Ready to begin or deepen your meditation practice? Join Dan Harris and world-class meditation teachers on the 10% with Dan Harris app here: https://app.danharris.com/membership This episode originally aired in May 2024. Your brain has a default setting. It kicks in whenever you're not actively focused on a task, and it tends to fill the space with self-referential thinking, rumination, and habits of mind that feel like facts. Two neuroscientists call this the "house of habit" — and they've spent two decades studying how to get out of it. Dr. Zindel Segal is a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a pioneer of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, and one of the world's leading researchers on depression relapse. Dr. Norman Farb is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough whose neuroimaging research has helped explain why mindfulness works — and what it's actually doing to the brain. Together, they wrote Better In Every Sense. In this conversation, they cover: - What the default mode network is, why they call it the "house of habit," and how it keeps us stuck - The difference between languishing and flourishing — and the brain states that drive each - Why the default mode network is adaptive and useful until it isn't - What their neuroimaging research actually showed about what mindfulness meditation does to the brain — and how it surprised them - Why the real risk factor for depression isn't rumination itself but being cut off from sensory experience - Sense foraging: a low-barrier, no-cushion-required practice for stepping out of automatic pilot - The nine rules of sense foraging — including why you can't force it but you can choose it - What radical acceptance has to do with sensation — and how accepting a changing body is the same skill as accepting a changing life - Why toggling between the "house of habit" and a state of sensation is at the heart of flourishing - Why the hippies were right — but you get to find your own weird version of it Subscribe to watch more 10% Happier videos: https://www.youtube.com/tenpercenthappier Follow Dan Harris on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/danharris/ https://www.tiktok.com/@danbharris https://www.facebook.com/DanHarrisABC https://twitter.com/danbharris https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-harris-91ba5716b/ Timestamps: 0:00:00 Introduction and origin story of the collaboration 0:03:00 What is the default mode network? 0:05:00 Why they call it the "house of habit" 0:07:00 Is the default mode network a happy place or an unhappy place? 0:10:00 Languishing vs. flourishing — and the connection to the default mode network 0:13:00 How to move from languishing to flourishing: the central thesis 0:16:00 What is a "state of sensation" — and how is it different from habit mode? 0:18:00 Isn't this just mindfulness? The lower-bar version of the same idea 0:22:00 Sense foraging: what it is and how to try it right now 0:26:00 A step-by-step sense foraging exercise 0:29:00 Summary: dropping out of spinning stories and into the senses 0:34:00 What the neuroimaging actually showed — and why they were wrong about meditation 0:37:00 The real risk factor for depression: not rumination but sensory shutdown 0:38:00 Sensation as the release valve — the butterfly counterargument 0:43:00 Radical acceptance and how it connects to sense foraging 0:46:00 What radical acceptance looks like in practice — Norm's hip story 0:50:00 How sense foraging changes your model of the world over time 0:52:00 The nine rules of sense foraging — walked through in a grocery store 0:54:00 You can't force it, but you can choose it 0:57:00 Access points: nature, art, exercise, travel, meditation, psychedelics 0:59:00 The hippies were right — but you get to do it your own way 1:01:00 Toggling: the vehicle between the two modes, and why it's at the heart of everything #mindfulness #mentalhealth #neuroscience