Boredom is Where You Meet Your Mind; DL Ep.34 with Dr. Richie Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl

We now live in a world where boredom is almost optional. The moment there is a gap in the day, we can reach for a device and instantly distract ourselves.

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore boredom and restlessness from both a scientific and contemplative perspective. Richie explains why boredom often brings us face to face with the “default mode” of the brain, the self-referential narrative we carry around about who we are. Cort reflects on the physical, restless energy of boredom, and how meditation can turn that discomfort into an object of curiosity. They also offer a simple and powerful tool to bring more awareness into our day: the next time we feel the urge to escape boredom, we can pause, notice the urge, and let that moment become a practice.

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In this episode

00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?00:00:58 – Why boredom matters00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind00:04:19 – The default mode network00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle00:11:12 – Why kids need to move00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?

Cortland Dahl:We’re now living in a world where we just have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored.

Richie Davidson:Our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind. One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind.

00:00:58 – Why boredom matters

Cortland:Hello everyone. Welcome to Dharma Lab. I’m here with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Richard Davidson, one of the world’s eminent neuroscientists, and I’m Cortland Dahl.

Today we’re going to talk about something I think probably everybody experiences, and maybe experiences a lot, which is boredom and restlessness.

00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”

Cortland:I have such vivid memories of this. If we had a normal distribution of where people fall and how easily bored they are, I’m pretty sure I would have been an outlier. I was so easily bored as a kid. I was one of those kids who just could not sit still.

I have vivid memories, especially of summer afternoons, sitting at home and desperately trying to call my friends to see if anybody wanted to hang out. There was nothing on TV. This was back in the days before you could get everything on demand, just boring daytime TV shows.

And I remember this feeling of crawling out of my skin. I literally could not sit there. We had no mobile phones. This was long before the iPhone and smartphones. But I would have done anything to have had something like that.

Now it’s kind of amazing. After years of meditation, I would say if one thing has changed in my life, it’s my relationship to boredom. I kind of feel like I’m immune to boredom now. There’s a whole long practice history with that.

But I thought we could start by talking about boredom because we’re now living in a world where we have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored, to just sit with that.

So maybe we could talk about it from a scientific perspective. We can both share our personal experiences. But let me kick it over to you, Richie, and see if you have any opening thoughts. Then we can dive into it more deeply.

00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind

Richie:I think boredom is an interesting topic.

Cortland:It is. That’s the weird thing. It’s strangely interesting. Boredom is not boring.

Richie:Yeah, it is strangely interesting.

I think it’s a phenomenon that has been deeply impacted by changes in the fabric of our society, by the development of technology and so forth.

And I think boredom, our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind.

One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind. That is the one thing we can’t get rid of.

People try, with drugs and other ways to dull the mind, but under most circumstances we have our minds.

00:04:19 – The default mode network

Richie:From a neuroscientific perspective, we know that when a person is not engaged in a demanding activity that really requires their mental resources, what is active is a mode of brain function that we call the default mode.

The default mode is mostly associated with self-referential thought. By self-referential thought, we mean the narrative we tell ourselves about who we are and all the things associated with that.

And for a lot of people, that’s uncomfortable.

00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first

Richie:We have data from work we’ve done using our Healthy Minds program with beginning meditators who’ve never meditated before. We often see that after the first week or so of cultivating awareness, they actually become more anxious. They report more anxiety.

We think it’s not that they’re actually experiencing more anxiety, but that they’re noticing what’s going on in their mind. And what’s going on in their mind is often quite chaotic.

Simply becoming more aware of it makes them more anxious, or they perceive their anxiety more accurately for the first time. And so they report higher scores more accurately.

So I think one of the reasons people try to find strategies to get rid of boredom is because the chaotic nature of their own mind is uncomfortable.

I actually think this is why people engage in certain kinds of leisure activities that are cognitively demanding, but that don’t serve any other function other than being interesting leisure activities. For example, doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku.

There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time doing those things, and people report that they enjoy it. I think they enjoy it because it temporarily blocks the default mode. It temporarily engages other parts of their mind, so they’re not aware of the self-referential activity. They’re not aware of the narrative going on in the background.

00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness

Cortland:I’m curious about one thing I’d love to unpack from a scientific point of view: the relationship between these brain networks, specifically the default mode network that you talked about, and the rest of the nervous system.

If I think back to my teenage self sitting on the couch, which to me is the most intensely bored I can remember feeling in my life, I think at that time I was completely oblivious to what was going on in my mind.

When I remember that, I don’t remember the thought activity. Now, having meditated, I’m sure it was going on, but I just didn’t know how to attend to what was going on in my mind.

But what I do remember is the physicality. There was almost this charge of restless energy. I needed to release the energy, and it just had nowhere to go. You’re kind of just this ball of energy, and yet it’s like you’re trying to constrain a ball of energy that’s trying to get out, but there’s no release for it.

I’m imagining there are all sorts of things going on in the brain and the nervous system. It points to the relationship between thought activity, which can be completely subterranean at times. We’re not even really aware of all the thought activity, and yet it can have this bidirectional relationship with emotional experiences and physical experiences.

I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit too, because I think the felt experience of boredom is often a very physical experience.

00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle

Richie:Yeah, that’s so interesting.

When I think back to my childhood, during those periods I got on my bicycle.

Cortland:That’s what I should have done, probably.

Richie:I developed a lifelong habit, which I still have, of riding my bicycle.

I grew up in New York City, in Brooklyn, and for me my bicycle was liberating. I rode all over Brooklyn. I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan all the time. This was before I had permission to go on the subway by myself, but I could go on my bicycle. My parents didn’t really know where I was, and I just went. I explored all over.

That was important for me. I also felt a kind of somatic restlessness, but I was able to deal with it through physical activity.

00:09:38 – Restlessness, the body, and the brain

Richie:Getting back to the essence of your question, I think it is certainly the case, and we’re learning more and more about this now, that there is bidirectional communication between the brain and the body.

We know there are certain networks in the brain that communicate with the body. Activity in the brain will be expressed in part through the body, through changes in both the autonomic nervous system and the skeletal muscular system, through muscle tension and things of that sort.

One of the signs of anxiety is increased muscle tension, and you can measure that with electromyography. It’s a way to measure the electrical activity of muscles noninvasively, in the same way we measure the electrical activity of the brain. We can put sensors on muscles in different parts of the body, and there is indeed activation in these muscles associated with anxiety.

When we’re bored, I think we notice this muscle activity more because there is no competing demand for our mind. Our awareness might be pulled to the places where the signal is strongest. And there may be a lot of signal in the body.

00:11:12 – Why kids need to move

Richie:I think particularly for boys growing up, it never made sense to me that kids were expected to sit at desks for the majority of the day in school. It just seems so inconsistent.

Cortland:Yeah. It’s like a recipe. It’s like a boredom inducement, as though you were designing a system to make kids restless.

Richie:Right. Designing a system that seems inconsistent with their developmental stage. They need to move.

Cortland:It certainly was for me. It was like torture having to sit for hours on end and not move.

Richie:So I think that also plays into this.

When we begin to notice our body, it’s kind of the somatic parallel to noticing the chaotic nature of our mind. You were saying that you didn’t really notice a lot of anxious thoughts, but you did feel a lot of pent-up activity in your body.

I think for young kids, the somatic representation is particularly important.

00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom

Cortland:Yeah, and it’s a great entry point too, because from a practice point of view, what do you do with that? What would be the inner skill set to shift that dynamic and work with it in a more healthy way?

A lot of it, I think, is the physicality and the somatic aspect of it. So maybe we could talk about how each of us has practiced with this.

One of the gifts of meditation practice is that I think it’s almost impossible to have a meditation practice in which you don’t have to really grapple with boredom. You’re literally sitting doing nothing for long periods of time. That is basically what you’re doing.

Sleepiness and lethargy are strangely painful when you really can’t escape them. Anybody who experiences jet lag knows that well. It’s almost physically painful when you’re exhausted, and yet there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do with it.

Boredom is similar when there’s no escape hatch, so to speak.

00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort

Cortland:I noticed there’s a Gen Z meme going around. Younger generations these days have grown up with devices in their hands and have very little experience sitting with the discomfort of boredom. Equally, we could have a whole other topic on social discomfort. The fact that you can look at your phone is also an escape hatch for social discomfort.

In a way, it makes us less resilient because you don’t have to deal with that discomfort. Therefore, when it happens, you’re almost unprepared. You haven’t developed the muscle memory to do that.

But with boredom specifically, there’s this meme. I won’t use the term because it’s quite profane, but basically it’s just sitting and doing nothing. Put your phone down and just sit there. There’s discussion about the benefits of doing that as unfamiliar territory.

For us growing up, we had no choice but to sit and do nothing at times. But it’s interesting that there’s a recognition that unplugging and dealing with the discomfort of not being plugged in all the time is actually pretty helpful and important.

Let’s each share our practice experience with this. What have you found helpful, and how have you worked with that?

00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone

Richie:Just riffing off what you said, Cort, there are times, and this happens virtually every day for me, when I might be waiting in line. I could be waiting to get coffee somewhere, or waiting for my wife when we’re going out together. Maybe I go downstairs and I’m just waiting a few minutes.

I’ll notice that I have a period, maybe as short as two or three minutes, where there’s nothing scheduled. I feel the urge to take out my phone.

And I notice the urge. I just say, “Okay, I’m not going to take out my phone. I’m just going to sit here and be aware. I’ll be aware of the urge. I’ll be aware of my body.”

I might be able to go outside and feel the fresh air and just enjoy this few minutes of awareness.

It’s an intentional choice. I have at least a couple of those every single day where I notice, during an interstitial period where there’s nothing and I’m just waiting for something, that there’s an urge to pull out the phone because that’s what we do during these times in our modern society.

And I make an intentional choice to let it stay in my pocket.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s a little moment of celebration that I still have enough residual self-control to resist this, and then enjoy that moment of awareness.

00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness

Cortland:It’s very similar with me, to the point where it has become clear that you can actually train yourself so that the impulse and the urge spark awareness.

For me, awareness is the go-to practice. It’s the easiest entry point. It’s almost like you rewire yourself so that you feel that urge, and then immediately on the heels of that, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to. That’s not a fulfilling experience. I know what it feels like to always do that, and I’m going to do something else.”

Another thing I do is almost like a preemptive strike on the habit. Knowing there are certain times when that tends to happen, I intentionally leave my phone somewhere else.

When the space opens up, I don’t even have it next to me. I would literally have to go to a different room. The example I’ve given many times is the urge to pick it up first thing in the morning or to look at my phone when I go to bed.

I made a decision to leave my phone in my office. Often, when I finish work before dinner, I put my phone on its stand in my office, which is a room I don’t usually go into after dinner. Then it’s not even in my orbit.

I still notice those urges. It’s kind of like, “Where’s my phone?” And then I remember it’s in the office. I’m certainly not going to get up and go somewhere just for that purpose alone.

00:18:09 – Breathing with restless energy

Cortland:There are two things I’ve found really helpful in terms of what to do in that space.

One is using the breath as a support for awareness. Mindful breathing has always been part of my practice since my early days as a meditator. With that kind of restless energy, sometimes I’ll just take a few deep breaths and it settles the mind. That’s really helpful.

Sometimes I love to pay attention to the restless energy itself, the energy of the urge, the energy of the impulse, and not even try to change it or dampen it.

00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?

Cortland:As we started with, boredom is kind of interesting as an experience. It’s painful when we’re trying to avoid it. The pain is the impulse to escape the discomfort. But when you ask, “What actually is boredom? Where do you feel boredom?” it changes.

I can tell you exactly where I feel boredom. It feels like a buzzing energy. Then I notice it’s almost like a movement impulse. There’s something that feels like my premotor cortex is firing. It’s almost this feeling of, “I need to move in some way.” But it’s like the precursor to movement. It’s the impulse to move.

You can almost feel the body mobilizing. But somehow you’re not in a situation where you’re going to open the door and run down the street. It’s a mismatch between the context and the impulse to move. And that mismatch creates this weird discomfort, at least in my own experience.

When I pay attention to it, it’s weird because it’s the feeling of boredom, but the mind is interested.

Usually you would think those are mutually exclusive. You can’t feel bored and be interested. One is the absence of the other. But I can tell you, you can very much experience them at the same time. Maybe it ceases to be boredom at that time, but some elements are still there. It’s like the residue of boredom is still there, but you’re fascinated by it.

It’s very interesting when you look at it.

00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?

Richie:I think the somatic residue is still there, but you change the mindset. You can also examine: who is it that’s feeling this boredom? That can be very helpful too.

Cortland:Totally. That one I do in retreat every time there’s a hint of boredom. That’s my go-to practice.

Often it’s almost like: what is boredom, and who’s experiencing it?

Then I feel like I don’t find anything. It’s there one moment, and the moment I look, it’s like, “Where did that go?” It has a totally different effect. It seems like it’s there, and then it’s just ethereal. Suddenly it’s like, poof, somehow it changes.

Richie:I experience that when I’m actually sitting meditating. If I have boredom, or something very similar with sleepiness, just really looking at it with curiosity, “Who is actually sleepy?” Then it changes without trying to fix it.

It’s not like I’m trying to get rid of sleepiness. No, I’m really interested in: what is sleepiness? How does it feel?

00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice

Cortland:Okay, that’s it. We need to put a pin in sleepiness. We need to do an episode on sleepiness too, because that is another one that is so painful when you’re trying to avoid it.

As a meditator, it’s really painful to avoid sleepiness. It becomes a subtle spiral where you’re trying to avoid something you’re feeling, and it’s hard to get out of it. But when you turn toward it, it’s fascinating.

Boredom is the same.

I think we talked about awareness, and this last point is more of an insight practice. It’s getting curious and digging into either “What is boredom?” by unpacking the different dimensions of it, or, as you’re saying, Richie, “Who is it that’s experiencing this?”

This gets into a very Buddhist deconstruction of the self, which is incredibly interesting and powerful. It completely turns the table on boredom. Suddenly it’s fascinating.

You can use these little moments when you’re waiting for a cup of coffee, or you’re stuck somewhere, or you’re waiting for your friend or partner to go somewhere. There are just two minutes, and you’re sitting there. Suddenly all those moments become interesting and meaningful, rather than something you need to escape.

It becomes kind of a beautiful thing in life.

Any final thoughts before we sign off on this one?

Richie:I think we covered this in a nice way. Thank you.

Cortland:All right. To everyone watching, if you have not tried this for yourself, this may be less interesting theoretically, but super interesting experientially if you actually try some of these techniques.

I highly recommend a little inner exploration with this one if it’s not already on your inner roadmap.

Thank you again for joining us and tuning in. Hopefully you found something helpful here, and we’ll see you soon in another episode of Dharma Lab.

Thank you.

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