My year of living mindfully

[Music]

i’d like to tell you that my latest epic

experiment started because i wanted to

tackle

a big problem namely the global

mental health crisis

after all the leading medical science

journal

the lancet has declared that every

country

in the world is facing

and failing to tackle a host of mental

health problems

but although that would have been a

worthy motivation

for any unshrinking journalist like

myself

the inspiration for my latest deep dive

was also

very personal for me like so many others

the wounds of mental illness run deep

throughout my childhood i witnessed the

devastating effects of severe depression

and addiction first hand when i was 24

years old

i was diagnosed with an incurable

autoimmune disease

which causes chronic pain and arthritis

throughout my body

and has a terrible tendency to flare up

during times of stress

but it was perhaps my insomnia that was

most troubling of all

one or two nights a week ever since i

was a teenager

like many of you here today i would lie

awake in bed and i wonder if any of you

can relate

to the feeling of obsessing about an

upcoming

event or exam or with thoughts churning

about somebody you care about

and unable to sleep fast forward into

my adulthood and i still hadn’t learned

to tame my monkey mind

and it wasn’t just my future that i was

thinking about i wanted to be able to

teach my kids

how they could protect and nurture

and nourish their mind

now although lifestyle choices such as

eating a healthy diet or exercising

regularly

are all recommended for good mental

well-being

i was really surprised that when i

searched

and searched for the mental equivalent

of a 30-minute workout

or the mind’s equivalent of eating five

fresh fruit and vegetables

a day when i searched

there was nothing

i knew that any realistic solution

needed to

meet some key criteria it needed to be

free

or at least affordable it needed to be

available to anyone anywhere regardless

of their education

or life circumstances it needed to

flexibly

fit into different schedules

and it needed to be based on scientific

evidence which was

a lot to ask for in my search

for a mental health eating plan

[Laughter]

but there was one thing that fit the

bill

mindfulness meditation

a meta-analysis which means a study of

all the available studies

had just concluded that a particular

eight-week

mindfulness program was equal to

medication

for preventing recurrent depression

here’s why that matters to the young

people here today

we know that mental illnesses like

depression

have a tendency to begin sometime

in our mid to late teens and professor

willem kaiken who’s from oxford

university

and the lead author of that

meta-analysis

explained to me that there’s a 50

percent

chance that if you’ve had depression

once

you will get it again and an 80

chance that if you’ve had depression

twice

you’ll get it a third time

so the idea it

seemed completely absurd to me that in

our current healthcare system we wait

until we’re at the equivalent

of stage four cancer before we think to

intervene with our mental health

and the idea that something like

mindfulness training

could prevent us from developing an

illness like depression in the first

place

is really significant game changing

actually on top of that

there were also clinical trials

demonstrating that mindfulness training

could help people

with chronic pain stress anxiety

and even some addiction so

given this mental health crisis i

wondered

if mindfulness could really be

the solution should we all be practicing

mindfulness in the same way we should

exercise regularly

and eat our vegetables or was this

evidence too good to be true

more importantly what would happen to my

health and well-being

if i committed to meditating every day

for a year asking those questions

is what led to my absurdly elaborate

hair-brained and world-first experiment

which became known as my year

of living mindfully

but there was a really big problem i

had no idea what i was supposed to be

doing

with a hundred thousand products

capitalizing on the word mindfulness for

sale

on amazon including my personal favorite

the mindful pets tear stain remover

combs for dogs

it was very difficult to know who to

trust

and where to turn

on top of that there was also evidence

demonstrating

that mindfulness training doesn’t

actually always

work that it can be dangerous

and that some of the science was being

overhyped and

oversold in the popular media

i wondered if the first person who

developed mindfulness training a man

named

siddhartha gautama aka the buddha

if he were around today whether he would

recognize his systematic method for

relieving mental suffering

in a jar of mindful mayonnaise

i knew i needed expert guidance

so i set up interviews with 18

of the world’s leading mindfulness

scientists

and i recruited a team of six australian

scientists

who would track me throughout the year

and with their help i would find out

once and for all

if daily meditation was worth putting on

my to-do list

now i don’t want to give away the ending

for those of you who haven’t yet seen

my resulting film or read the book

but i will tell you this at the

beginning of the experiment

my subjective well-being score was just

below

average by the end

i was well above average

i suspect that had a lot to do

with working up the courage to attend

a 10-day silent meditation retreat

we’re talking no netflix no

phone no email no social media

no talking just

me and my mind

and it turned out to be one of the most

profound

experiences of my life

all of that fretting about my past and

worrying about my future all those

telling of stories to myself

a hundred thousand million times a day

all that made way for moments

of deep absorption a sense of inner

peace

and a feeling of connectedness to the

world

around me it was as though

i had learned to take a holiday

from myself and it was life-changing

neuroscientists told me that this might

partly be explained because of something

called

my default mode network

this is a network in the brain that was

actually discovered by accident

when the scientists were asking their

subjects to not do anything in

particular

and they noticed the same areas in the

brain were lighting up

in everyone what we now know is that the

default mode network

is programmed to automatically take over

when there’s

nothing more important happening it

functions

to help me make sense of everything

related to me myself

and i and although it can be

super handy to know exactly who i am

when i wake up in the mornings

there can be a huge downside to having a

default mode network

mother nature didn’t intend for me to be

happy

all the time she wanted me to

force me to mull over my life to ensure

that i get along better with other

people

for the good of the tribe and the

survival of the species

so whenever i catapult myself into

horrible

hypothetical futures whenever whenever i

rewrite my verbal blunders or obsess

over what to wear for my upcoming ted

talk

that is all my default mode

network kicking in and

we now know that having an overactive

default mode network

is linked to excessive worry rumination

self-criticism and loneliness

and those things are also linked to a

whole range

of mental health disorders

and so enters mindfulness

one theory is that mindfulness training

is a little bit like doing mental

push-ups

so the instruction involves focusing

on an object such as the feeling of your

breath

or the sounds in the room around you

noticing when you’re distracted or when

your default mode network has come

online

and then returning back to observing

that object

so as to how these mental push-ups

affected my life

by learning to strengthen my ability to

intentionally switch away from my

overactive inner me network

i experienced a greater sense of

well-being and a feeling of greater

connectedness

and that’s why this story doesn’t end

with me because at the end of the day i

am a white woman and i live in a

peaceful country

and i have been blessed with an

excellent education like so many of you

guys

here today and the fundamental questions

still remained could mindfulness

training

really be part of the solution

for the global mental health epidemic

and could it

really make a difference for anyone

anywhere in any life circumstances

and that’s how i found myself traveling

to

the front line of the global

humanitarian crisis

where more people have now been

displaced by war and famine than since

world war

ii when you consider the scale

of a refugee camp like this one that i

visited on the border of syria

and jordan one-on-one therapy

just isn’t a viable solution when we’re

facing

mental suffering on a mass

scale but i did find

hope because i also traveled to israel

where i met

a team of psychologists led by professor

amit bernstein from the university of

haifa

who have developed something called the

moments of refuge project

they’ve been teaching a particular kind

of mindfulness training to groups of

east

african asylum seekers who have

experienced

more pain and torment than any of us

can even imagine in their tens

of thousands they fled a brutal

dictatorship

and a civil war only to fall into the

hands

of criminal bedouin gangs

who turned torture into a profitable

extortion

industry and although the data shows

that these people

are among the most traumatized people

on the planet the nine-week mindfulness

intervention

is being proven in clinical trials

to not only be safe but to also be

transformative

as one former child soldier named darwit

said to me

if somebody offered him either 10

000 israeli shekels to make his problems

go away

or the mindfulness training he would

take the mindfulness because it’s the

only time

someone has ever taught him how he can

heal himself

so as i boarded the plane bound for my

own peaceful country

my husband and kids it was an old

expression

turning over in my mind give a man a

fish

and he will be hungry tomorrow teach

a man to fish and he will be fed for

a lifetime

so i know many of you young people

feel that you are facing a very

uncertain future and there’s a lot of

pressure that comes with that

you are about to come of age in the wake

of

a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic

and by the time you’re my age in about

the year

2050 there are some predictions

that up to 1 billion people will be

forcibly displaced by climate change and

war

unless we change course

i don’t think for one second that

mindfulness training is going to

solve all of the world’s problems

but i do find hope in the stories of

some of the people that i’ve told you

about today who are now

investigating if teaching mindfulness to

teenagers in their school years

can prevent them from developing

depression later in life

and whose programs for traumatized

refugees

have the potential to transform tens

of thousands of lives

i don’t think for one second that

mindfulness is a quick fix

and as we face all of this

together there is one thing that i can

tell you

for sure as every good flight attendant

will tell you

if the plane is going down it is best to

put on your own

oxygen mask first i know that my own

life would have been

monumentally different if i had known

from a much younger

age that my mental well-being is

just as important as

eating a healthy diet and getting enough

sleep

and exercising regularly

mindfulness is not a quick fix but it is

a very simple skill that teaches us to

understand how our minds work

and that makes all the difference

[Music]

you