Step-by-step tips on how to transform your course for online teaching

Like the rest of the world, I am teaching online these days. While my first online teaching back in April was mostly just a repeat of the normal courses in an online format, I decided to completely restructure my course Data Analytics & Communication for the current quarter, to make it more amenable to online teaching. Thanks to a wonderful course by our Education Support and Innovation (shoutout to Tracy Poelzer!), it was actually much less intimidating than expected.

The first thing I did to transform the course to an online format was to divide it up into online folders corresponding to the course weeks, and within every week a series of steps. To make this insightful, I plotted all the steps into a jamboard. This allowed me to quickly keep track of the different components of my course. Every week starts with a short welcome video in which I explain the students what the week is about. I make these videos in loom, a very easy to use video recording program.

Sample screen shot from my course environment with the folders belonging to the weeks on the left bottom and some of the first steps in the centre.

Because this covid time is very hard for everyone, I decided to provide my students with maximal flexibility by only having a single lecture every week. All the other lecture material consists of pre-recorded mini-lectures on loom. So every week I go through my original course lectures, extract the main topics, and make a 5-10 minute video on each topic (see for example this video on reproducibility versus replicability). I can reuse most of my slides because loom allows you to present the slides while you talk. I then link all these videos to Blackboard, which hosts the course. The added benefit of this is that loom records the number of views of each video, so I get a sense of how many students are following the lectures.

I have transformed the live lecture substantially to centre around student interaction. Again, I use the topics I identified from my original lectures to come up with classroom activities. These activities can include a poll. Typically I start the class off with a fun icebreaker poll, for example asking the students to pin a needle on a map indicating where they are listening in from. Another popular activity is putting students into breakout rooms of 4 or 5 and discussing a question or having a debate. I then ask about the outcomes of this debate using a fun website called Wheel of Names, in which I insert the group numbers to randomly choose a group to report. Another popular tool is to ask students to brainstorm together on a jamboard, for example, "what is your advice for producing good graphics?", which requires the students to mobilise all their knowledge from the lectures, the course readings and their own experience. A final fun lecture activity is to invite an expert on a topic (e.g., who has written a paper the students have read) and hold a kind of talkshow in which I as a lecturer moderate the discussion (in this case a good source of questions were the comments made by the students on the social reading platform Perusall that I use in my course).

A final change I made to the online course is to make the tutorials more explicitly social. Rather than them being just an education activity, I also invite students to come to the tutorials to have a chat with each other or with the teaching assistants. Rather than having the tutorials within the Blackboard environment, we moved them to gather.town, a fun online environment that kind of looks like an old computer game. In this environment, you only see and hear individuals when you are sufficiently close to them, kind of like in the real world. This would allow students to naturally work together on assignments, and walk up to the teaching assistant if they have questions. There are even some games to play in this environment created by my awesome colleague Martijn Wieling!

Screenshot from the gather.town environment

Of course a big challenge is the final exam. When students do final exams online you have to assume that they have all information available and communicate with each other through the class WhatsApp. Consequently, I decided to make my exam, which usually involves knowledge questions about the material and interpretation of data analyses, to be about the actual analysis of real-life datasets. Different students get assigned different datasets and answer different questions about these datasets. Hopefully this will make the exam fair and also a good reflection of the students' knowledge and skills. And most importantly, prepare them well to do data analysis and interpretation in the real world. 

My working-from-home strategies

It's been 7 months since the start of the pandemic and working from home. I thought it would be nice to share how I have been holding up with that. For me there are several tricks that I learnt:

- start the day with a little dance. I have several choreographies that I like to practise for upcoming (we hope!) performances. These are nice little dances, but everything can work. I think this helps to nicely demarcate your working day. Also, remember how we used to write in our poetry friend albums: "begin the day with a little dance, begin the day with a smile, whoever is happy in the morning, smiles the whole day"

- sit on a slightly unstable cushion that requires you to make micro-movements all the time and thereby keeps your spine mobile. I am using a balance cushion to sit on, which also has little spiky things that serve as a great "butt-massage" to calm these overworked ballet turnout muscles ;-)

- insert a short mindfulness break. Just practise for a few minutes, either with an app such as ==InsightTimer or ==Headspace, or just by yourself. It is a great tool to let whatever you are working on settle and also sometimes this brings to mind things you have almost forgotten.

notice spiky cushion on the chair

- sometimes when I am attending a meeting where no camera is required, I like to do some stretches during the meeting so I can keep moving. See the short video clip as an example

- finally, I like to take little dance breaks. Sometimes I just put on some music I like and dance for a few minutes. Sometimes I use a bit more structure and follow a short 5-minute workout. My favourite is this one from Lazy Dancer Tips.

I hope this helps. How are you doing with #workingfromhome?

Risky mindfulness business

Lojong slogan 36 is "Don't act with a twist." This slogan refers to misusing the practices that are intended to transform your mind. In today's world, there is quite some discussion about this point. Is meditation practice only used to feel less stressed, or even worse, to feel you are a good human being because you are meditating. Sometimes meditation is used to signal virtue, especially on social media. But, to put it in the words of John Dunne, the real signal of the meditation practices working is not how much you practise or what special experiences you have, but rather, whether you are less of a jerk.

I think that it is very easy when you are meditating, to think that that is the solution to everything, and that you are better than everyone else because you practise. Of course that runs completely counter to the idea of the meditation practice, which is to cultivate an open mind and humility. The challenge is to stay curious and open, and able to be with whatever arises. I think there are plenty opportunities for this in this time of COVID (not to mention the upcoming US elections!), during which there are so many strong opinions that often cause rifts in relationships. Is it possible to step away from your feeling that you know better and instead practise true curiosity into the thoughts and feelings of others, without being swept away by those. I find that when I manage to do that, there is often a lot more commonality with the other person, and often they then can become more open to solid arguments (and maybe you yourself change your views as well).

In addition, it is also very easy to get caught up in the idea that rather than being on your cushion, you should just help people. There is merit in sitting on your cushion and observing your mind, or practising these patterns of loving kindness and compassion, because otherwise your mind may be too disturbed when you meet difficult people or difficult emotions. I find one important case where this is very obvious that meditation (which I practise way too little) helps me to inhibit my immediate impulse to always do something and constantly look for new input. Instead it allows me to practise staying with what is, and repeatedly contemplating different courses of action. I often find that in the space afforded by the practice, new ideas or courses of action appear spontaneously. This not only makes me feel less stressed but also these responses may be a bit more thought-through and adaptive.

Finally, what are we to do to prevent ourselves from going off in meditation? Probably the most important to do is to not take yourself too seriously. So I am curious: how are you trying to make sure your mindfulness or meditation practice succeeds in making you less of a jerk, instead of going off the rails in self-absorption?

Why is it so difficult to turn off? Investigating competitiveness

Logan slogan 35 is "don't be so competitive" (the next iteration in the #lojongchallenge). There is hardly a slogan that is more apt in today's competitive world. In the academic world I am part of, competition is part and parcel, because we constantly have to compete with colleagues to win grants and get our research published in the top journals. Of course there is also a lot of collaboration within science, especially in my department, in the end the evaluation and reward system is highly skewed towards recognising only individuals. A particularly powerful example of this are the Nobel prizes, which were awarded last week. These almost assume that science is done by individuals, rather than by a team, as it is in reality. Pretty much all universities require you to be in the top-whatever to survive as an academic (which obviously is impossible, because by definition not everyone can be the top). This is slightly problematic because science really thrives when you combine many different viewpoints and ideas.

Somehow I internalized the competition to such an extent that I find it difficult to turn off: there is always something more to do, and I find it very hard to give myself permission to rest. Of course it's easy to blame that only on the external world. Probably I myself am at fault at least just as much. But nevertheless, the external world really facilitates that. I think taking the time to be still and rest is almost a revolutionary act.

For me, working against this innate and external competitiveness is a constant struggle that requires a lot of vigilance to recognize these patterns creeping up, and to drop them. I found two things really helpful here: first, practising joy when someone else gets ahead or does something good. When you look at it, seeing someone else succeed and seeing them happy is actually really nice and pleasant, and it improves your relationship with them as well. In one of the ballet schools I take class at the students tend to applaud for each other when they do something well. A very nice gesture, I think. I also try to remember to tell other people what I like about them, and especially to appreciate my students. A little positivity goes a long way!

The other trick I use is to investigate again and again the effects of suspending competitiveness for a moment and just letting be. When I take a few minutes to just rest, I find that actually my performance improves, because I often recognize things that I had overlooked until that moment, and thereby make fewer mistakes. Moreover, it also really feels good. But somehow it's still so hard to do--to overcome the ingrained 'doing' habit. With this blog, I try to commit again to taking more moments of silence and being. Just another reminder...

How are you doing? Do you notice these kinds of tendencies as well? How do you work with competitiveness?

Connecting mindfulness (research) to societal action: a report from the Dutch Mindfulness Symposium

A few weeks ago, I attended the National Mindfulness Symposium organized by the Radboud Centre for Mindfulness. This is a yearly event in which researchers and mindfulness practitioners (mostly the latter) get together to discuss current topics in mindfulness interventions and research. Obviously this year's meeting was online.

The meeting started with a talk by Stephen Batchelor. He emphasized the need to not focus so much on mindfulness as a way to temporarily relax, but instead developing the tools to lead more flourishing, wise and compassionate lives. While I do not agree with him that Buddhism gets in the way of this, and needs to go back to its secular roots to do this, I still found he made some helpful points. He summarized the way to flourishing in terms of four tasks: (1) saying yes to whatever is going on ("embrace life"), (2) letting go of habitual reactive patterns, (3) stopping of reactivity so you can respond more wisely and (4) actualize a way of life. So the main point is to act without aweareness, and with "fearless engagement" as he put it. Those are definitely sensible points in my book, and critical to face the disasters of today's world, ranging from covid-19 to climate change. A good document summarising this can be found here.

Next up was Jamie Bristow, who also emphasised skilful action. According to him, the main reason mindfulness works is that it allows us to engage in intentional action. This is beautifully written up in a document by the Mindfulness Initiative. According to this document, mindfulness helps to develop three dimensions of agency: perception, understanding, and doing. This helps to face the crisis of this world, which is our collective inability to act in accord with the complexity of the world. This includes the ability to face uncomfortable truths, and deal with information overload. Our attention is so easily distracted by the big corporations that we just act habitually without thinking. Mindfulness helps us to reduce this doing mode and engage more in a reflective being mode in which we can perform more intentional action.

The last keynote was by Femke Merkx, a Buddhist teacher who has been engaging a lot with climate change. She reminded us that the compassion cultivated in Buddhism is not as much a difficult moral imperative but rather through the practice is an effortless gesture. So we have to start by cultivating our minds in order for compassionate action to become effortless, like the image of green tara. As Joanna Macy puts it: start by honouring your pain, then letting compassion arise, which allows you to see with new eyes, such that you can go forth, and finally engage with joy, which allows you to have more courage to feel the pain, and the cycle starts again. She finally mentioned being part of the Climate Tables, a series of conversations in which the pain of climate change is deeply faced, and from a space of compassion these issues are thought about to allow people to start to act from their intrinsic values.

In the afternoon, there were contributed symposia. I attended a symposium about the effect of mindfulness interventions. There was a lot of discussion about mindfulness for parents of children with ADHD. Corina Greven presented work in which the interpersonal mindfulness in parenting scale showed improvements after such an intervention. Eva Potharst showed how this scale correlated with several other self-report scales, including acceptance and emotional communication. Importantly, it also correlates with objective behaviour such as the amount of mother's gaze towards the child. Mira Cladder-Micus investigated MBCT for very chronic and treatment-resistant depression. The good news was that even in this group, depression was reduced after the intervention, although it did not completely go away. A final study that was presented was an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of MBCT interventions, by Annelieke van Velthoven. Sadly, the MBCT was not cost-effective compared to continuing anti-depressant medication.

In the last session of the afternoon, I organized a panel on the ethics of being a mindfulness researcher. How can we use the principles we learn in our mindfulness practice to deal with the ethical challenges and the competitiveness of the academic world? The panel started off with very personal stories by Anne Speckens and Katleen van der Gucht, who shared how it was challenging to follow their own path instead of going for the route of perceived success. We then went into small groups and discussed how it is sometimes challenging to practise generosity and kindness when faced with a pressure to compete and excel. One issue we discussed is how peer review can sometimes be a brutal exchange, rather than a process of constructive criticism. We can all do our parts to be a kind reviewer (instead of being =="reviewer 2"). Another thing that came up is the importance of reducing your own sense of self-importance and practise humilty: both as a person and about your scientific findings. This all requires a slow change of culture, but hopefully we can all do our part and make this world a better place.

Some tips and tricks for hybrid teaching

As most people, I have been engaging in hybrid teaching in the last months. This is surely challenging, but thankfully our university has quite some support from education professionals to help us rethink our courses. Teaching online is not simply a matter of delivering your lectures through the internet, but rather requires you to rethink the way you teach. And this doesn't have to be bad, and I must say I really enjoy learning new teaching tricks. I am currently participating in a course on Teaching Online taught by Tracy Poeltzer, which is a lot of fun. In this blog I share some of the things I have learnt in the course and in webinars.

Image from the days of giving in-person talks

One of the most important things to think about in teaching online is building connections with the students, because successful learning does not only depend on transferring information successfully, but also requires a human connection. A very simple way to start building connections is before class: being present in the chat about 5-10 minutes before the class starts and welcoming students and asking how they are doing or chatting about the weather is a good start. You can then gauge how students are feeling in the class itself by asking them to respond with an emoji or respond to a question using polling software such as mentimeter or polleverywhere. Another fun icebreaker is to ask students to pin themselves on a map in one of these polling software tools. This is especially useful now students may not be following your course from the same continent as where you are. Then during the class, it's always nice to tell stories. A powerful way ti tell a story is using the word "imagine...". Also analogies can be very powerful, for example teaching during the pandemic is like building a plane while it's flying in the air. This evokes a vivid imagine in the student's mind. Another way of humanizing the course is to use video introductions to get to know each other. A perfect and easy tool for this is flipgrid, in which you can easily make videos and comment on other's videos. Also video or spoken comments can be a nice way to humanize things. Googledocs for example allows you to record comments with google voice, but you can also record video comments with screencastify and loom. These comments have the added advantage that you can share more of your thinking process with the students, which can sometimes be a hekpful learning tool. A final nice tool to humanize the course is to hold an informal coffee shop in which students can drop by to ask questions but also to simply chat or wave to each other. Teaching online also requires you to be much clearer for the students about what is expected of them, and ideally the course has many asynchronous components that students can do at a time that works for them. One model that students seem to like is to make folders for every week of the course, and in those folders to make a series of steps. In that way, students find it easy to keep track of where they are and what they need to do when (someone should build calendar plugins for those!). Then when you get to the lecture, it's good to minimize the amount of frontal talking. You can actually pre-record your lectures in short chunks (or use existing lectures from e.g., TED, coursera etc), and then use class time to discuss these in breakout groups. Breakout groups are great because students really get to know each other. One nice model for breakout groups is to ask students to discuss about questions they want to ask the lecturer in the next plenary session. In that way, students practise asking questions. A very practical tip for the lecture time is to insert a slide that reminds you to press the record button (if you're anything like me and tend to forget to record). As regards discussion, it is helpful to explicitly discuss group norms for interaction, that mention things like kindness, respect etc. The same can also be useful to put in discussion fora, which are very helpful to get students to interact on an asynchronous basis. Finally, it's really important to remember that we are all working from covid brains, so be gentle with yourself as well as with the students. How are you doing with covid teaching? Any tips or tricks?

It's so easy to blame others, especially in the time of COVID-19...

Picture from an epic bicycle ride from Delhi to Taj Mahal with Delhi by Cycle (picture Himanshu Shekhar https://www.instagram.com/hr.the.traveler/ )

The current slogan in the #lojongchallenge is number 34: "don't transfer an ox's load to the cow." Obviously this refers to not pushing our own problems onto others. Blaming others is such an easy and automatic thing to do. But as Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also points out in her recent talks on agency, this really also is a way to disempower yourself. Of course other people and influences are part of the cause of your problems, but you yourself typically also have a part to play. A traditional example that is given is when someone hits you, they can only hurt you when you are in the way of the hitting. But of course that's a bit of a lame example in some ways and clearly shouldn't be used to justify hitting someone.

But on a more minor level, I think one case where a lot of blaming is going on these days is in COVID-19, where people blame each other for either being "corona-nazis" or for being too lax in following the rules. Last week I found myself to be also guilty of that when I was complaining about the students not taking the rules seriously. She retorted that complaining about the students only makes youangry and is not going to change anything. So true! Complaining usually doesn't make you feel better. It's better to focus on your own contribution to the problem and situation.

A village in the area of Vrindavan, India, with cows

One of those classic Indian cow pictures where cow sits in the middle of an intersection, here in Allahabad/Prayagraj

A very liberating example of a more healthy way to go about things is given by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in his book "The intelligent heart" in which he writes "The Japanese culture is very strong in this way. Even the emperors take pride in apologizing when they are at fault. They bow down low and say "I'm very sorry. It was my mistake." Having this quality gives people tremendous freedom and dignity." An example to aspire to.

Having said that, I do also find in myself a pitfall with this slogan--which encourages us to not shift responsibilities onto others. What is a tricky pitfall is the tendency to take all the work upon myself, sort of being overly optimistic of the work I can accomplish. This is obviously a recipe for exhaustion and eventually burnout. So while it is important to not overly burden others, it is also important to reflect on your own boundaries and stick to those. Because in the end, if you get a burnout, you are shifting even more responsibilities on others...

Speaking and writing inspired by the thermal baths

I was reflecting on the next #lojongchallenge slogan while relaxing in the thermal baths. This slogan is number 33, "don't bring things to a painful point." It's kind of an interesting thing to reflect on in an environment dedicated to promoting wellness and the absence of pain and suffering!

So what is meant by this slogan? It is about avoiding blaming others for your pain and suffering. Maybe it is especially easy to understand in a wellness centre, because the owners have thought for a long time on how to create an environment in which it is pleasant to hang out. This slogan asks us to create such an environment for the people around us. One way you can do this is to think before you speak or write something about the following:

Is it truthful? 

Is it helpful? 

Is it inspiring? 

Is it necessary?  

Is it kind?

The slogan is asking us to speak in a way so that we don't harm others. More importantly, it is asking us to see whether we can avoid blaming our own misery on others. This is typically a bit more challenging because it is so attractive to blame others for things. For example, in COVID-19, to complain about others' reckless behaviour, or alternatively, their fearful behaviour which makes us uncomfortable. But of course that is not really going to help much if you think about it--in fact, it probably only creates feelings of unrest and annoyance. Khandro Rinpoche also says that many obstacles are created because of our own stupidity or ambitions. And then we try to cover that up by blaming others for it. Of course that eventually creates painful situations. If on the other hand you are able to just be honestly who you are, with all your defects, not blaming anyone else for it, then there is less to protect and eventually also less to worry about.

Image from the wellness centre (captured by Stefani Nellen)

Amazing food at the thermal baths

Hotelfie at the thermal baths

It all seems so logical and simple. Then why is this so difficult? I think it is due to the heavy emphasis of our society on success, and the constant feeling that we do not measure up. Counteracting that takes a lot of reflection--again and again--until it becomes natural. That's why I do the #lojongchallenge!

Reconsidering "I told you so"

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge series is "don't wait in ambush". This slogan talks about how we can brood on "getting someone back" if they've said or done something nasty to us. A more noble response would be to instead return their unkindness with kindness.

Now of course being kind to someone who has treated you poorly is not always that easy. My personal response is usually to simply avoid this person. Then at least you know you won't cause them harm, and they also cannot cause you harm. For example, today I was on the train to Amsterdam, and when I see people who do not wear masks, one response is to be nasty to them, but another response is to simply go outside their way (which may either way be a smart thing to do in either case...).

A more subtle tendency that this can refer to is put forward by Khandro Rinpoche. She says that it also refers to cases in which we may allow situations to worsen so we can say in the end: "I told you so", rather than preventing the mistakes to happen. I personally don't think this always works, because sometimes you just need to give people the space to make their own mistakes. Nevertheless, at that time it is still not very compassionate to respond with "I told you so", rather than helping that person to clean up the mess, which would be a bit more supportive. There is sometimes quite some satisfaction in the smugness of saying "I told you so", but it's a good reminder to self that it is pretty much never helpful when you think about it.

Ballerina waiting in ambush? Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

On the whole I must confess that i am lucky that I never enjoy seeing people suffer, not even when they have hurt me. What I am trying to cultivate more of is to enjoy it when people do well. This morning I was in a ballet class in Amsterdam and I was able to really enjoy some of the beautiful dancing of the other dancers in my class, instead of being jealous of them, which can also happen sometimes. That was my little win of the day. And in the end, it makes your own life so much better as well (but of course it requires changing of habits, which is always a challenge...).

Seeing the buddha in your chance encounters

Today my retreat finished and I am easing back into daily life. I already had my first interaction with a friend I randomly ran into in the marketplace. But in the end, the whole purpose of retreat is not to run from life, but rather to prepare to engage in life in a more productive way. This is why I felt it was quite a good idea to write these blogs while I was on retreat so I could think about how to interact with the world once I got back into it.

The 31st slogan of Lojong is "don't malign others." This is quite an obvious slogan: don't speak ill of people. As I mentioned quite a few times before on this blog, sometimes it feels good to take others down, so we can feel better about ourselves. But apart from the fact that this feeling good is only short-lived, in the end, it also does your relationship with the person you are talking with no good. After all, who likes to talk to someone who only complains about others?

Khandro Rinpoche also says that it's very easy to judge--it doesn't give the other space to make mistakes, to work with themselves. it may sound naive, but giving others the benefit of the doubt usually improves the quality of your interactions. If you assume others have good intentions then I find that often people feel that and proceed to interact with you in a more positive way than when you assume others' bad intentions. I find this relatively easy now but when I was bullied as a little kid, I always had the feeling that other kids were speaking bad about me, and this made me very anxious. So this habit is definitely shaped a lot by your experiences with other people. Now most people approach me positively I find it quite easy to do.

Saying hello to the door. Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

Yet, I don't think this means you can never criticize people. I actually sometimes have that tendency because I don't want to make other people angry. But that in itself doesn't help either because tensions are built and never spoken off. Or even worse, people who behave poorly and harm others get never any headwind and therefore step by step make their behaviour even worse because they think they can get away with it. So, just like all these slogans, I think they should be applied with care. Nevertheless, seeing things from the perspective that all people are inherently buddhas-to-be, and therefore inherently good, definitely makes the world a better place.

Playing the unpredictable in an uncertain post-COVID world

We are halfway in the #lojongchallenge! The 30th slogan is "don't be so predictable." This refers to our tendency to respond very habitually whenever we are challenged, mostly by feeling sorry for ourselves. Do you recognize this? I certainly do! In these days of COVID-19, this tends to happen for example when the internet breaks down just at a moment that an important meeting or teaching is happening (like yesterday). My natural reaction is to make a big drama out of that, which obviously won't make anyone feel better, not even myself.

More specifically it also refers to the case where someone causes you trouble. Our natural reaction is to respond nastily in response. In a way, this is also what society expects from us. But what if we don't follow that pattern? In a way, when someone causes you trouble, they hope you get annoyed, and if you don't, that not only surprises you but them as well, thereby breaking the chains of action and reaction that we call karma.

Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

Breaking this chain of karma is very significant because it helps us to break our habitual patterns of reactions. If you are able to do so, it feels so good because you have gained freedom! However, it is not so easy, so you have to start with small actions. Khandro Rinpoche for example suggests surprising yourself by being generous, or maybe try being patient. For example, right now it is quite hot. A natural reaction is to feel very sorry for myself it is so hot, and then to slump down in tiredness. But maybe I can also just feel the heat and enjoy it while it lasts (I mean, next week I am going to a sauna: even more heat, and then voluntarily ;-) ). 

The practice of meditation is also very much about not being predictable. Our predictable patterns are to indulge in thoughts, especially self-related thoughts, and forget about everything else. Meditation is instead an invitation to be curious: to watch your mind, to see where your awareness comes from, to explore just being, and just doing nothing, taking space. In our busy society that is almost a revolutionary act.

And maybe, when we are less predictable in how we respond to things, we can also respond better to an unpredictable world, which very much characterizes this COVID-19 situation, and which is probably one of the biggest challenges of it for most people. Maybe the attitude of playfulness towards our own reactions can also translate into a playfulness towards the daily surprises that COVID throws at us.

Dropping the self from the meditation

We're moving along quite nicely in the #LojongChallenge! Today I want to discuss slogan 29: "give up poisoned food." Of course it is never good to eat food with poison, but obviously here this is meant more metaphorically. The idea here is that when you practice, you do it not so that other people think you are an amazing person, but rather, for the benefit of others. This is not surprising, since the whole Lojong is pretty much about that. Nevertheless, it is important to keep examining your motivation in whatever you do.

Here I would like to focus a little more on the case of meditation, since I am currently doing a meditation retreat. In meditation too, it is attractive to want it to be a kind of quiet and peaceful state in which we feel good and feel like we are a great meditator. But of course, meditation isn't always like that! Often meditation is just like a big mess of turbulent thoughts that go all over the place. And many of these thoughts--in fact--are self-related. We know this from neuroscientific research: whenever people are left to their own devices, a brain network known as the default mode network turns on, which consists of a set of mostly midline areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex that are thought to be strongly involved in self-referential processes. And in my lab I have demonstrated that the moment people are prompted to think about themselves, they get distracted and do worse on cognitive tasks such as a memory task.

So what to do? One strategy I am playing around with right now is to focus on the process rather than the result. Just the fact that you sit down to practise is awesome. Sometimes the practice will feel good, sometimes it won't, but slowly you will make progress anyway. It is also said that it is better to leave your analysis and judgment of how the meditation went until afterwards, and to during the practice mostly focus on being relaxed and spacious. One quote of Sogyal Rinpoche that illustrates this well is "meditation is becoming naturally assimilated in it." It says that instead of working hard to do something, it is more about un-doing, and trusting that you will land in your buddha nature. What a beautiful and soothing idea in this stressful world!

Can we be without a goal?

An intriguing slogan in the Lojong text is number 28: "abandon any hope of fruition." Here in the West, we are strongly conditioned in being very goal-directed, having specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound goals. This contributes to getting things done. So why are we to let go of a hope of fruition, or in other words, "achievement"?

Sometimes the tendency to try to achieve things can be in the way of accomplishment. This is particularly true with these Lojong teachings, because achieving something tends to often be associated with a feeling of self-cherishing. It's not bad to feel good a bout yourself, but feeling superior is a problem.

Moreover, the tendency to always be goal-directed also gets in the way of taking time to just rest and being present with what is. A large part of Buddhist practice is about sitting there and doing nothing--and through that, through observing what happens, becoming familiar with the nature of reality that is to be found within, rather than in busy activity.

Approaching the goal. Picture by Anna van der Meijden, https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

But yet, how can we then still motivate ourselves if we shouldn't hope for fruition? Maybe it is the case that we will never reach fruition, but we will still make some progress along the way, and we can still celebrate those little moments in which we were able to transform an emotion or approach a situation in a different way. And at the same time realize that that is only a tiny step along the way. Then it is key to go back to your motivation and use that as your major impetus: whatever you do, be it action or inaction, can be with a motivation to help beings and eventually to becoming a truly healthy and happy person (something which Buddhists call enlightenment).

Looking for focus: a case for just being

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is number 27: "Work with the greatest defilements first." Of course the whole Lojong programme is about working with our emotions. A wonderful thing of this programme is that is has a fantastic array of methods. This is at the same time a challenge, because we can get lost in it and not end up making substantial progress in any of them. I notice this tendency most strongly in ballet classes I take: when I strongly focus on fixing one bad habit (such as forgetting to suck in my tummy or not stretching my legs fully) then I make much more progress than when I focus on whatever is that day's teacher's particular focus. The same applies of course to working with your negative emotions.

Just being happy with flowers. Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/ 

How do you know what is your most insistent emotion or habit? One clue is to look at what you tend to put off, because that is often where the strongest obstacle is located. The good news, according to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, is also that all the different emotions are in some way related to self-cherishing. If you deal with one of them, then the others will automatically be improved as well.

For myself, I definitely recognize this tendency to try out many different things and not persist on one path until the end. It is just too easy to get lost in doing, instead of spending time in being--doing nothing in particular but just being with what is and seeing what emerges. Sometimes just being can be the most productive because, as Khandro Rinpoche says, it allows the natural compassion to shine out. It is also where we can drop our competitiveness and instead just connect.

Maybe this is for me the greatest obstacle or habit: to get lost in the doing. Getting lost in doing is an easy way to avoid facing things, and at the same time it is also often driven by the need for recognition--recognition by others for all the amazing things you are doing. This is just one manifestation of what Buddhists call "attachment"--in this case attachment to praise. But when you think about it from the Dzogchen perspective: you are already totally fine. Your nature is the Buddha, and if you only let it out, it will shine all by itself with brilliant wisdom and compassion. If only it weren't so hard to trust that... 

More thoughts on self-criticism and other-criticism in life and ballet

The next slogan in Lojong is number 26: "Don’t ponder others’ flaws." This is quite similar to the previous slogan, but whereas the previous one is about acting out your criticism in terms of speech, this one is about merely thinking about the flaws of others. For me that is a much stronger temptation than speaking of other's flaws. You may think "thoughts don't harm, right?" And indeed, they don't do so directly. But they are not particularly pleasant either.

The moment you start criticising others, first of all, doesn't really feel that good in the long term. In the short term, it may make you feel better about yourself, but to maintain this feeling better, you have to keep comparing yourself to others and that is pretty exhausting. One domain in which I am quite prone to mentally comparing myself to others is ballet. This is completely unnecessary because I am way too old for a career, so I am just doing it for fun. And yet, this is my mental habit. A few weeks ago I did a kind of home-made ballet intensive during which I stayed in Amsterdam for a few days and took many classes. This was my chance to play with these feelings! I found out that when I was doing a tough conditioning class, one strategy is to handle the challenge by comparing myself to others. As I just indicated, this is a quite a stressful strategy. Alternatively, I could just try to stay with the moment--with the unpleasant feelings of a tough exercise but not thinking about how long it's still going to last (long!) and not thinking about how well it's going--just staying there non-judgmentally. When I was able to do that, the whole experience became like a meditation, and quite relaxed (at least from a mental perspective). Moreover, practising in such a mind state feels so much more satisfying.

Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

I will end with one more tip that I found in Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche's book "Intelligent heart", which I found quite helpful. He said that if you are dealing with a very difficult person for whom criticism almost naturally arises, then try to realize that it's just your perception. Everyone perceives people differently, and there may well be people who see this person as amazing. The same is true about yourself by the way: the way you see yourself is probably quite different from the way others see you.

Exploring together-apart mind and reality in times of COVID-19

Last week I attended the European Mind and Life Summer Research Institute. I have been lucky enough to attend many such events over the course of my career, and it is safe to say they have shaped my career as a contemplative scientist. During these Summer Research Institutes, scientists and contemplatives get together to discuss about issues in the field of contemplative science, but also do a lot of contemplation themselves. Unsurprisingly, this year's edition took place online.

I was not sure how an online version of this event would work out, but I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of connection that I felt with the other attendees. This was achieved by some quite inventive meeting formats. Before the meeting itself, the faculty had recorded brief (20-30 min) lectures that you could watch and ask questions about. These questions were collected on a board that allowed for upvoting of your favorite questions. Participants who presented posters had submitted PDFs and 2-minute video presentations of their posters and all gotten a Slack channel to discuss these posters during the meeting. Every day of the meeting started with contemplative practices: a choice of meditation, and a choice between chi gong, yoga and juggling. I ended up mostly not following those but taking a ballet class instead. After that, the first session was a plenary meeting with the faculty in which they briefly recapped the essence of their talks, followed by a panel discussion, partly driven by the submitted questions. There was also a brief period in which we were put in breakout rooms to discuss possible questions to ask. I must confess that during most of these sessions I ended up instead just talking to the others about their fascinating work! In the afternoons, we then had breakout groups with the day's speakers in which we discussed a bit more deeply. Before that, we would often have a fun activity, for example answering a question with one word on mentimeter that then transformed into a word cloud. The afternoon ended by bringing everyone back together with reports from the breakout groups and more general discussion. As the week progressed, there were also more and more self-organized zoom meetings for discussions and chats. As usual, there was a much-needed silent meditation day in the middle of the week which also featured a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche, who talked about his wandering retreat and meditation in general.

Now the contents of the meeting. We started the first day by talking about perception: how do we derive knowledge from the world? This questions was approached from neuroscientific, philosophical and contemplative directions. Michel Bitbol for example argued that our experience of the world is just the part we need, which is an optimal way to perceive the world, but we should remember that that is not reality. There were many discussions about how we continuously make up stories about the world, and then confuse them for reality. Yet even if science is just another story, Michel Bitbol argued that it is a very efficient way towards knowledge, for example in the case of a search for a COVID-19 vaccine.

The second day was dedicated to interoception and emotions. Holger Yeshe talked about how the Buddhist teachings give us tools to investigate where our suffering, and our negative emotions (which are the source of this suffering) come from. Micah Allen talked about interoception--the feeling of our body from the inside, and argued that many psychiatric disorders are accompanied by problems in interoception. There have been claims that meditation improves interoception, but the evidence for this is not unequivocal. He also argued that we need more replication in the field of meditation reserarch and called for a Many Labs experiment in this field. I fully agree, and I am working on a project to work towards that! On a more poetic note, Giovanna Colombetti argued that emotions are not a feeling of the body but a feeling through the body. A lot to think about!

Thursday was dedicated to embodying knowledge. All too often, we think that knowledge is just in our heads, but dancers will know that you can also know and investigate through the body--a perspective that was also shown by Asaf Bachrach and Hsuan-Hsiu Hung. Asaf Bachrach showed an intriguing experiment in which people were moving in virtual reality, where he found that people felt very calm, and he noticed that when people moved slowly, they felt more together than when moving quickly. Despite the wisdom there is to be found in movement, Guiseppe Pagnoni argued that by keeping body and mind still during meditation practice, you can detect changes in the body-mind complex with much greater precision, which affords you to be less enslaved in your habits.

The last day was dedicated to artificial intelligence. Luisa Damiano argued that in addition to the empirical cycle of scientific research, we need the synthetic cycle in which we simulate the world and explore the world in-silico. Father Tiso discussed how artificial intelligence allows us to appreciate the sphere of interconnected minds through the internet (as was indeed happening there and then during the summer research institute!). Venerable Aileen Barry summed up the Ai day very beautifully by arguing that behind every AI there is a human, and a motivation, and we should watch this motivation.

Altogether, the ESRI was a very rich and beautiful exploration of what it means to know, and what it means to connect as humans--through technology. My head was spinning by the end, and there was as always too little time to explore this richness in ideas, but it was definitely a beautiful experience. And now it is time to take that wonder into my own retreat.

What does it mean to do retreat in times of COVID-19?

As I am writing this, I am entering into a retreat. A retreat not at the Buddhist centre of  Lerab Ling where I usually go to, but at my own home. In one of the first sessions, it was mentioned that the moment you leave your home, the retreat is half accomplished. Of course that makes a lot of sense, because you have already physically retreated from ordinary life. This made me reflect on the question of what is means to retreat, when you do not leave your home. 

For me, retreat is about taking the space and time to reflect on the Buddhist teachings--something I nornally only have little time to do. When you are in a Buddhist retreat centre, the whole environment is conducive to thinking about this, and the place is usually so beautiful that meditation almost arises naturally. The aim of this is of course to transform our minds so that it works a little bit differently, with a little more sanity, in everyday life. So how can I create that in my own home?

The meaning of retreat is "boundary", so the first thing to do of course is to reflect on every single thing I do: is this necessary for my retreat, or can I drop it? Of course work has to go, for sure. Social media, also pretty clear. News? I noticed I am quite addicted to news since COVID-19, so ideally this should go as well. At the same time, it is important to know when something changes in the world situation that may affect the way I live my life. So I decided to have a short "news" moment every morning. I will still keep up my ballet practice because it is important for me to have a flexible and strong body, but I will do so with youtube teachings, rather than interacting with other individuals. The wonderful thing of a retreat is to momentarily drop social interactions (not so difficult when you live alone like me) so you can devote yourself with less distractions to the study and reflection.

I must confess that doing retreat at home is challenging because I can feel the pull of the habits that like to fill my mind and provide entertainment. So this is a time to work with this attachment--after all, retreat is about reducing attachment and aversion, according to the Richö teaching. At the same time it is also wonderful to have the space and time to do something as meaningful as study and practice. And here it is important to not go into overdrive either but make sure that while you adhere to a retreat schedule, you also take enough time to relax. This is particularly important because this is not only my retreat but also my vacation. As it says in the Richö: "Generally, refrain from any noise and busy-ness, whether outside or within the mind, and simply remain perfectly at ease, effortlessly. This is the true, essential solitude or hermitage."

In the end, while I miss the beautiful surroundings of the Buddhist centre, I think it is also lovely to create new habits that may more easily transpire to life after the retreat. I am planning to keep writing blogs, so I will keep you posted on how it goes.

Transforming criticism into a gift

I find criticism one of the most challenging things in life (I know, I am pretty lucky) and also during COVID-19. For example, I find it difficult to deal with people who go into a self-righteous mode of criticizing other's over-reaction or under-reaction to the pandemic. The Lojong teachings say "Don't speak of the downfalls of others". But of course criticising the criticising is also speaking of other's downfalls. In the end, we can only change what we do and how we react to what others do.

Still from the video which is my image of a gift in ballet language: taking a bow to dedicate your dancing to the audience

Criticism is tricky, because as a was reminded of in a recent instagram post by The Whole Pointe, criticism is ballet is pretty important: it allows you to improve. In fact, traditionally often criticism by a ballet teacher is coveted because it indicates that you are seen and worthy enough to be criticised. And in science too, criticism is so important because it keeps the discussion going and allows for sharpening of arguments and the improvement of experiments, data and interpretation, as was eloquently discussed in this podcast. Yet, what I think makes the difference is the motivation underlying the criticism: is it a motivation to help, or is it instead a puritanical motivation arising out of insecurity and fear. I notice myself that often when I am in my head criticising others, I do so to feel better than them. And since the Lojong teachings are all about reducing our self-importance and increasing our altruism, this is probably the reason that criticism of others is discouraged.

I feel there is another angle to it as well. I notice in my self that those times that I criticise others more, I also tend to criticise myself more, as if I build some maladaptive mental habits. Also self-criticism is not necessarily bad, because I believe it is important to work with yourself to become a better person (in whatever you want to cultivate). The moment it becomes problematic I think is when it gets rooted in hope and fear: the hope to be this amazing person, better than everyone else, or the fear of not being good enough. What I decided to work on in the coming weeks is to watch my motivation, especially when I dance, and to shift it to giving whatever I have without hoping for any praise in return. For me such a motivation creates a tremendous sense of freedom and allows me to receive whatever reaction comes my way without being unnecessarily pained by it or elated by it.

Motivation during COVID-19

Today I want to share some thoughts on motivation in the current COVID-19 situation. Working from home is the new reality for many of us, and I find that motivation is a big topic for both myself and my students. This situation really leads us to question what our motivation really is, which I think is a good thing. At the same time, it is not easy. Normally we are often motivated simply by being in a context that expects a certain work from us, and it happens more or less automatically. Now in this situation the motivation has to come from within, and it has to withstand countless sources of distraction that varies from the news to kids (depending on your situation) and everything in-between.

picture taken on the Manali-Leh highway in India

I find the current Lojong slogan I am working with quite helpful in this respect: slogan 24 says: "Change your attitude but remain natural." Changing your attitude refers traditionally to working with your mind so it is not so much focused on hope and fear for yourself, and instead more occupied with care for others. This care for others is not so much primarily about what you do, but rather about the motivation with which you do things. For example, when you sweep the floor, you can do this with the motivation that it makes a cleaner world for all living beings, and even maybe that it clears away all the infections that beings are currently suffering from. In this way, every single thing you do can become something inspiring and meaningful. In a recent podcast, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also expressed this idea very well when she talked about how we can relate to COVID-19 not so much in terms of our hopes and fears, but rather in terms of what we can learn from it. "remain natural" refers to not displaying these efforts in an attempt to appear like the most amazingly compassionate person--because then it becomes again a self-aggrandizing effort. And besides the fact that the point of the Buddhist path is to reduce this tendency of ours to want to increase our ego, a more important reason to not want that is that whenever we engage in self-aggrandization it is also causes a lot of fear. It is more helpful to ask "how can I serve?" than to ask "how can this serve me to get ahead or to get appreciated."

I have been reflecting on these ideas in the last few days, and I found that what helps me to stay motivated (while I live and work pretty much by myself and spend about 10 hours a day in front of my computer screen) is to go back to the question "what is my motivation?" again and again. I am striving to cultivating this memory more and more, because if I reach for a new binge (my weak spot currently) and I ask "what is my motivation?" then it is just to get entertainment. If I instead work on a paper and I inquire about my motivation, then it is to help my students, or even bigger, science, ahead. If I dance, then I can do this with a motivation to nurture my body and mind, and maybe even to make others happy who see my dancing. If I post on social media, I can do this to get the likes, or instead I can just do it to benefit others without hoping for anything in return. In all these cases, the latter motivation is the bigger one and the more sustainable one.

The main thing is to keep investigating your motivation instead of just going on autopilot.It is not easy to stay with the bigger motivation to benefit the world--or to be the best person I can be, as someone put it beautifully today--but it is a beautiful aspiration!

Reflections on the covid-19 situation and Lojong

I figured the times make it almost imperative to take into account the covid-19 situation in my #lojongchallenge blog series. Thankfully, the Lojong slogans pretty much all are suitable to work with whatever situation. I found that slogan 23, "always abide by the three basic principles" also gives some useful advice to deal with the current situation.

My last trip abroad before the lockdown started in the Duomo of Milan (notice gloves!)

So let's start by breaking down this slogan: what are the three principles? Those are first to stay committed to working against self-importance, second, to not act outrageously or show off, and third, to be impartial and equanimous. Before we go into this, let me talk a bit about how I am coping with the situation. I count myself lucky because I do have a secure job, a nice place to live, and all the things that I find important can be done online in some way. It is strange to not leave the house apart from for errands and running once a week, but I am not thinking about that so much. Every day I start the working day by doing a few dances that get my blood flowing and my brain going. Then I sit down behind my computer and do the usual--meetings, e-mail, writing, except that all meetings take place in front of a computer screen rather than in real life. And then my normal past-times, ballet and Buddhist gatherings, also happen from behind the same screen. My calendar is the tool that I use to distinguish between all of those. I make sure to plan in the Buddhist gatherings and ballet classes such that they surely happen. I feel sad to not really meet people in real life, but I feel excited about learning so many new things and seeing all the creative things that people have developed.

Now back to the principles. The first principle, reducing self-importance is basically what we are all doing right now: while we may not be at too much risk for the virus, we have to give up a social life for a little while so others can stay healthy. If I work from home then the person in the hospital will better be able to manage the tremendous workload of patients. I also notice that everyone seems more aware of each other as we move around each other in the streets to maintain our 1.5m distance. While it may seem that letting go of self-importance is all about the other, it is important to realize that dropping self-importance does not mean letting go of self-care. Self-care is especially important to ensure you can be there for others. This is why I try to prioritize sleep and ballet, so I am happy and healthy.

Life at home: dancing with the vacuum cleaner

The second principle, not to act outrageously refers primarily to showing off one's spiritual practice. In a wonderful advice for these times, Khandro Rinpoche emphasises the importance of simply coming back to being kind to one another. Don't try to impress others with what a good practiioner you are. Simpler is better. What I also find helpful in this slogan is that by reducing our tendency to show off, we are reducing our own anxiety because any time we show off, we are anxious about others' responses. Good reminder to self in this age of social media, that make it so easy to get trapped in the tendency to seek for others' approval..

The last principle, maintaining equanimity is also helpful. For me it brings a lot of peace to realize that not all is in our own hands. I am currently trying to practice this by not thinking too much about what will happen in the future, and just stay with what happens day by day. Because every day things will change. I was supposed to go to India right when the lockdown happened, and most of the other things that were supposed to happen this summer--summer schools, conferences, ... have been cancelled. But who knows what the world will look like even a few weeks from now. It is surreal to think about what has happened. Never has the truth of impermanence and interdependence be so clear!

Your brain on ballet

A few months ago I attended the lecture-performance "Dancing and the Brain" at Nationale Opera and Ballet in Amsterdam. I thought it was really cool to discuss how dancing affects our brain, and join lecture with dance demonstrations. Inspired by the lecture, here is my version of dancing and the brain, with an emphasis on ballet, the form of dance with which I have most personal experience.

Cortical representations of hand and foot in Meier et al (2016)

To understand how dancing affects the brain, we need to start with discussing what dancing really is in general, and then how ballet differs from that. In general, dancing can be defined as a combination of movement, often with music, often in the service of artistic expression and conveying a certain aesthetic experience (but sometimes also a social action). As such, dancing inevitably is a training of motor coordination, which is requires coordination between many brain areas, including the parietal and premotor cortex (Cross et al., 2009). Each type of dance has a specific movement vocabulary, and when dancers watch their "own" type of dance, their ventral premotor cortex gets more active than when they watch other forms of dance (Pilgramm et al., 2010). This suggests that dancing helps to set up specific motor programs (for example, in ballet dancers it has been shown that the area of motor cortex associated with the foot has increased; Meier et al., 2016). Dance has also been shown to be associated with more sensitivity in the recognition of other's movements (Sevdalis & Keller, 2009).

In my home office

Now let's move on to the specific form of dance that is ballet. What is unique about ballet is that it consists of a very specific movement vocabulary that has changed little over the centuries. A strong emphasis is placed on the lines created by poses and movements. As such, I would expect that this is associated by a very strong sensitivity to small differences in the production and perceptions of these patterns of movement. A lot of this sensitivity is visual because ballet dancers perfect their movements largely with the help of mirrors. This is probably different in many other forms of dance that do not rely so strongly on mirrors. Moreover, because ballet involves the precise repetition of a relatively fixed movement vocabulary, this is associated with increased ability to memorize movement sequences (Smyth & Pendleton, 1994). This often happens by chunking a series of movements into bite-size pieces, which ballet dancers have been shown to be relatively good at Foley et al. 1991 . I am very curious whether this also transfer to better memory in general. I would not be surprised if ballet were a good training method for memory and cognitive control (see also van Vugt (2014) for similar ideas).

Apart from training memory and cognitive control, ballet is likely to be also excellent training for your attention. When you are in the studio, you need to focus on many pieces of information at the same time: the series of movements you are supposed to produce, the muscles you are supposed to be tensing and relaxing (while dancers have been training for years to automatize those patterns, they keep honing them every single day of their careers).

During an EEG experiment at the Night of Arts & Sciences, 2019

Apart from those technical aspects, ballet is most importantly an art, so the best part for a dancer usually comes when they can forget about the steps and totally inhabit the character or the mood that comes with the dance. They then typically forget everything around them and enter something like a flow state. I would not be surprised if ballet dancers are very good at imagination, but I have not found any studies that test that. I would predict this would lead to a strengthening of a set of brain areas called the default mode network, involving the posterior cingular cortex, medial prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe, which are all involved in creating stories in your mind, and disconnecting from outside distraction. While there have been

claims that ballet improves creative thinking, i am not so sure about that, and I think this is mostly true for those dancers who have specialized in improvisation (indeed, all the dancers in this study did, including some ballet dancers).

But ballet is not typically something you only do by yourself. In fact, one of the most beautiful things about ballet is when the corps the ballet moves in perfect synchrony, such as the entry of the shades in La Bayadere. To make this happen, dancers need to be highly aware of the dancers that are in front of them, to the side, and behind them. In fact, they are even told to breathe together. As such, I would strongly suspect that not only their bodies synchronize, but even their brains synchronize (here is a video where I talk about inter-brain synchrony in dancers.

A final unique aspect of ballet is the extreme balance expertise required, Women even balance on the tips of their toes! Recent research has shown that dancers are better at balancing than non-dancers (Burzynska et al., 2017). Such balancing expertise was associated with changes in dancers' hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus (thought to be crucial for orientation in space), insula (thought to be important for feeling sensations inside your body)Dordevic et al., 2018).

Brain areas larger in ballet dancers than in controls (from Dordevic et al., 2018)

, and cingulate motor cortex (

In summary, dance, and in particular ballet, is great for lots of things. Indeed, I found that in the last few weeks, when I was stuck at home due to the covid-19 situation, ballet was really my outlet and saving grace. The good news is that dance in general, and ballet in specific is nowadays also used in interventions for diseases such as Parkinsons (read more here). It has also been found that people who have been dancing their whole life tend to suffer less from dementia and age-related cognitive decline (Verghese et al., 2003). So, keep dancing!