

If however, you can set aside five or ten or fifteen minutes per day and you can meditate every day, well, then I think you have a little bit more flexibility in terms of how long you meditate.

也许某天只练三分钟，第二天练一分钟，第三天练十分钟，如此往复。

Maybe it's three minutes one day, one minute the next day, ten minutes the next, and so on and so forth.

就像锻炼一样，关键在于持续性，这一点在《改变的特质》一书中所涵盖的所有数据中都得到了证实。

Just like with exercise, the key component is consistency and this is born out in all the data that's covered in altered traits.

自该书出版以来，所有最新研究也表明了同样的结论：持续性才是关键。

It's also born out in all the recent studies that have come out since that book was published, consistency is key.

所以，请问问自己你能坚持做什么，同时也不要给自己施加压力，认为每次冥想都必须保持相同的时长。

So ask yourself what you can do consistently and also don't necessarily burden yourself with always having to do the same amount or duration of meditation.

所以之前我们决定将冥想练习进行分解或精细切分，而我们确实一直在这么做。

So earlier we decided we were going to parse or fine slice the meditation practice, and indeed we've been doing that.

我们讨论过内感受与外感受的偏向，也一直在探讨你将感知或注意力集中在何处。

We've talked about interoceptive versus exteroceptive bias, and we've been talking about where you place your perception or your focus.

冥想的另一个关键要素是你所采用的呼吸模式。

Another key component of meditation is the pattern of breathing that you embrace.

事实上，你在冥想过程中所采用的呼吸模式本身就可以成为一种独立的冥想形式。

In fact, the pattern of breathing that you embrace during your meditation practice can itself be its own form of meditation.

我这话是什么意思呢？

What do I mean by that?

如今，我们经常听到关于呼吸练习的讨论。

Well, these days we hear a lot about breath work.

在过去五到十年里，呼吸练习的流行程度显著上升，这背后有多个原因。

Breath work has really grown in popularity in the last five, ten years, and there are a number of reasons for that.

首先，我认为我们应该感谢温·霍夫，或者我们可以恰当地称他为伟大的温·霍夫吗？

First of all, I think we need to credit Wim Hof or can we call him, I think appropriately, the great Wim Hof?

当然，在Wim之前就有人在进行有意识的呼吸练习并谈论它，但大约在2015年左右，Wim Hof才开始因其一种特定的呼吸方式而广为人知并流行起来，这种呼吸方式在实验室中被称为循环性过度通气。

Certainly there were people before Wim who were doing deliberate breath work and talking about deliberate breath work, but it was really about 2015 or so that Wim Hof started to grow in recognition and popularity for a particular style of breathing, which in laboratory we call cyclic hyperventilation.

我知道从古老传统中还有其他名称来称呼这种呼吸法。

I know there are other names for it that come from ancient traditions.

他本人或别人以他的名字命名了这种呼吸法，称为Wim Hof呼吸法。

He named it or people named it after him, Wim Hof.

对于不了解的人，Wim Hof是一位荷兰人，以在刻意低温暴露方面创下多项世界纪录而闻名，包括在冰山下游泳、在冰中埋至颈部时间最长等，但他同样精通通过特定呼吸方式来应对和驾驭这些挑战。

Wim Hof, for those of you that don't know, is a Dutchman who is known to hold many world records for deliberate cold exposure, including swimming under icebergs, longest period of time buried in ice up to his neck, etcetera, but who's also expert in the use of breathing in particular ways in order to manage and maneuver through those challenges.

他开始谈论不同的呼吸模式，特别是循环性过度通气——深而有意识的呼吸，即大吸气、大呼气，再大吸气、大呼气。

And he started speaking about different patterns of breath work, in particular, the use of cyclic hyperventilation, deep deliberate breathing, so big inhales, exhales, big inhales, exhales.

在实验室中，我们再次将这种模式称为循环性过度通气。

In the laboratory, again, call that cyclic hyperventilation.

无论是针对Wim本人的研究，还是我的实验室及其他实验室对普通人群的研究都清楚表明，这种循环性过度通气——即有意识地反复深呼吸，通常通过鼻子吸气、嘴巴呼气——会引发大量肾上腺素释放，或促使大脑和身体分泌肾上腺素。

It's very clear from studies both done on whims specifically, but on the general population as well by my lab and other labs, that that pattern of cyclic hyperventilation of deliberately breathing deeply and repetitively, typically in through the nose, out through the mouth generates a lot of adrenaline or causes adrenaline release from the brain and body.

它会升高体温，确实能提高身体温度，但肾上腺素的释放会对大脑和身体的状态产生多种影响。

It heats up the body, indeed it raises body temperature, but the liberation of adrenaline does a number of things to shift the state of the brain and body.

这基本上就是温·霍夫呼吸法，尽管温·霍夫呼吸法，或者有些人称之为图莫呼吸法或循环过度通气，并不属于大多数冥想实践中所讨论的典型呼吸模式，至少在研究文献中是如此。

That more or less is what Wim Hof breathing is, although Wim Hof breathing, or some people will call it Tummo breathing or cyclic hyperventilation, is not a pattern of breathing typical of most meditations that have been discussed, at least not in the research literature.

这并不是说循环过度通气不能融入冥想练习，但温·霍夫呼吸法，也就是循环过度通气或图莫呼吸，通常被视为一种独立的练习，明白吗？

Now that's not to say that cyclic hyperventilation can't be incorporated into a meditation practice, but Wim Hof breathing, AKA cyclic hyperventilation tummo is typically considered its own practice, okay?

一种与冥想分离的独立呼吸练习。

Its own breath work practice divorced from meditation.

它可能包含冥想的成分，但通常并不被讨论为冥想或冥想的一部分。

It might have a meditative component, but it's not often discussed as meditation or as part of meditation.

更常见的是，冥想练习涉及放慢呼吸，这可以表现为吸气、呼气、吸气、呼气的循环模式，这也是循环的，或者在某些情况下是两次吸气后一次呼气。

More typically, a meditation practice involves slowing one's breathing and this could be in the form of cyclic breathing of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, which is cyclic, or in some cases doubling up on inhales and then exhaling.

所以是吸气、吸气、呼气，吸气、吸气、呼气，或者控制吸气、屏息、呼气、屏息的时长，也就是所谓的箱式呼吸，其中吸气、屏息、呼气和屏息的时长都相等。

So inhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, exhale, or controlling the duration of inhale, breath hold, exhale, breath hold, repeat, so called box breathing where the inhale, the hold, the exhale, and the hold are of equivalent durations.

各种不同的呼吸模式，如缓慢的循环呼吸、箱式呼吸，或吸气三到六秒、屏息两秒、呼气七秒的节奏，无论采用哪种呼吸节奏，大多数冥想练习中都有一个共同趋势，那就是放慢或有意识地控制呼吸。

Any number of different breathing patterns, slow cyclic breathing, box breathing, a cadence of three to six seconds in, holding for two seconds and seven seconds out, Regardless of what cadence of breathing one uses, there is a tendency during most meditative practices to slow one's breathing and or control one's breathing in deliberate fashion.

这至关重要，因为当我们默认呼吸时，也就是不关注吸气与呼气的时长比例，不主动呼气时，通常我们只是被动地呼气，但主动地吸气。

This is essential because when we default our breathing, that is when we don't pay attention to how long we are inhaling relative to our exhales, when we don't deliberately exhale, that is normally we just passively exhale, but we actively inhale.

我再重复一遍，通常当我们不刻意关注呼吸时，我们会主动吸气——大脑会发出指令让肺部扩张，然后被动地呼气；但在许多呼吸练习或冥想练习中，我们实际上也会主动呼气。

I repeat that normally when we're not thinking about breathing, we deliberately inhale, there's a motor command that's sent to inflate the lungs, and then we passively exhale, but in many breathwork practices or meditation practices, we actually actively exhale as well.

当我们这样做的时候，会发生很多事情。

Well, when we do that, a number of things happen.

首先，这迫使我们进入内感受状态，为什么？

First of all, it forces us into interoception, why?

因为膈肌——这个帮助推动肺部运动、决定呼吸节奏或深度的肌肉（比如在箱式呼吸或刻意缓慢呼吸中）——位于我们体内，因此当我们关注呼吸时，大多数情况下我们关注的并不是空气从鼻腔或口腔排出的细节（或许有一点），而更常是被迫或自然地关注膈肌、腹部的起伏，或胸部的升降。

Because the diaphragm, the muscle that helps move the lungs essentially and create a specific cadence of breathing or depth of breathing as one would with box breathing or deliberately slow breathing, well, that muscle resides inside of us and so when we focus on our breathing, more often than not, we aren't focused on the actual air leaving our nasal passages or mouth, maybe a little bit, but more typically we are forced to focus or we just default to focusing on the movement of our diaphragm or of our belly or the rising and falling of our chest.

所有这些都说明，通过刻意关注呼吸，我们转向了内感受。

All of that is to say that by deliberately focusing on our breathing, we shift to interoception.

因此，呼吸以及特定的呼吸模式在冥想中是伴随发生的，但反过来也可以说，当我们专注于呼吸时，我们会转向内感受，而远离外部事件。

So breathing and specific patterns of breathing sort of along for the ride in meditation, but the reverse can also be said that when we focus on our breathing, we shift to interoception and away from external events.

这并不意味着我们不能继续关注外部事件，我们依然可以感知外部世界，但至少我们注意力的一部分会转向内感受。

Doesn't mean we can't still pay attention to external events, we can still exterocept, but at least some portion of our perception of our attention shifts to interoception.

当然，我们必须呼吸才能生存。

So we of course need to breathe to stay alive.

我们必须至少每隔一段时间呼吸一次才能维持生命。

We have to breathe at least every so often in order to stay alive.

因此，呼吸当然是任何冥想练习的一部分，就像它也是任何生活活动甚至睡眠的一部分一样。

So of course, breathing is part of any meditative practice, just like it's part of any living activity, even sleep.

但如果冥想的第一步是利用前额叶皮层有意识地将我们的感知引导到身体表面或内部、或身体外部、或两者兼有的特定位置，但通常只关注其中之一，那么我们可以说冥想的第二个要素是呼吸模式，我们可以问自己：它是否应该、以及是否必须是有意识的？

But if the first component of meditation is to direct our perception in a deliberate way using that prefrontal cortex to a specific location either on the surface of or within our body or external to our body or both, but typically one or the other, then we can say that the second element of a meditative practice is the pattern of breathing and we can ask ourselves, can it and should it be deliberate or not?

换句话说，我们是否只是默认随其自然地呼吸？

In other words, do we just default to however we happen to be breathing?

还是应该有意识地控制？

Or should it be deliberate?

也就是说，我们是否应该控制呼吸的深度和节奏？

That is, should we be controlling the depth and the cadence?

我相信，基于我们对特定呼吸模式如何改变大脑状态的了解，在冥想中控制呼吸模式可以带来极大的益处，无论你关注的是身体内的内感受感知，还是外部的外感受感知。

And I do believe that based on what we know about the capacity for specific patterns of breathing to shift our brain state, that controlling one's pattern of breathing during meditation can be enormously useful and that is true regardless of whether or not one is focusing on interoceptive perceptions within our body or exteroceptive perceptions.

这就引出了一个问题：冥想时我们应该如何呼吸？

So that raises the question, how should we breathe during meditation?

当然，这里没有一个放之四海而皆准的简单规则，但有一些呼吸生理学的基本原则，能帮助我们找到最适合自身目标的冥想方式。

Well, there's again, no simple one size fits all rule there, but there are some general rules of respiration physiology that can help us access and develop a meditation practice that is going to best serve our goals.

由于这集并不是专门讲呼吸的（我们之后会做一集专门讲），我只想先给你讲讲呼吸如何影响你的大脑和身体状态。

And since this is not an episode all about respiration, and we will do one, but I simply want to give you the basics of what respiration can do to shift your brain and body state.

但在那之前，我想给出一个非常具体的建议：当你坐下来冥想时，或者如果你选择走路冥想，那也没问题。

Before I do that, however, I want to give a very specific instruction, which is when you sit down to meditate, or if you're going to do your meditation walking, that's fine too.

我应该说，当你即将开始冥想练习时，你需要问自己一个问题。

I should just say when you are about to begin your meditative practice, you need to ask yourself a question.

你是希望在冥想结束后比现在更放松，还是希望比现在更清醒？

Do you want to be more relaxed than you are at present or do you want to be more alert than you are at present when you exit the meditation practice?

你是想让自己平静下来，还是想变得更警觉？

Do you want to calm down or do you want to become more alert?

这是个简单的问题，你可以每次冥想时自行决定，甚至可以在一次冥想过程中调整。但就像你需要判断自己是更偏向内感知还是外感知一样，你也需要问自己：我是否需要或希望在冥想结束时更平静，还是更清醒？

Simple question, you can decide from session to session, you could even switch within a session, but just as you need to assess whether or not you are leaning more interoceptively or exteroceptively, you also need to ask yourself, do you need to calm down or want to calm down or do you want to be more alert at the end of your meditation session?

或者，你也许希望先进入深度放松状态，然后在结束时变得更有警觉性。

Or maybe you want to go into a state of deep relaxation and then exit with more alertness.

实现这一点的方法非常简单，就是通过呼吸练习和特定的呼吸模式。

The way to do that is very simple, using breath work and specific patterns of breathing.

以下是基于我所了解的所有呼吸生理学所支持的一般规律。

And here's the general rule that is supported by all the respiration physiology that I'm aware of.

我在这里做了过度简化，但这是有意为之，以便你能轻松应用这一方法。

I'm oversimplifying here, but I'm oversimplifying intentionally so you can simply apply the tool.

正如我之前提到的，我们将来会专门做一期关于呼吸生理学的节目。

And then as I mentioned before, we will do an episode all about respiration physiology in the future.

本质上，如果你的吸气时间更长或更有力，那么你往往会变得更加警觉，或者让你的大脑和身体转向更警觉的状态。

Essentially, if your inhales are longer and or more vigorous than your exhales, then you will tend to be more alert or you'll shift your brain and body towards a state of more alertness.

这仅仅基于像Prebotsinger核和旁面部核这样的神经回路如何调控呼吸生理和警觉性，它们的工作方式就是这样。

This is simply based on the way that the neural circuits like the Prebotsinger nucleus and the parafacial nucleus, they govern respiration physiology and alertness, simply the way they work.

它们会与释放去甲肾上腺素、去甲肾上腺素等物质的大脑区域进行沟通。

They communicate with brain areas that release noradrenaline, norepinephrine, etcetera.

相反，如果你强调呼气时间更长或更有力，相对于吸气而言，你会更容易放松，从而平复你的神经系统。

In contrast, if you emphasize longer duration and or more vigorous exhales relative to your inhales, you will tend to relax more, you will tend to calm your nervous system.

你现在可能会说，好吧，我明白如何让吸气比呼气更长，但如何让吸气更有力呢？

Now you might be saying, okay, I understand what it is to make an inhale longer than my exhale, but how do I make it more vigorous?

这Simply意味着以更快的速度将更多空气吸入肺部，而不是允许自己缓慢呼出这些空气。

Well, it simply means drawing more air into your lungs more quickly than you allow yourself to exhale that air.

因此，一种以吸气为主的呼吸练习示例是：吸气时有主动强调，且略长于被动的呼气。

So an example of inhale biased breath work would be, so there's an active emphasis on the inhale and it's a little bit longer than the exhale, which is passive.

相反，如果你想放松，就需要延长呼气时间，使其相对于吸气更长，甚至可以进行主动呼气。

Conversely, if you want to relax, then you want to extend your exhales relative to your inhales and you can even make them active exhales.

所以它可以是吸气，然后呼气。

So it can be inhale, exhale.

这会将你的神经系统导向更平静的状态。

That's going to shift your nervous system in a direction of more calm.

当然，如果你希望保持在警觉与平静之间的平衡点——因为这两者是同一跷跷板或同一连续体的两面——如果你想在冥想结束时仍保持与开始时相同的警觉与平静水平，那么你就应该让吸气和呼气的时长保持相对均衡。

And of course, if you would like to stay at the level of alertness, AKA calmness, because those are two sides of the same seesaw or the same continuum, If you'd like to be right where you're at at the end of your meditation as where you started, at least in terms of levels of alertness and calmness, well, then you would just keep your inhales and your exhales relatively balanced in terms of duration.

现在，像箱式呼吸或温霍夫呼吸法这类方法，通常包括25到30次深吸深呼，然后彻底呼出所有空气，屏住呼吸15到60秒，再重复，有时也会加入吸气后屏息。

Now, the introduction keep of things like breath holds with box breathing or Wim Hof breathing, typically it's 25 or 30 deep inhale, exhales, deep inhale, exhales, and then exhale all your air, hold your breath for fifteen to sixty seconds and then repeat and so on, sometimes some inhales and holds.

嗯，这本身就是一个专门的领域，但就冥想而言，关键是要明白，如果你要进行复杂的呼吸练习，那么根据设计，它必然会将你的大部分注意力转移到呼吸练习上，尤其是当它不是循环呼吸时，即不是吸气后接着呼气。

Well, that's a whole business into itself, but for sake of meditation, the key thing to understand is that if you are going to do a complicated breathing practice, it will by design, necessity shift much of your attention to the breathing practice, especially if it's not cyclic, if it's not inhales, follow exhales.

循环呼吸是指吸气总是紧接着呼气，呼气又紧接着吸气，如此循环往复。

Cyclic breathing is where inhales always follow exhales, follow inhales, follow exhales.

这实际上依赖于一个特定的大脑中枢，称为前包钦格复合体，由加州大学洛杉矶分校的杰克·费尔德曼发现。

It actually relies on a specific brain center called the Prebotsinger Complex discovered by Jack Feldman at UCLA.

他之前曾作为嘉宾出现在这个播客中。

He was a guest on this podcast previously.

然而，如果你采用双重吸气的方式，即两次吸气后一次呼气——这是本实验室深入研究过的一种呼吸模式——那么这依赖于另一个不同的脑中枢，即面旁核。

However, if you are doubling up on your inhale, so two inhales and then an exhale, a pattern of breathing my laboratory has studied extensively, well, then that relies on a different brain center, the parafacial nucleus.

关键在于，如果你正在进行非周期性呼吸，或者刻意强调吸气或呼气、又或是吸气和呼气的力度等等，那么你的一部分注意力将必然用于确保遵循该呼吸练习。

The point is that if you are engaging in noncyclic breathing or you are deliberately emphasizing inhales or exhales or the vigor of inhales and exhales, etcetera, well then some portion of your attention will be devoted to making sure that you follow that breathing practice.

我们天生就非常擅长进入周期性呼吸模式，此时我们的注意力可以漂移到其他事物上，无论是内感受还是外感受都无关紧要，我们可能只是沉浸于身体的感受，或是房间里看到或听到的某些事物等等。

We are very good at going into cyclic breathing practices by default and our attention can drift to other things, interoceptive or exteroceptive, doesn't matter, we can just drift into how our body feels or something we see or hear in the room, etcetera.

当我们专注于呼吸，且呼吸模式是非周期性的，或者以某种方式变得复杂——因为它涉及有意识的自主指令（再次强调，这些指令来自前额叶皮层所谓的自上而下机制）——那么这种设计本身就要求我们将一部分（通常是相当大一部分）注意力投入到呼吸练习本身。

When we are focused on our breathing and the breathing pattern is noncyclic or complex in some way in that it involves deliberate voluntary commands, again, from those so called top down mechanisms of the prefrontal cortex, well, that by design requires some portion, often a significant portion of our attention to be devoted to the breathing practice itself.

这意味着什么？

So what does this mean?

这意味着呼吸练习本身可以是一种冥想，而冥想也可以包含呼吸练习，但你应该明白，呼吸模式越刻意、越不自然，你就越难专注于其他事情。

This means that breath work itself can be a form of meditation and meditation can involve breath work, but one should know that the more deliberate and unnatural that pattern of breathing is, the less you will be able to focus on other things.

但这不一定是一件坏事，你实际上可以利用这一点。

Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, you can actually leverage this.

例如，如果你是一个特别容易陷入自己思绪中的人，对吧？我们之前讨论过这一点，当你处于某种状态，真的被困在自己的头脑里，想要摆脱它时，那么你所做的冥想练习应该侧重于外向型注意力。

So for instance, if you're somebody who's very much caught in your own head, right, we talked about this earlier, you happen to be at, or you're in a moment where you're really stuck in your head and you want to get out of your head, well, then that meditation practice that you do really should be focused on exteroceptive bias.

你应该专注于你外部的某样东西。

You should really focus on something external to you.

我建议你采用一种自然的循环呼吸模式，即吸气跟随呼气，呼气跟随吸气，如此循环。

And I would encourage you to use a natural cyclic pattern of breathing where inhales follow exhales follow inhales follow exhales.

然而，如果你发现自己被周围发生的事情所牵绊，想要让自己安定下来——这说法比较随意，并非科学术语。

If however, you are finding that you're sort of caught in the landscape of things happening around you and you want to to ground yourself as it's sometimes called, that's a loose language, not a scientific language.

我知道有一种叫做‘接地’的练习，人们总是写信问我：接地真的有效吗？赤脚踩在土地上，利用磁场和重力场，这些确实存在，但所谓‘接地’，说实话，科学依据并不多。

I know there's this practice of grounding and that's a whole thing, people always writing to me is grounding a real thing, walking barefoot on the earth and magnetic fields and gravitational fields, well, is real, but grounding, there isn't a lot of science for it to be frank.

不过，赤脚走在地上确实感觉很舒服。

It does feel nice to walk on the ground, however.

但如果你经常感到自己被外界拉走，或在某个时刻想把注意力拉回身体、让自己平静下来，那么我建议你使用一种有意识的、略显不自然或非默认的呼吸模式，这种模式必然会迫使你关注体内的感受。

But if you are somebody who's kind of feeling pulled out of yourself a lot or in a moment and you want to bring your awareness into your body and sort of calm down, well, then I would encourage you to yes, use a deliberate, somewhat unnatural or non default pattern of breathing, which by definition will force you to attend to what's going on interoceptively.

再次说明，我不记得以前有任何地方如此详细地讨论过这一点。

Again, I'm not aware of any place that this has been discussed in detail such as this before.

如果有关于这方面的研究文献，请告诉我。

If there is a research literature on this, please let me know.

我的实验室一直在深入研究这个问题。

My laboratory has been working on this extensively.

我一直在寻找新的同事和合作者。

I'm always looking for new colleagues and collaborators.

我们，指的是斯皮格尔医生。

We, meaning Doctor.

大卫·斯皮格尔，他是催眠领域的专家，曾做客《休伯曼实验室播客》，也是我在斯坦福精神病学系的同事。

David Spiegel, who's an expert in hypnosis, again, who's been a guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast and my colleague at Stanford Psychiatry.

事实上，他是我们精神科的副系主任，是催眠领域的世界权威，之前也来过这个播客。

In fact, he's our associate chair of psychiatry, world expert in hypnosis, he's been on this podcast before.

我们有一个活跃的研究项目，专注于这些问题。

We have an active research program focused on these issues.

我们非常相信，呼吸练习本身就可以是一种冥想。

We are very much of the belief that a breath work practice itself can be meditative.

冥想练习可以包含呼吸，但冥想越专注于呼吸本身，其内感受倾向就越强。

A meditation practice can include breathing, but the more that that meditative practice focuses on the breathing itself, the more interoceptive biased it will be.

现在，非常重要的是要理解，一种以内感受为导向的呼吸练习会产生特定的效果，即增强你的内感受觉知。

Now, it's very important to understand that an interoceptive biased breathwork practice will have a specific effect, which is to make you more interoceptively aware.

如果你回想起本集前面的内容，对许多人来说，这将是一件好事，也是他们积极寻求或应该寻求的，因为它能帮助人们提高觉知，例如，当他们感到压力却直到一天结束时才意识到，只是感到精疲力尽，那么全天候增强内感受觉知会非常有益。

And if you think back to earlier in the episode, for many people, that will be a wonderful thing and something that they are actively seeking or ought to seek because it can help people gain awareness, for instance, if they're stressed and they're not realizing it till the end of the day, they're just exhausted, more interoceptive awareness throughout the day can be very beneficial.

但如果你是一个过度关注身体感觉的人，那么增强外感受觉知就很重要。

If however you are somebody who is overly focused on your bodily sensations, well, then more exteroceptive awareness is important.

这引出了一个更宏大的主题，但我认为这个主题突显了：对于那些利用冥想应对特定挑战——尤其是情绪、睡眠或专注力方面挑战的人——哪些类型的冥想练习最为合适。

And this brings us to a yet larger theme, but a theme that I think really emphasizes what particular types of meditative practices are going to be best for certain especially people who are using meditation to combat certain challenges, in particular mood based challenges or sleep based challenges or focus based challenges.

我在这期节目中还没有列出冥想的所有积极益处，但它们非常多、非常多、非常多。

I haven't listed off all the positive benefits of meditation yet in this episode, but they are many, many, many.

事实上，现在已有数以万计的科学研究表明，例如，冥想对改善睡眠有明确的益处。

In fact, there are now tens of thousands of scientific studies showing, for instance, there are known benefits of doing meditation for enhancing sleep.

规律的冥想练习对提升专注力有明确的益处。

There are known benefits of a regular meditation practice for enhancing focus.

规律的冥想练习对减少炎症细胞因子、甚至改善癌症预后、减轻疼痛、改善情绪、缓解多动症和临床诊断的创伤后应激障碍等症状，效果显著，不胜枚举。

There are known benefits of a regular meditation practice for reducing inflammatory cytokines, even improving outcomes in cancer, reducing pain, improving mood, reducing the symptoms of ADHD and clinically diagnosed ACE and on and on and on.

而且，与其今天详述所有这些精彩的研究——它们基本都指向同一个结论：即使非常短暂的规律冥想练习，也能对我们的健康产生巨大甚至超乎预期的益处，甚至超过某些药物治疗的效果——

And again, rather than focus on all those beautiful studies today, which all basically point to the fact that some meditation practice done regularly, even if it's very brief, has tremendous, even outsized benefits on our health, even relative to some drug treatments that's been shown.

我更关注的是，当我们进行冥想练习时，大脑和身体会发生哪些变化，更重要的是，究竟什么才真正构成了一种冥想练习？

Rather than focus on all that, I've been more focused on what sorts of brain and body changes occur when we do a meditation practice and perhaps more importantly, what really constitutes a meditation practice?

我们有一个关于感知连续体的概念。

We have this thing about a continuum of perception.

我们现在也在讨论呼吸。

We also now are talking about breathing.

现在我想提出另一个组成部分，我们可以称之为第三个主要组成部分。

Well, there's another component that I'd like to raise now, which we could say is the third major component.

如果我之前提到的第一个是内感受与外感受的偏向或连续体。

If the first one that I raised was interoceptive versus exteroceptive bias or continuum.

第二个是呼吸，是默认呼吸还是刻意呼吸？

Second being breathing, is it going to be default or deliberate breathing?

是自然的节奏还是非自然的节奏？

Is it going be natural cadence or unnatural cadence?

同样，没有对错之分，这完全取决于你的目标。

Again, no right or wrong, it just depends on what your goal is.

还有第三个组成部分。

There's a third component.

这是一个尚未在文献中正式确立的组成部分，但斯皮格尔医生和我正在努力通过研究将其系统化，并将在即将发布的综述中提供相关链接。

This is a component, again, that hasn't really been formalized in the literature, but that Doctor.

斯皮格尔医生和我正在努力通过研究将其系统化，并将在即将发布的综述中提供相关链接。

Spiegel and I are working hard to formalize through some research and through an upcoming review that we will provide links to once it's out.

这是一个独立的连续体，即内感受与解离之间的连续体。

And that's a separate continuum, which is the continuum between interoception and dissociation.

现在你们都知道什么是内感受了，但大多数人可能并不了解或没有意识到什么是解离。

So now all of you know what interoception is, but most people probably don't know or don't realize what dissociation is.

我们经常听到解离这个词，有时也被称为离解，有些人发音为解离。

Often we hear about dissociation, sometimes called disassociation, some people pronounce it dissociation.

猜猜怎么着？

Guess what?

尽管我多次被纠正这些发音，但我还是咨询了在解离或离解领域有专长的同事们，猜猜怎么着？

Despite being corrected many times for each of those pronunciations, I checked with my colleagues who are experts in dissociation or disassociation, and guess what?

它们是一回事，tomato、tomahto，potato、potahto，都一样。

They're the same thing, tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto.

所以我会使用‘解离’这个词。

So I'm going to say dissociation.

有些人会说‘离解’，就像我说‘关联’一样，其他人则会说‘解离’，明白吗？

Some people will say disassociation, like I associate, other people will say I dissociate, okay?

这两者实际上指的是同一件事。

Both of those refer to essentially the same thing.

dissociation 通常在负面事件的背景下被提及，事实上，dissociation 不幸地（或者更准确地说，适应性地）与创伤事件相关联。

Dissociation is often talked about in the context of a negative event and indeed dissociation is unfortunately, or I should say is adaptively associated with traumatic events.

特别是遭遇暴力或性创伤时，人们报告在经历过程中或回忆经历时感到脱离身体或脱离体验。

In particular, violent or sexual trauma, people report feeling out of body or out of the experience during the experience or during a recollection of the experience.

dissociation 也被描述为人们遭遇严重事故，或亲眼目睹他人被杀时的状态。

Dissociation has also been described in terms of people who are in a traumatic accident or they see someone killed right in front of them.

急救人员在到达现场时也会谈到自己出现了 dissociation 的状态。

First responders will talk about dissociating when they arrive on a scene.

我不想在这里提供令人不适的画面，因为我知道很多人对这些内容比较敏感，但想象一下到达车祸现场，看到满目疮痍、身体严重损毁的场景。

I don't want to provide gruesome imagery here because I know people can be pretty sensitive to this, but showing up on the scene of a car crash and just seeing carnage or incredible damage to bodies or this sort of thing.

dissociation 位于与 interoception 相对的一端。

Dissociation lies at the opposite end of a continuum with interoception.

之前我说过，interoception 位于与 exteroception 相对的一端，但它同时也位于与 dissociation 相对的一端。

Now, earlier I said that interoception is on the opposite end of a continuum with exteroception, but it also is on the opposite end of a continuum with dissociation.

我们可以提供一些更清晰的定义，让这一点变得明明白白。

We can provide some better definitions perhaps to make this crystal clear.

在这里，我实际上是在引用一篇即将发表的综述。

And here I'm actually reading from an upcoming review.

我之所以敢直接引用，是因为我是这篇综述的作者之一，但无论如何，内感受指的是神经系统——即大脑与身体之间的连接——感知、解释、整合并调节来自身体内部的信号，从而在意识和无意识层面持续地映射你的内在状态。

I feel comfortable reading from it because I'm an author on the review, but nonetheless, interoception refers to a process by which your nervous system, meaning your brain and connections with your body, senses, interprets, integrates, and regulates signals originating from within the body and thereby provides moment to moment mapping of your internal landscape at both a conscious and unconscious level.

好吧，这堆词其实就是在描述感知皮肤表面或身体内部发生什么的过程。

Okay, that's a lot of words to describe basically the process of perceiving what's happening at the level of the surface of your skin or inward.

解离可以被看作是内感受的反面。

Dissociation can be thought of as the opposite of interoception.

它表现为对身体的觉知缺失，或意识与身体体验和觉知的脱节。

It's a lack of bodily awareness or a removal of one's conscious experience from one's bodily experience and awareness.

同样，这通常是在创伤情境下被讨论的，但如果我们思考健康、心理健康和身体健康，那么在内感受与解离这个连续体上，最佳的状态其实是居于中间位置。

Again, this is most often talked about in the context of something traumatic, but really, if we think about health and mental health and physical health, the optimal place to reside on the continuum between interoception and dissociation is somewhere in the middle.

我们不希望与生活体验脱节，但也不希望世界上每一件事都剧烈地影响我们的心率和呼吸。

We don't want to be dissociated from life's experiences, but we also don't want everything that happens in the world to profoundly impact our heart rate and our breathing.

我们会被每一次经历牵着走，明白吗？

We'd be yanked around by every experience, okay?

有些时候，被拉入某种体验中是我们渴望并想要的，比如看一部我们想看的电影，或者临床催眠、坠入爱河，这些美好的体验，有时也包括一些悲伤的体验，对吧？

There are instances in which being yanked around or pulled into an experience is something that we desire and want, like seeing a movie that we want to see, or for instance, clinical hypnosis or falling in love, wonderful experiences, and sometimes also sad experiences, right?

能够感受自己的情绪，取决于生活中的事件，这很重要，但过于疏离，或者过于敏感——即对每一件事都反应过度，也同样有问题。

Being able to feel one's feelings depending on life's events is important, but being too dissociated or being too feeling, that is feeling so much in response to everything that happens is also problematic.

有些人存在一种被称为叙事距离感的困难。

There are certain people, for instance, that have challenges with what's called narrative distancing.

比如，他们看到电影里有人被打，几乎会条件反射地躲闪，就好像自己被打了一样。

That is they see someone in a movie getting hit and they almost flinch as if they are getting hit.

他们看到电影里的人害怕或开心时，也会感到害怕或开心，仿佛自己完全沉浸其中，有点太过投入了。

They see someone who's scared or happy in a movie and they feel scared or happy in a way that seems like they're along for the ride a little bit too much.

这一点很重要，因为它涉及到了之前开头提到的能力——那个前扣带回皮层和脑岛，还记得吗？

This is important because what it speaks to is the ability for that, remember way back at the beginning of the episode, that ACC, that anterior cingulate cortex and the insula?

我们拥有前额叶皮层，它能说：嘿，让我们理性一点。

We've got a prefrontal cortex that can say, Hey, let's be rational.

那个电影里快乐或悲伤的人，你环境中正在崩溃大哭的人，是的，他们感到悲伤，对此保持同情甚至共情很重要，但别被这种情绪牵扯得太深，以至于迷失了自己。

That movie, that person who's happy or sad, that person in your environment who's breaking down crying, yes, they're sad, it's important to be sympathetic, maybe even empathic towards them, but let's not get pulled into the experience so much that we lose ourselves.

当然，你的大脑中还有一些区域也在依赖——这里我用的是隐喻——它们依赖于前扣带回皮层，说：‘嘿，我关心的人不开心，我也应该不开心。’

And then of course there are areas of your brain that are also leaning on, and here I'm using metaphor, but they're leaning on the insulin ACC and saying, Hey, there's somebody that I care about that's upset, I'm also going to be upset.

或者，我关心的人很快乐，我也就会更快乐。

Or somebody I care about is happy, I'm also going to be happier.

他们感到害怕，所以我也就会感到害怕。

They're scared, so I'm also going to be scared.

因此，这是一场拉锯战：一方面我们认识到自己是独立的个体，另一方面我们又自然地渴望与他人的经历以及周围环境产生联结。

So it's a push pull between our recognition that we are each distinct entities and also of course the very healthy desire to be attached to others' experiences and the experiences around us.

那么，我为什么还要提出另一个连续体呢？

So why am I raising yet another continuum, right?

我们已经有一个关于内感受和外感受觉知的连续体了。

We already have the one continuum of interoceptive, extraoceptive awareness.

如果我们想思考冥想如何促进我们的心理健康和专注力，就可以构建一个非常独特的心理模型，将这个内感受性分离连续体纳入其中。

Well, if we want to think about how meditation can serve our mental health and our ability to focus, there's a very particular mental model that we can arrive at that incorporates this interoceptive dissociative continuum.

再次强调，如果你极度关注内在感受，你会感受到身体里的所有感觉，而这些感觉几乎完全构成了你的全部体验，如果你已经深入这个连续体的话。

Again, if you are extremely interoceptive, you're feeling everything in your body and those feelings in your body nearly completely account for all of your experience if you're that far into the continuum.

在解离的一端，你能看到正在发生的事情，也能对这些事情做出反应，但你的身体对此的反应基本上被关闭了。

On the dissociative end of things, you can see what's going on, you can react to what's going on, but your bodily response to that is essentially shut down.

你可能完全瘫痪、停滞不动，也可能仍在进行某些行为，但内心却是解离的状态。

You could either be paralyzed shut down, so in kind of no movement, or you could still be engaging in behaviors, but you're dissociated.

遗憾的是，创伤受害者常常报告说，他们只是机械地完成动作，却关闭了自己的情绪，或者情绪自动消失了。

Again, sadly, this is often what victims of trauma report that they are able to just go through the motions, but just shut off their emotions or their emotions just shut off.

他们感觉不到心跳加速或呼吸急促。

They aren't feeling the elevated heart rate or breathing.

有时他们甚至可能非常害怕，但却没有出汗，也没有任何自主神经兴奋的迹象，比如恐惧、压力或恐慌。

Sometimes they can even be quite scared, but they're not even perspiring or showing any signs of autonomic arousal that is fright or stress or panic.

让我们来讨论一下这种关于内感受与解离的模型，以及一种冥想练习，它可以帮助我们将自己锚定在这一连续体上合适或健康的位置。

So let's talk about this model of interoception and dissociation, and then a meditative practice that can be used to try and anchor us at the right location or the healthy location along that continuum.

首先，让我们想象一下理想的心理健康状态。

Let's first imagine the ideal mental health state.

在这里，我想指出，没有人能够实现，或者说维持这种心理健康状态。

And here, I want to acknowledge nobody achieves or at least maintains this mental health state.

我希望你想象，你在这种从内感受性到解离的连续体上所处的位置，就像一颗滚珠，可以在整个连续体上来回滚动。

I want you to imagine that where you are along this interoceptive to dissociative continuum is like a ball bearing or you represent a sphere that can roll back and forth along the continuum.

一端是纯粹的内感受性，你感受到一切；另一端则是完全解离。

At one end, have pure interoception, you're just feeling everything, at the other end, you're completely dissociated.

在这一种心理健康模型中，我们将这个连续体的两端向上折叠，使其看起来像一个V形，明白吗？

Well, in this one version of mental health, we take that continuum and we fold up the sides so that it looks like a V, okay?

一端是内感受性，另一端是解离。

On one end, you have interoception, the other end you have dissociation.

我知道很多人在听这段内容，但没有在YouTube上观看，所以看不到我的双手现在正贴在一起，手掌根部相抵，手指却张开，形成一个V形。

I realize a number of people are listening to this, not watching this on YouTube, so they can't see that my hands are now, the heel of my hands are together, my fingers of my hands are apart, so it looks like a V.

而你就像一颗滚珠，你的状态位于这个V形的底部，处于内感受性与解离之间完美平衡的沟槽中。

And you are like a ball bearing, your state is like a ball bearing at the base of that, you are in a trench of perfectly balanced interoception and dissociation.

因此，你能感受到事物，能觉察到外界发生的一切，但你的感受不会被外界发生的事情淹没或压倒。

So you can feel things, you can register what's going on in the outside world, but your feelings are not overwhelmed or overtaken by what's happening in the outside world.

你正处于一个既能做出理性决策，又能感受情绪的完美状态。

You are in a perfect place of being able to make rational decisions and yet still feel your feelings.

那不是很美好吗？

Wouldn't that be lovely?

如果我们能随时都像那样，岂不很好？

Wouldn't that be lovely if we could be like that whenever we wanted to?

坦白说，没有人能一直保持那样的状态。

And frankly, nobody is like that all the time.

更常见的是，关于心理健康、情绪、幸福感以及自我与他人、内在与外在状态的感知模型，更像是一个U形，一端是内感受，另一端是解离，呈U形分布，而你的状态就像位于U形底部的滚珠，会左右移动。

More typically, the model of mental health and mood and well-being and perception of self versus others and internal versus external states is one of more of a U, a U shape, where at one end we have interoception and at the other end we have dissociation and it's kind of U shaped and your state is more or less like a ball bearing at the base of that U that can, you know, it gets pushed from side to side.

也许因为某些好事或坏事，你的心跳加快了，这个滚珠就会稍微向内感受一端偏移，于是你注意到自己的心跳在加速。

Maybe your heart races a little bit because of something bad or good and that ball bearing shifts towards interoception a little bit more and you notice that your heart is racing.

或者在任何时刻，当你看电影、与伴侣交谈，或孩子抱怨某事时，你的思绪会飘走，开始想别的事情，这时滚珠就会稍微向解离一端偏移。

Or perhaps at any given moment, your mind drifts a little bit while watching a movie or while talking to your partner or while your child is complaining about something and you're thinking about something else, and that ball bearing shifts towards the dissociative state a little bit.

这是一种轻微的解离状态。

That is a mild form of dissociation.

我认为大多数人会同意，心理健康也涉及这种U形模型，它可以在一定程度上来回波动，但不会走向极端。

And I think most people would agree that being mentally healthy would involve this kind of U shaped model as well, where it's kind of can shift back and forth, but it's not extreme.

你不会从完全偏向内感受直接跳到完全解离的状态。

You're not going from interoceptive biased all the way to dissociated in any kind of extreme way.

那个小钢珠始终停留在U形底部附近。

The ball bearing stays down near the base of that U.

当然，我们每个人偶尔都会进入一些状态，在这些状态下，内感受与解离的连续体几乎是平的——你就像一颗停留在某一点的小钢珠，取决于你是否全神贯注于一部电影，或与伴侣、朋友进行对话或活动，是否完全融入了对方的状态，对吧？

Then of course there are states that we all frankly go into from time to time where the continuum of interoception and dissociation is essentially flat, where you are a ball bearing at one location or another, depending on whether or not you're watching a movie that you're very engrossed in, or you're in a conversation with, or in an activity with your partner or a friend, etcetera, has you very engrossed maybe matching their state, right?

你可以想象出许多状态，其中与他人状态同步实际上是健康且有益的。

There are a number of states you can imagine where matching one state is actually healthy and good.

但生活中也存在许多情况，当你与他人的情绪同步时反而不利，比如对方对你大喊大叫、情绪愤怒，于是你也变得愤怒，很快你就不再处于这条连续体上的理想位置。

And then there are a number of conditions in life and situations in life where being matched to someone else's condition, like you're getting yelled at and they're angry, so then you're getting angry and then pretty soon, you're not in the best place along that continuum.

我认为，对许多人来说，他们发现自己处于这条连续体的某个位置，而许多实践——包括冥想、锻炼、保证充足睡眠、接受治疗、写日记，以及参与你喜欢的社交活动——都是为了将这条平直连续体的两端向上拉起，使其更接近U形或凹形，从而使那个小钢珠——也就是你的觉知状态和感受自身情绪与关注外界之间的平衡——再次偏向中间位置，通过抬高两端来实现这种偏向。

And I think that for many people, they find themselves somewhere along that continuum and a number of practices, including meditation, including exercise, including getting a good night's sleep, including therapy, including journaling, including just doing activities like social engagement that you enjoy are designed to sort of bring up the edges of that flat continuum into more of a U or concave shape so that that ball bearing, meaning your state of awareness and your state of feeling your own feelings versus paying attention to what's going on around you is somewhere, again, biased toward the middle by curling up the edges of that continuum on either end, it biases that state toward the middle.

当然，还有一种极端状态，我相信几乎所有人都会认为这基本上是病理性的：在这种状态下，这条连续体不再像深沟那样呈V形，也不再是U形，不是两端略微上翘的平直状态，甚至不是平直的，而是变成了凸形。

And then of course there's the extreme that I think almost everybody would agree is more or less pathologic, which is one in which that continuum is no longer shaped like a deep trench, like a V, it's not shaped like a U, it's not flat with the edges curled up a little bit or even flat, it's actually now convex.

它看起来像一座山的形状，顶部有一个小钢珠，这个钢珠可能完全滑向一侧，进入纯粹的内感受状态——只感受自己的情绪，完全无法关注外界任何事物，比如愤怒、悲伤，甚至快乐，对吧？

It looks like a mountain shape, a peak, and that little ball bearing at the top can either drop all the way to one side of pure interoception, just feeling beyond any ability to pay attention to anything else, just feeling one's feelings, being angry, being sad, or even happy, right?

极度快乐或躁狂到无法意识到这种情绪与周围环境完全不相称，或者滑向另一端，进入深度解离状态，完全脱离周围环境，真正地‘失联’了。

Being so extremely happy or manic that you can't pay attention to the fact that it's totally out of context, inappropriate for what's going on around you or dropping to the other side of the continuum where you're so dissociated that you're not engaged with what's going around you, you're truly checked out.

这种形态我认为几乎所有临床医生，如果不是所有的话，以及大多数人都会认为是病理性的，因为你要么完全脱离现实，要么完全沉浸在自己的内在感受或外界环境中。

That shape is one that I think almost all clinicians, if not all clinicians and most people would say is pathologic because you are either completely checked out or you are completely absorbed in what's going on within you or around you.

我刚才描述的这种心理模型是一个简单的心理模型。

That mental model that I just created is a simple mental model.

它绝非详尽无遗，但它确实涵盖了我们在思考心理健康、谈论心理稳定、感受自身情绪的同时仍能积极参与周围事务时所考虑的许多内容。

It is by no means exhaustive, but it does incorporate a lot of what we think about when we think about mental health and we talk about the ability to be mentally stable, to feel one's feelings, but to still be actively engaged in what's happening around us.

而且，这是一条从内感受觉知到解离的连续谱，两端是病理性的，中间部分更健康，而有一些实践方法能让我们默认偏向中间状态。

And again, it's a continuum that spans from interoceptive awareness to dissociation where the extremes are pathologic and somewhere in the middle is healthier and then there are practices that bias us toward being in the middle by default.

这些实践方法是什么？

What are those practices?

我们明确知道，比如睡眠不足会让我们偏离那种沟壑状或U形连续谱，甚至偏离平坦的连续谱，使这个连续谱变得更呈凸形。

Well, we know for sure that being sleep deprived, for instance, tends to take us away from that trench shape or U shape continuum or even flat continuum and starts to make that continuum more convex.

它会让我们感觉自己完全脱节且精疲力尽，或者情绪极度不稳定，被任何正在发生的经验牵着走，根本无法掌控。

It tends to make us either feel like we're completely checked out and exhausted or that we are completely labile, we are yanked around by whatever experience is happening, we're just not able to manage.

所以睡眠，正如我常说的，是心理健康、身体健康和表现力的根本基础，因为它通常能让我们处于更健康的状态。

So sleep is, as I always say, the fundamental or foundational layer of mental health, physical health, and performance, because it tends to put us in a healthier place.

当我们持续获得充足且高质量的睡眠时，它往往会让我们处于那个连续体的中间位置。

That is when we're getting enough quality sleep consistently, it tends to put us in the middle of that continuum.

睡眠不足则恰恰相反。

Sleep deprivation does exactly the opposite.

它会把我们撕裂。

It pulls us apart.

当我说到‘撕裂’时，这并不是一个准确的术语。

And when I say pulls us apart, that's not a real term.

它的作用是让这个连续体的凹度降低，对吧？

What it does is it tends to make that continuum less concave, right?

变得不那么像碗状，而更像凸起的、山丘状的形态，甚至可能变成山峰状，把我们推向一侧或另一侧。

Less bowl shaped and more convex, convex, more hill shaped, if not a peak mountain shape where it drops us to one side or the other.

此外，定期进行冥想练习可以帮助我们增强内感受觉察能力，或者增强外感受觉察能力，而这实际上只是另一种形式的解离。

In addition, a meditative practice done regularly because it can allow us to become more interoceptively aware or it can allow us to become more exteroceptively aware, which is really just another form of dissociation.

同样，解离并不总是坏事，只要不是极端情况，冥想练习实际上可以教会我们有意识地在这条连续体上移动。

Again, dissociation isn't always bad provided it's not at the extreme, a meditative practice can actually teach us to deliberately move along this continuum.

所以，这一点在文献中很少被讨论。

So this is something, again, that hasn't been discussed a whole lot in the literature.

我应该说，它在不同领域的文献中被零星地提及过。

It's been discussed, I should say, in pieces in different literatures.

如果你查阅临床精神病学文献，会发现大量研究和综述指出，内感受觉察非常有益，但对那些过度关注自身内部状态、以至于无法与外界互动的人来说，情况则不然。

If you look in the clinical psychiatry literature, there's a wonderful collection of studies and reviews that will say that interoceptive awareness is terrific, except for the person that is so aware of their internal functioning that they are not able to engage in the world.

同样，你也会发现大量研究和临床文献指出，解离在创伤情况下是极其有害的。

Similarly, you'll find a beautiful literature, research and clinical literature that will say that dissociation is terrible in the case of trauma.

事实上，它可能让人反复做出对自己有害的行为，因为他们能够抽离或解离于这些行为之外，从而持续下去。

In fact, it can put people in positions of repeating a behavior over and over that's damaging to them, but because they can disengage or they're dissociated from it that they continue the behavior.

或者，解离也可能非常适应且有益，例如，它能让人建立某种叙事上的距离感，从而不被每一个争执牵扯其中，或者当有人对他们大喊大叫时，他们不会立刻认为是自己的错，而是能运用前额叶皮层提醒自己：等等，你情绪不好，并不意味着我做错了什么。

Or dissociation can be very adaptive and beneficial if it allows people, for instance, to create some narrative distancing so they're not getting pulled into every argument, or if someone screams at them, they don't necessarily think that it's their fault, they are able to say, Hey, wait, use their prefrontal cortex and say, Hey, wait, like just because you're upset does not mean that I did something wrong.

让我们理性地看看证据。

Let's look at the evidence rationally.

好的，谈到冥想对情绪的积极影响时，有两个方面很重要。

Okay, so in thinking about the positive effects of meditation on mood, there are two aspects that are important.

我们之前讨论过第一个方面，即专注于当下的体验与幸福感的提升相关。

The first one we talked about earlier, which is being present to one's experience correlates with increased happiness.

当你的思绪飘忽，默认模式网络处于漫游状态时，实际上与更不快乐的状态相关。

Having your mind wander, having your default mode network be one of mind wandering actually is correlated with being more unhappy.

这就是我们之前提到的那项研究，发表在《科学》杂志上的研究。

That was the earlier study that we talked about, that study published in Science.

当然，冥想能让我们更专注于当下，但如果我们不留意自己是更关注内感受还是外感受，也就是不关注自己是偏向内感受还是解离，也不关注自己在这一连续体上的位置，那么冥想实际上可能让情况变得更糟，而不是更好。

Now, of course, meditation can make us more present, but if we do not pay attention to whether or not we are becoming more present to interoception or exteroception, that is to interoception or dissociation, and we don't pay attention to whether or not our bias is one of dissociation versus interoception, we don't know where we are in the continuum, well then the meditation actually can make things worse, not better.

换句话说，如果你本身具有极强的内感受觉察能力，那么专注于内在状态的冥想可能并不有益，甚至有一些证据表明它可能有害。

In other words, if you're somebody who has a tremendous amount of interoceptive awareness, well then meditating on your internal state may not be good and actually there's some evidence that it may actually be bad.

我给你举一个小小的例子。

I'll give you one little tiny example.

我之前在播客中提到过这一点，但在温迪·苏兹uki实验室的那项研究中，明确显示每天13分钟的冥想有助于提升专注力和情绪等，但也很清楚的是，对于许多每天进行典型第三眼冥想13分钟的人来说，如果他们在临近睡眠或想入睡时进行，会难以入睡，这完全合理，因为他们变得更加内感受觉察，提升了专注水平。

I've talked about this previously in the podcast, but in that very study from Wendy Suzuki's lab showing that thirteen minute a day meditation is beneficial for focus, mood, etcetera, it's also very clear that for a number of people that do that typical third eye meditation for thirteen minutes a day, if they do that too close to sleep or when they want to go to sleep, they have a hard time falling asleep, which makes perfect sense because they are becoming more interoceptively aware, they are ramping up their level of focus.

冥想练习通常是一种专注与重新专注的练习，而入睡则涉及关闭你的思维和专注，仅专注于感觉，然后你的思维逐渐碎片化，最终飘入梦乡。

A meditation practice typically is a focus and refocus practice and falling asleep involves turning off your thoughts and your focus and focusing purely on sensation and then your thoughts kind of fragment and you drift off to sleep.

这就是为什么我非常推崇非睡眠深度休息或瑜伽睡眠（Yoga Nidra）。

This is why I'm a big fan of using non sleep deep rest or Yoga Nidra.

我们将提供非睡眠深度休息和瑜伽睡眠（Yoga Nidra）练习方法的链接。

We will provide links to non sleep deep rest and Yoga Nidra protocols.

我之前在播客中讨论过这些方法，但这些练习本身并不是冥想。

I've talked about them on the podcast before, but those protocols are not meditation per se.

它们通常引导人们放松专注力。

They tend to have people defocus.

它们是反专注的练习，而冥想则倾向于是一种专注的练习。

They are anti focus practices, whereas meditation tends to be a focusing practice.

与此相关，一种偏向于外感受的冥想练习——即专注于身体外部的事物——对于那些过度关注内在感受和内在叙事的人来说非常有益，可以帮助他们摆脱自我中心的思维和身体束缚，这非常有益。

Along those lines, a meditation practice that is one that is exteroceptively biased, where you focus on things that are outside your body, can be wonderful for somebody who tends to focus too much on their inner landscape and their inner narrative, etcetera, can help get them out of their head and body, which can be very beneficial.

但对于那些不了解自己情绪、不清楚自己感受的人来说，这种做法反而会让他们走上完全错误的道路。

But for people that are not in touch with their emotions, aren't in touch with how they feel, it actually can drive them down the exact path that's wrong for them.

因此，今天的讨论是关于冥想的，我们希望以一种理性的方式理解冥想，使其与所涉及的神经回路相匹配，更重要的是，为了实际目的，你要问自己正确的问题。

So today's discussion is about meditation and we want to make sure that we are parsing meditation in a rational way that matches the neural circuitry involved and more importantly, for sake of practical purposes, that you are asking yourselves the right question.

你是偏向内感知的，还是偏向外感知的？

Are you interoceptively or extraoceptively biased?

你是倾向于解离，还是倾向于强烈地感受一切，对吧？

Do you tend to dissociate or do you tend to sort of feel everything in a big way, right?

我听过‘高度敏感人群’这类说法，其中一些是临床术语，一些则不是，但你需要评估自己属于哪种类型，同时也要评估自己在某一天的具体状态——这当然取决于你睡得如何、生活经历等。

I've heard this term of hypersensitive people or things of that sort, and some of those are clinical terms, some of them are not, but you need to assess this and you also need to assess where you happen to be at on a given day, which will be dictated of course by how well you slept, life experience, etcetera.

因此，在进行任何冥想练习之前，你都需要正视从内感知到解离这一连续谱。

So this interoceptive to dissociative continuum is one that you need to address prior to any meditative practice.

再次强调，针对你是否更偏向内在或外在的判断，该如何应对的答案其实非常简单。

And again, the solution or the answer of what to do in response to your answer of whether or not you are more inward focused or outward focused, again, is very simple.

只需做与你倾向相反的事情即可。

Just do the opposite of where your bias lies.