Dr. David Vago on self-transcendence - how to experience personal growth and awakening through meditation and meta-awareness | Brought to you by Babbel (https://babbel.com/passionstruck).

David Vago, Ph.D., is on a mission to alleviate suffering and improve well-being through investigating connections between the mind, brain, and body. He is a Research Associate Professor and Director of the Contemplative Neuroscience and Mind-Body Research Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. He is part of the faculty for the Vanderbilt Brain Institute and Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology, and Inflammation. Dr. Vago maintains a research associate position in the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and is also Research Lead for the mental health and well-being platform, Roundglass, and a Mind and Life Institute Fellow. Over one million people have viewed Dr. Vago's Ted Talk on self-transformation.

How Self-Transcendence Impacts Your Self-Identity

Self-transcendence is the idea that there is something to transcend the self as if the self is something that is created through time. Over time, you have certain thoughts and emotions that construct your self-identity. It is a clinical model of self-reification, right conditioning, and habit formation. It all leads to how we conceptualize our identity, our needs, wants, fears, expectations, attitudes, and values. It is how our whole worldview is constructed. And so what meditation does, is it allows you to create a distance with those thoughts to find your greatest peace.

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Links from the Show:

• Buddhism and Equanimity - MR Tom, DR Vago - The Virtues in Psychiatric Practice, 2021. This edited text describes the use of positive psychology and contemplative practices in the context of psychiatry.
• How meditation changes the brain: A neurophilosophical and pragmatic account. DR Vago - Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation, 2022 This Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the state of the field of the philosophy