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  • [ Silence ]

  • >> I want to welcome you to this closing keynote for our first Radical Compassion Symposium

  • at Naropa University and especially welcome people who are watching online.

  • Thanks to our partnership with Yoga Journal, a new relationship for Naropa.

  • I want to thank the Editor-in-Chief, Carin Gorrell and the publisher, Jeff Tkach,

  • who came together with us just a few weeks ago and actually allowed us

  • to livestream some of our symposium.

  • Tonight's closing keynote, Dr. Dan Siegel would be up in a moment and be fully

  • and completely introduced by one of our faculty members who I will introduce in a moment.

  • This is the end, last night, the end is actually tomorrow afternoon for all of you here

  • in a very Naropa style, will actually end with a Naropa like process, little less, blah, blah,

  • blah and a little more interpersonal relating

  • which I think is very good the way we began is kind of the way will end.

  • And I think that's an important part of how we bookend this conference and so I'd encourage all

  • of you that have the opportunity to come and join us tomorrow

  • at noon for the closing ceremony.

  • So, I'd like to introduce to you our Dean of Graduate Education, faculty member,

  • Christine Caldwell who teaches in our Somatic Psychology Department

  • and will introduce Dr. Siegel to you all and I hope you enjoy the evening.

  • [ Applause ]

  • [ Silence ]

  • >> Good evening.

  • I'm going to read because otherwise I just won't get it all in.

  • So, it's really an honor and a trill

  • to be introducing Dr. Dan Siegel to Naropa's extended community.

  • Many different cultures and traditions are currently contributing to our understanding

  • of present moment focus and the power of leading a self-reflective and contemplative life,

  • but perhaps more than any other, Dan Siegel is creating multiple networks for us

  • that link theory to practice, east to west, empiricism to the experience,

  • brain to behavior, and mind to heart.

  • By calling, he is a psychiatrist, teacher, therapist, writer, and researcher

  • and he is helping us to gracefully dance

  • between research labs meditation cushions, playgrounds, and family dinners.

  • His accomplishments are many but I would like to briefly highlight two areas of his work

  • that have been game changers, particularly in the field of psychotherapy and well-being

  • and that he will talk with us about that tonight.

  • As we know modern western psychotherapy was founded on the assumption that insight leads

  • to healing Freud called it the talking cure.

  • The idea was that if we deeply examine what we thought and understood the way

  • that early experience shaped us, we would be free to change.

  • While this view has always had some merit, contemplative teachers

  • and practitioners have always known that there was something more.

  • Wisdom traditions, many of which lie in the east have known for centuries that how we think,

  • how we relate to and engage with our direct present moment experience using disciplined,

  • high quality attention can be much more central to well-being

  • than understanding who did what to whom and why.

  • Dan Siegel has created the language system that helps us to understand

  • that both scientifically and experientially.

  • One of the central terms in his new language system is called Mindsight,

  • defined us more than understanding and more than mindfulness.

  • It involves how we focus our awareness on ourselves

  • and on the internal world of someone else.

  • And then use this focus in the service of therapeutic change that can heal communities

  • and families, as well as individuals.

  • The second concept is Neural Integration.

  • Here we see the bridge that he and others have built between neuroscience

  • of the developing brain relationships and present moment awareness.

  • In this concept, we understand that the brain develops first in distinct sections

  • but then the important work begins when these sections wire together, interconnect,

  • and integrate their information and actions.

  • With this wiring together of various brain areas complex,

  • healthy and relational behavior becomes possible.

  • And possibly if we remember the story that Joanna Macy told us yesterday

  • about the activist protecting trees in the Australian rain forest,

  • this neural interconnection may enable us to realize

  • that we are also connected to others apart of all life.

  • The really interesting issue is that attention is a primary director

  • of the neural growth needed for creating this integrated neural circuits.

  • First the attention and care given to us by others and then the patterns

  • of attention we subsequently develop that direct our adult behavior.

  • Dan has been at the forefront of articulating and extending this concept

  • so that we can understand the neurological processes of attention

  • that underlies states of radical compassion.

  • These ideas and others he has pioneered, articulated in his speeches and writings

  • in a really clear and warm and accessible way shifted the emphasis of psychotherapy

  • so that it now includes an examination not so much of what one thinks,

  • but of how what one is feeling and doing right now and how that present-centered experience

  • when guided with consciousness and compassion, can deeply heal us.

  • The application of these ideas into parenting and family life would allow us

  • to take neuroscience and contemplative practices not only into our hearts and minds but also

  • into our homes and into our interactions with our partners, our children, and our communities.

  • Dr. Siegel is currently clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine

  • and co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center.

  • He has written such best-selling books as "The Developing Mind," "The Mindful Brain,"

  • "The Mindful Therapist," "The Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology", "Mindsight",

  • "Parenting From the Inside Out", "The Whole Brain Child", and "Brainstorm".

  • Dr. Siegel has lectured for the King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II,

  • His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Google University, London's Royal Society of Arts,

  • and TEDx and now he can add Naropa to that August list.

  • [ Cheers & Applause ]

  • Please join me in welcoming Dr. Dan Siegel.

  • [ Cheers & Applause ]

  • [ Silence ]

  • [ Applause ]

  • >> Thank you so much.

  • It's a real honor to be here with you.

  • I'd like to thank Naropa University for hosting this incredible birthday party in general

  • and the honor I have of participating with you.

  • And Yoga Journal Life for streaming this out to the world and making that happen

  • and all the people who've supported the work that you're doing here.

  • We get the joy of spending almost two hours together.

  • Really diving deeply into issues related to internal practice

  • and our interpersonal relationships and our relationship with the planet.

  • And so what we're going to do in this time is begin with the inner world and so in thinking

  • about how we would spend our time together, I felt it would be really important

  • to actually start with a practice.

  • So you've heard the world I live in which comes from both academics and from clinical practice.

  • It's a field called the interpersonal neurobiology,

  • which combines all the different disciplines of science together into one framework

  • and we're going to talk a lot about that as we go.

  • But let's begin first with an exploration that comes from this field

  • of interpersonal neurobiology and the central idea of integration.

  • So, instead of giving you kind of the-- all the science behind it and the clinical implications

  • of it before we do it, let's just dive in and do it.

  • So when I ask you to do since probably most of you are very familiar

  • with contemplative practice because it's the center of Naropa University's early origins

  • and certainly it gives us time to say,

  • well what is this inner world of our mental life really like?

  • Let's dive in and explore it.

  • So what I ask you to do is just put your stuff down.

  • Let's make sure all our phones are off and even turn them off from vibrate if you can and as,

  • you know, get yourself ready, so sitting up straight like any reflective practice.

  • This one is called the wheel of awareness practice and what it entails is an exploration

  • of different aspects of our inner and interpersonal lives.

  • And to begin with, just to give a little framework to the focus of attention

  • which we'll be really playing with and exploring in just a moment, before we close our eyes,

  • get ready for an inner practice, we do bless you.

  • In fact, let's have a bless you, for everyone who's going to sneeze for this evening.

  • There you go so feel free to sneeze.

  • So, let's just have with your eyes open, let your visual attention come to the middle

  • of the room around here and if you're out in the online world, just let your focus come

  • within the screen to where you imagine in the middle of the world -- room would be.

  • And then send your visual attention back to the far wall here.

  • And now, let your attention come back to the middle of the room

  • and then bring your visual attention to about book reading distance as if you had a book

  • or magazine in your hands and just notice how you can determine where attention goes.

  • And just like the common practice of focusing on the breath,

  • let's just now let our attention find the breath and just do a short bit

  • of breath awareness practice, the basic mindfulness practice

  • of strengthening our attention, sometimes called the Shamatha

  • but it's really a universal practice not just in Buddhist practice to focus on the breath.

  • And let's sense the breath wherever you feel it most naturally, whether it's the air coming in

  • and out of your nostrils or your chest rising and falling or the abdomen moving out and in.

  • Just let your attention ride the wave of the breath, even the whole body just breathing.

  • Let's spend the moment now just ride in the wave of the breath in and out.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And just sensing the breath can bring us to a deep place beneath the surface

  • of all the chatter of our thoughts, and memories, and images, and feelings

  • and for people who feel safe in the water, this can be a useful analogy

  • to going beneath the surface of the ocean.

  • We're deep beneath the surface, it's calm and clear.

  • And from this deep place of tranquility and clarity, it's possible to just look upward

  • at the surface and notice whatever conditions are there.

  • It might be flat.

  • It might be rough waves.

  • It could even be a full storm and no matter what those conditions are,

  • deep beneath the surface, remains calm and clear.

  • And so, we know from all sorts of studies that simply focusing

  • on the breath can bring a deep sense of clarity and strength as it stabilizes our minds,

  • and we'll talk a lot about that later on, but for this practice we'll let the breath go

  • and I'd like to introduce to you to a practice if you've never done it before that we do

  • at the Mindsight Institute called the wheel of awareness.

  • And the idea that is simply this, if you can imagine in your mind's eye

  • if your eyes are closed or if you want to open them and look at me I'll show you with my body,

  • if you can imagine a large wheel with an outer rim

  • and a smaller inner hub that's also a circle.

  • We'll be talking about this visual image and if you're like me, it maybe hard for you to evoke,

  • actually seeing the image and that's fine as long as you have the sense of the idea

  • of a wheel with an outer rim and inner hub and imagine that there's a single spoke

  • that can be moved around from the hub to various places on the rim.

  • So what I'd like you to imagine is this,

  • is that the hub represents the experience within consciousness of knowing.

  • It's basically the most direct way.

  • The simplest way of defining what consciousness or awareness is, it's a sense of knowing.

  • And within consciousness, we not only have the knowing which is represented in the hub,

  • we have the known which could include for example,

  • what you see with your eyes or what you hear with your ears.

  • And the known, which will go through as a review includes what's on the rim,

  • so the rim represents anything that we can know about like what we see or hear.

  • The hub represents the experience of knowing and the way we connect knowing

  • to the known is with the spoke of attention.

  • So the spoke is the way we direct attention and we'll systematically move the spoke

  • around the rim, which if you can picture it like a pizza,

  • we can divide that whole wheel of awareness into four segments.

  • The first segment we'll review includes our first five senses of sight,

  • hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

  • We'll then move the spoke over to the next segment of the four and this is the segment

  • of the rim representing our internal bodily sense

  • which in science we actually call this sixth sense.

  • It's called interoception.

  • We'll explore that and then we're going to actually move the spoke

  • around to the third segment of four in the rim.

  • This third segment allows us to explore mental life or feelings, thoughts, memories, hopes,

  • dreams, attitudes, intentions, longings.

  • All of that mental life is represented here on this third segment of the rim.

  • And then as we go around, we'll do some other things including exploring the fourth aspect

  • of the rim, which is our sense of relationships to people

  • and things including outside of these bodies that we inhabit.

  • So that's basically an overview of the wheel with its knowing in the hub,

  • its spoke of attention, and its rim of the known.

  • So let's begin now again, letting your eyes stay open partially closed or closed,

  • it doesn't matter whatever feels most comfortable for you.

  • Let your back be straight, unfold your legs if they're crossed, keep--

  • if you're on the floor, that's fine, you can cross it but if you're in a seat,

  • it's helpful that both feet flat on the floor.

  • This is an active practice, so we want to have a sense of dignity, our chest could be like,

  • :OK I'm getting ready to go here," and let's begin the practice.

  • Let's find the breath and ride the wave of the breath in and out, letting that deep sense

  • of clarity and calm place us in the hub of knowing of the wheel of awareness.

  • And now let the breath go as your focus of attention, so we're letting the breath go

  • but imagine that you are centering yourself in the hub of knowing, in this wheel,

  • and imagine either visualizing it or just the idea of it, that you're now going

  • to send this spoke out to the first segment of the rim.

  • And let's begin with the sense of hearing and allow sounds to feel awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now moving the spoke over a little bit this time to the sense of sight

  • and let light feel awareness coming through closed eyelids

  • or you can gently open your eyelids and let us all focus bring light into awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now moving the spoke over a bit this time to the sense of smell,

  • letting any odors feel awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • Now moving the spoke over a bit more, this time to the sense

  • of taste, putting tastes feel awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now moving the spoke over one more time in this segment to the sense of touch,

  • anywhere where the skin is touching clothing or the floor,

  • skin touching skin, hand holding hand.

  • Let the sense of touch feel awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • Now, I invite you to take a bit of a deeper breath as we let these first five senses

  • that bring the outside world into awareness.

  • Letting them go as we imagine moving the spoke of attention over to the next segment of the rim

  • and this is the segment that includes the interior of the body.

  • And let's begin with the facial region, allowing the sensations of the muscles and bones

  • of the facial area feel awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And then, focusing on the sensations from the skin and the muscles and bones at the top

  • of the head, at the top of the skull, and then back to the back

  • of the head and the side where the ears are.

  • And then moving to the sensations of the bones and muscles and the shoulders,

  • and then streaming attention down both arms from the shoulders, to the elbows down to the wrists

  • and then down to the ends of the fingers.

  • And then bringing attention to the upper back and the chest, and then to the muscles and bones

  • in the lower back and the muscles in the abdomen.

  • And now bringing attention to the hips, and then streaming attention down both legs

  • from the hips, to the knees, to the ankles and then to the ends of the toes.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now bringing attention to the pelvic region sensations, to the genitals.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And then to the sensations of the intestines beginning in the lower intestines

  • and then moving inside the abdomen to the middle intestines in your stomach.

  • And then even up through the center of your chest, through the esophagus

  • up into the interior of the throat.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now bringing attention to the interior of the lungs

  • and now centering attention in the heart region.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now expanding our attention to the interior of the body, letting the whole of the interior

  • of the body muscles and bones, our internal organs,

  • setting all those sensations feel awareness.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And knowing that our perception of the interior world, our interoception,

  • is a window into the wisdom of the body invite you now to take in a deeper

  • and more intentional breath as we let this window into the wisdom of the body go for now

  • and we imagine moving the spoke over now to the third segment of the rim.

  • And this is a segment of the rim, this segment that represents our mental life of feelings

  • and thoughts, memories, images, intentions, hopes, dreams,

  • anything that's part of our mental life.

  • This known of mental life is represented here in the third segment of the rim.

  • So with the spoke of attention coming from our hub of knowing,

  • we then aim it at this third segment and we'll do this part of the rim review in two portions.

  • The first portion simply goes like this, from the hub of knowing of the wheel with the spoke

  • of attention going to mental life, simply invite anything at all into awareness,

  • any feelings, thoughts, memories anything.

  • And so in many ways, this is kind of the opposite

  • of a standard breath practice instruction where you're told to focus on the breath

  • and if a thought or feeling or memory intrudes you,

  • let that go and you come back to the breath.

  • This is an opportunity to say to your mental life, bring it on.

  • Anything in there or nothing, whatever from the hub of knowing, you're spoke going

  • out to this part of the rim, you just say, "Come on in," just like a room is

  • on a guest house, anything there just let it come.

  • And let's do that portion now and when you hear my voice next,

  • you'll hear about the next portion of this part of the rim review.

  • So we're just inviting anything in from mental life.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And now for the second portion of this review of our mental life.

  • I invite you again to simply invite anything to come in or nothing whatever is coming

  • from that aspect of the room into the hub of knowing of awareness.

  • Only this time, I invite you to pay particular attention to the characteristics,

  • the qualities by which in mental activity, let's say a thought

  • or it could be a memory, but let's say a thought.

  • How's a thought first present itself to awareness?

  • Is it sudden?

  • Is it gradual?

  • Does it come from one place to the other?

  • What it's like for something to present itself to awareness?

  • Then once it's in awareness, how does that to stay there?

  • Does it vibrate?

  • Is it solid?

  • Is it fluid?

  • What does it feel like to actually have something stay in awareness?

  • And then, how does this mental activity, this thought, how's it leave awareness?

  • Is it just replaced by another mental activity that kind of overlaps it or is there a gap

  • between two mental activities and if there's a gap, what is that gap feel like?

  • So, here I'm inviting you to study the architecture of mental life.

  • How things first present themselves, stay present and leave awareness.

  • And let's begin that practice right now.

  • [Pause]

  • And now, I invite you to find the breath and just ride the wave of the breath in and out.

  • And before we move from this third segment of the rim to the fourth and final segment,

  • we're going to try a step of the wheel where from the hub of knowing the wheel of awareness,

  • we're going to send the spoke of attention out.

  • But instead of going to the rim, imagine that you can bend the spoke around.

  • So it goes out from the hub, it then bends before it gets to the rim and aims its focus

  • of attention, straight into the hub of knowing of awareness.

  • So, for this part of the practice, from the hub of the wheel, you're sending this spoke

  • out from the hub, bending the spoke around.

  • So, it comes back to where it was launched from basically,

  • and aiming attention right into awareness itself.

  • And let's see what awareness of awareness feels like.

  • Let's begin that practice right now.

  • [Pause]

  • And I invite you to find the breath.

  • And ride the wave of the breath in and out.

  • [Pause]

  • Knowing that sensing whatever the hub of awareness feels

  • like is something we can develop more and more as we practice.

  • I invite you now to imagine straightening out to spoke of attention.

  • And moving it now from its focus on the hub to going

  • out to the fourth and final segment of the rim.

  • And this is the segment of the rim

  • that represents what we can call our relational sense, our sense of relatedness or connectedness

  • to things beyond these skin-encased bodies that are part of who we are.

  • So, to begin with, I invite you to just let the sense of connection,

  • here and now with this spoke going to this fourth segment of the rim.

  • Just invite the sense of connection to people for closes to right now.

  • Physically closes to you, just let that sense of connection

  • to those closes to you feel awareness.

  • [Pause]

  • And now, let that sense of connection expand, if you're in this room doing this practice to all

  • of us sharing this room here tonight.

  • And if you're out in another world listening to this, just the people who are outside

  • of this space here and a little bit further away, but still physically somewhat close.

  • Let your sense of connection to this wider set of people feel awareness.

  • [Pause]

  • And now, let that sense of connection to expand even further to people not physically close

  • to you, but your friends and family.

  • Let your sense of connection to friends and family feel awareness.

  • [Pause]

  • And then, widening that sense of connection even further to people you work with.

  • People you work with clinically or you are teaching or get taught by.

  • All the different people professionally you may interact with in your work life.

  • And then, letting that sense of connection to expand even further to people who live

  • in your neighborhood, to people who share your community.

  • And then widening that sense of connection to people who live in your city, to people who live

  • in your state and then widening it even further to open an awareness to the sense of connection

  • to people who live in your country, to people who share your continent.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And then broadening that sense of connection to all human beings

  • who share this common home, we call earth.

  • And then see if you can permit that sense of connection to expand even further

  • to all living beings, all animals, all plants, who share our common home

  • on this planet, to all living things.

  • [ Pause ]

  • This sense of connection what we can call our eighth sense is probably one

  • of the most underdeveloped senses that we have and helping nurture this sense of connection

  • to other people throughout the world and to living beings on this planet.

  • It's probably one of the most crucial missions we can all be on as we expand our sense

  • of consciousness or sense of awareness from the inside out

  • and recent studies have affirmed what contemplative practices have been teaching

  • for a hundreds and even thousands of years that bringing a positive sense,

  • not just of connection but of wishes of love, and kindness, of care and concern

  • out in the world, actually not only bring positive changes out in the world.

  • Recent studies have shown they bring powerful physiological improvements

  • to our own bodily health in many, many ways that we'll talk about.

  • So with that in mind, knowing that science has affirmed what contemplative practices have been

  • teaching for a long time, we're going to do a very basic love and kindness, positive wishes,

  • compassion reflective practice with a little bit of a twist at the end.

  • So, it goes like this.

  • We've been feeling a connection to all living beings, so we'll begin with the wishes

  • to all living beings and especially for those who've never done this before,

  • the way I'll do it is, as you probably heard it many, many times is I'll say part of a phrase

  • and then I'm going to pause and quietly in your mind,

  • you can explore that and repeat the phrase.

  • And then I'll complete the phrase and you'll repeat it the completion

  • and then we'll go on to the next phrase.

  • So we'll begin with, may all living beings be happy and live with a playful and joyful heart.

  • May all living beings be healthy and live with a body that gives strength, energy, and stability.

  • May all living beings be safe and protected from all sorts of inner and outer harm.

  • [ Pause ]

  • And may all beings flourish and live with the ease of well-being.

  • [ Pause ]

  • Now, taking a bit of a deeper breath, we now direct those same wishes to an internal sense

  • of who we are and this internal sense can be represented with the word I for internal.

  • So may I be happy and live with a playful and joyful heart.

  • [ Pause ]

  • May I be healthy and have a body that gives strength, energy, and stability.

  • May I be safe and protected from all sorts of inner and outer harm and may "I" flourish

  • and live with the ease of well-being and now taking a bit of a deeper breath.

  • We now come to the little twist that I was talking about which goes like this.

  • You know, our world we've been taught often from our homes, to our schools, to the culture,

  • from media and other messages we get that the self is a solo act,

  • where the self lives in these bodies we inhabit.

  • But that view, as we'll explore, is a limited view and a more integrative

  • and perhaps accurate notion of a healthy self is where, yes,

  • you have an internal experience the ''I", we were talking about.

  • This way we have a "me" that's the body, giving the body sleep, and nourishment,

  • and caring for the body is really important.

  • That's the "me."

  • But we also have a connected self, where we're linked not only to other people,

  • but to this magnificent and fragile planet of all living beings.

  • And we can encapsulate that sense of a self, as a ''we.'' And if we combine the "me"

  • and the "we," we get a single integrated self that we're going to call MWe, MWe.

  • So we're going to give a loving-kindness set of phrases to MWe and here is how it goes.

  • May MWe be happy?

  • And live with a playful and joyful heart.

  • May MWe be healthy and have a body that gives strength, energy, and stability.

  • May MWe be safe and protected from all sorts of inner and outer harm and may MWe flourish

  • and live with the ease of well-being.

  • [ Pause ]

  • I invite you now to find the breath and ride the wave of the breath in and out.

  • [ Pause ]

  • Knowing that we can all return to this wheel of awareness practice, doing the whole thing

  • or parts of it whenever we feel like it or as a daily practice,

  • I invite you now to take a more intentional and perhaps deeper breath

  • as we let this wheel practice come to a close for today.

  • If your eyes are close, you can let them get ready to come open.

  • If you want, you can stretch your body around, even get up and move around a little bit.

  • [ Pause ]

  • So, thank you for participating in the wheel of awareness practice.

  • We're now going to continue with the presentation.

  • My aim is to have about 20 minutes of discussion but given that we just did the practice,

  • if anyone would like to share anything briefly about just reflecting

  • on your first person experience, that would be welcome.

  • Not so much questions or discussion about the concepts but more just if you want to share what

  • that was like we can certainly do that knowing that you're being streamed

  • and recorded just so that's clear.

  • And no one says, "I didn't know it was going out to all those people."

  • Now that didn't get anybody to get up.

  • OK. So what I'll do then is share with you some

  • of the first person reports from this experience.

  • So I've done these in many workshops around the world.

  • We've had about half a million people downloaded from our website,

  • so you can get various versions of this from the drdansiegel.com website.

  • We just give it away for free and when we do in-person workshops or when we get emails,

  • I try to keep track of all those first person reports.

  • So we have basically data of what the experience is like across many, many cultures,

  • across educational backgrounds, ages, religious backgrounds, all sorts of things.

  • And what has been absolutely fascinating about it, first of all,

  • is if you want to understand mental life, having the systematic reporting is a wonderful way

  • of actually collecting, as a scientist, data because part of when we're going to talk now

  • about what the mind is, is it's about the subjective texture of what our inner life is

  • that we often experience within consciousness.

  • So on one level the wheel of awareness practice is a way to explore the inner world

  • and then we can see what that's like for each of us.

  • The second thing that we'll talk about after we just review that is we're going to talk

  • about what is the foundation for using the wheel of awareness as an intervention?

  • An intervention both on the individual level and we've been teaching the wheel of awareness now

  • to kids in kindergarten and throughout the school years,

  • and the results have been absolutely amazing.

  • So what does it do when you actually give people this tool

  • to what we say is integrate consciousness, and we'll get in that in great detail.

  • Then we're going to move on to the whole topic of compassion, and especially radical compassion

  • and what does this practice tells us about that.

  • And throughout all three of those explorations, what am I going to try to do to you--

  • with you is-- do to you-- what I'm going to do to you is get you dizzy on the way home.

  • What we're going to do together is explore how bringing all the sciences together, mathematics,

  • physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology,

  • and all the various sciences that exist.

  • What would happen if you actually took all sciences and created one framework?

  • And that's what we've done in this field called interpersonal neurobiology

  • and there's a long story behind it that we won't get into tonight.

  • But the bottom line is now there's a series of books, my colleagues and I have created a series

  • and then the founding editor of the Northern Series we have 40 textbooks

  • that are now published for mental health professionals to use.

  • We have a new series for educators and all the different books

  • that you heard Christine mentioned in the introduction are written

  • through the lens of interpersonal neurobiology.

  • So I know everyone laughed when you heard the pocket guide

  • because you probably know it's a very thick book.

  • But if you wear cargo pants, it actually does fit into your pocket.

  • So when the book first came out, I asked my daughter if it was OK.

  • She said, "You'll wear cargo pants to a professional presentation."

  • Anyway, it does fit in there.

  • So, there is a pocket guide and we're going to explore then how you can use science

  • to make sure that what you're saying is consistent with the framework

  • but not constrained by the framework.

  • And what I mean by that is if you think about the old Indian fable of "The Blind Men

  • and the Elephant" if you believe there is an elephant,

  • some divisions of science was study the ear.

  • Some will study the trunk, some will study the toes, some will study the tail.

  • They're all right.

  • But, the whole elephant needs a combination of all those disciplines, step one.

  • But step two, is if someone's studied the shoulder and someone studied the foot,

  • you can kind of guess there's a probably knee in there.

  • So, you got to be willing to have the courage to be wrong and say, "Gosh I don't know.

  • But it's probably something that's bending in there,

  • we don't know exactly what it's like, but let's take a guess."

  • So, in interpersonal neurobiology we try to say that all the sciences are fantastic

  • and they're looking at one division or one way of looking at the whole of reality.

  • So, if we're working it right then what E.O. Wilson calls consilience is what we'd be looking

  • for, the universal finding across all different disciplines.

  • And that's what interpersonal neurobiology is.

  • The main textbook of that is called, "The Developing Mind,"

  • so if you read especially the second edition,

  • you will see all the science, all the references.

  • If you want just the ideas, it's the pocket guide.

  • I'm giving you all that background, because we're going to go on a whirlwind right now.

  • Where you may hear things go, where does he come off saying that?

  • I just want to assure you that if you dive into the science, like we've been doing

  • for the last 25 years, you actually can explore things

  • like what the first person account is in the wheel of awareness.

  • Or why the research results from mindulness training are identical,

  • basically to the parent-child relationship that produces secure attachment.

  • And when I first said that in Washington D.C. at this big neuroscience meeting to someone

  • from the Mind and Life organization, they said,

  • "I don't think you know what you're talking about?"

  • And I said, "Well I actually don't know what I'm talking

  • about because I've never meditated before in my life."

  • But why are you saying that about what I just said, because I said, I think there's an overlap

  • in attachment and mindfulness, he said "In Buddhism, in Buddhist practice,

  • we try to get rid of attachment."

  • And I said, "What!"

  • And then, I came to understand that its attachment is clinging not attachment as love.

  • So we have to be very careful the words we use.

  • So, part of diving into each of these disciplines like contemplative practices,

  • the discipline for understanding reality is you got to learn from the inside

  • out what each discipline is using as a vocabulary lesson.

  • OK, so that's just the background.

  • So let me just describe to you some of the first person accounts,

  • because it's actually fascinating.

  • Number one, when I first did this extensively it was in Australia

  • and I have-- was on a sixth city tour.

  • Sixth city tour and I had minder by me, and that means a person guarding me from something,

  • I don't know why they do that, but she was by me all the time.

  • And so people at the break would always come up.

  • This would be a day-long conference and sometimes I do the wheel at the ends,

  • sometimes the middle, sometimes the beginning just to mix it up.

  • And in every single one of those cities, someone would come and say, "I've had hip pain

  • for three years, it's completely gone."

  • "I've got shoulder plan, you know, for five years, it's gone."

  • "My elbow couldn't move for a year and half, and now I can move it and the pain is gone."

  • Every city, and this happens all the time.

  • And when I've had people email me, the pain continues to stay away.

  • So, why would a 22-minute practice change things like that?

  • What's going on?

  • So, that's one of the scientific question we have to ask.

  • That isn't the intention of it.

  • The wheel of awareness got designed simply to say to my patients, if consciousness is required

  • for change and in our view, in interpersonal neurobiology what we say health is,

  • is a process called integration, you'll hear about that in a moment,

  • integration is the differentiation of parts of a system and then their linkage.

  • And I had this table I had designed for this new office back in the late '90s

  • where the center was this clear glass and the outside was a rim I would walk them

  • around the table and I would say, "Imagine this is the structure of mental life

  • and imagine this center glass thing is like the knowing.

  • And what if you could differentiate the knowing from this rim that was the known,"

  • and then there was like this thing that held up the table.

  • And I said, "Imagine that's a spoke."

  • OK, so maybe it's not a table of awareness, let's call it the wheel of awareness".

  • And then, we will go around with the spoke.

  • And they started getting over anxieties and traumas and depression.

  • It was freaky almost like the thing about the pain.

  • And the idea of it then is purely as an integration of consciousness practice.

  • It literally differentiates the elements of the knowing from the known

  • and then all the knowns from each other.

  • And then, systematically links them through the movement of the spoke of attention.

  • So, that's where the practice came from.

  • Years later, my colleague, Marry Hartzell and I wrote a book called,

  • "Parenting from the Inside Out" where we took the findings of developing mind and translate it

  • for parents which basically said, "Self-awareness is the best predictor

  • of a child attachment to a parent."

  • And what kind of self-awareness, it was a deep insight into where you had been as a kid,

  • but it was also about being intentional as a parent.

  • So we said, well what's a good word for being conscientious and intentional and awake.

  • So, we used the word "mindful", not aware

  • that there was a 2600-year-old practice of meditation.

  • So, we said, be mindful.

  • So then with the book came out, people would come to us and say,

  • when you will teach us to meditate.

  • Now, this is the-- like 2003, 2004.

  • So, I was already thought of as a pry on the university, because I was saying

  • that relationships shape brain structure which people thought was nutty.

  • So, I didn't want to do anything even nuttier than that like meditation.

  • So, I would say, "What do you mean meditation?"

  • And sorry about that, but that's how I felt at those years.

  • I'm so embarrassed to say.

  • And they would say, "Well, look you say meditation is one of your principles."

  • I say, "What do you mean?"

  • "You said in your book."

  • I say, "Where is it?"

  • They point it and say-- they said, "Be mindful."

  • And they would-- they'd point to that and they say meditation.

  • I'd say, "That means be conscientious."

  • They said, "No it's a form of meditation."

  • I say, "What's the form?"

  • They go, "Mindfulness meditation.

  • What are you talking about?"

  • So, soon after that, I met this guy, I was put on a panel with this guy that I didn't know of.

  • So, I read all his materials, his name is Jon Kabat-Zinn.

  • And you can actually get the recording of this, this is in 2005.

  • So, I was there with my buddy John O'Donohue who he and I we're doing all sorts of work

  • on spiritually and all this stuff and, you know, when John was still alive.

  • Bless his soul.

  • He was an Irish Catholic priest and poet and if you never read this stuff, please get his stuff.

  • Anyway, so John O'Donohue, he was there and I was working--

  • I met Diane Ackerman for the first time.

  • But, anyway, I was on this panel with Diane Ackerman and Jon Kabat-Zinn, so I said to Jon,

  • I said, "I don't know what does meditation thing is because I've never done it before,

  • but I read all your work before coming up on the panel."

  • And what's really weird is all the research you

  • and that guy Richie Davidson have done is basic--

  • identical what my colleagues in attachment research have done that points to a third thing

  • which is an area of the brain that takes differentiated areas,

  • its right behind your forehead and it links the cortex, the higher part of the brain,

  • the middle, the limbic area, the brain stem, the body, and even the social world

  • that takes five sources of energy and information flow.

  • And all links them together, so I said, all I can tell you is,

  • you're results from mindfulness training and our results from loving attachments relationships

  • that are secure are basically identical.

  • And what was weird was I dropped out at medical school--

  • I'm getting through the side but you need this--

  • gives you the feeling of what was happening back then.

  • I dropped out at medical school in 1980, because it was--

  • people are so not into what was going on inside of us it's all about the physicality of things,

  • and decided to go back, and finish school, I went on my further training.

  • But 25 years almost to the day that I dropped out at medical school I was asked

  • to go back to that same medical school.

  • And I was in the room where I decided to drop out of school, it's called the Ether Dome.

  • And then, Etherized us and it was weird, this is about two weeks

  • after being with Jon on the panel.

  • And I say, you know something-- I don't know what I'm talking about,

  • but its weird this thing called mindfulness meditation have you heard of it?

  • But, there's bad and there's secure attachment and the third thing is, this integrative area

  • of the brain they just seem to all go together and if we have to guess,

  • you'd probably see these particular fibers,

  • and I named the fibers that'll probably grow if you do research.

  • And then after I'm done, this guy comes up to me and he says, "We've just finished

  • that study and you're absolutely right."

  • And it was Sara Lazar's first study of structural change

  • in the brain mindfulness meditation.

  • And that was one of our colleagues.

  • So, it was-- one of these weird things is when you stick with the consilience,

  • you start predicting things like integration as a basic health.

  • So, you know, Australia, one way of understanding that is

  • when people are not integrated, they move either to chaos or rigidity.

  • And so, part of what we're going to explore as we look into this first person accounts.

  • Through lens of interpersonal neurobiology is

  • that chaos rigidity reveal a non-integrated system.

  • And what is integration?

  • Integration is the experience of harmony.

  • It has the five features that spell the word of you rearrange the element's faces.

  • So, F is flexible, so the system can adapt to things.

  • A is adaptive and it not only can change but it can move over time.

  • C is a mathematical term called coherent, which means how it holds together fluidly over time.

  • So it's different from cohesive, it's coherent.

  • F-A-C, E is energize, it has an energized quality to it.

  • And S is stable.

  • You can kind of rely on it.

  • It's like the ease of well-being.

  • You rely on your own mental life.

  • And so, part of what this first person accounts for them, the pain thing was

  • that these people have been stuck either in the chaos

  • of constantly feeling this thing flooding them or you can interpret it as rigidity.

  • They're rigidly feeling the pain in their bodies.

  • And integration is a pathway for liberation.

  • That's the key.

  • People would describe all sorts of things about the emergence of mental life

  • and in the topic I just see a big description of what that is like for many, many people.

  • But the part I want to talk to you about now is when people try to articulate the hub.

  • When you bend that spoke around in the hub and I think one useful way of starting

  • as Jack Kornfield and I started teaching together, he is one person I met

  • after meeting Jon where, you know, I'd never been a part of mindfulness community

  • or meditation community, never studied religion or anything.

  • This is like being-- like in this whole new thing.

  • And so Jack and I, Jack and I started teaching together and we taught in Seattle

  • where there is a lot of high tech people and, you know, we would--

  • we did the wheel and there was a break after the wheel and then after the break, we got back

  • and people came up to the microphone.

  • There is one engineer, he was 70 years old, never meditated before in his life,

  • just came because he was retired and wandered, see what was going on here.

  • And so he did the practice and he goes like this and he says,

  • "I have no idea what just happened to me."

  • And like everyone is like watching him.

  • And we go, "Well, can you share with us what happened?"

  • And he goes, "I did the wheel and then you had me bend the spoke and I was

  • in this unbelievably open, spacious place and I've never felt so peaceful before in my life

  • and then when the whole thing was over, we did the connection stuff, I went out on the break,

  • I was walking through the garden, it was like in--

  • at Space Needle place, walk through the garden and I see a gardener with that rubber thing

  • in his hand and he's like this water is like floating all over the grass.

  • And these butterflies are flying around."

  • And he goes, "And the roses were like shimmering," and he goes,

  • "And I had this experience I've never had before in my life where I was one with everything."

  • He goes, "What did you do to me?"

  • He goes, "This is fantastic."

  • And he is not alone.

  • We get people doing that all over the place.

  • And it's not that that happens every time but the issue is what is that?

  • And we're going to talk about that.

  • So from a first person account what's fascinating is whether you've meditated before

  • or not, I've met people who were meditating for 40 years, who do the practice,

  • who are really, really excited about it.

  • And what's interesting about it is Jack

  • and John both say it would meet criteria for mindfulness practice.

  • But it didn't start like that.

  • It started to be an integration of consciousness practice which is so fascinating.

  • So, you'll see me talk a little bit about this, there's a book I will call "The Mindful Brain"

  • which was-- Jon said, "You got to go get some experience

  • because you never had any experience," I said, "Totally."

  • And so then I wrote about book about being this naive dude, you know,

  • spending my first time meditating on a week of silence which is I wouldn't recommend exactly.

  • You know, it was the first time you do that.

  • I thought it'd be cool to be, you know, near all these scientists I always want to meet

  • like my next door neighbor was Paul Ekman and I really know what his feet look like.

  • Because if you've done a silent retreat, you know, it's the royal silence, the noble silence,

  • no non-verbal communication, nothing.

  • You're just looking down, no communication.

  • So I never got a chance to talk to Paul.

  • OK. So we're going to take lessons from those first person accounts in just a moment.

  • Now, from a second person reporting that is we're receiving the first person reports,

  • we're going to start to compile this data about mental life and what is the mind.

  • So, as we now go through this, what we're going to do is look at the science of mind,

  • science of health and from the lens of interpersonal neurobiology and then link it

  • to them-- the third and final segment of our talk is going to be about radical compassion.

  • So, I'm going to say now a couple of take home messages

  • that if we we're spending the year together, each one of these,

  • you could spend two months on each statement.

  • And they're so interesting at least to me.

  • I mean, one time I was writing this book "Mindsight" and I started getting all

  • over excited about things on the phone with my publisher because I want to put this in the

  • "Mindsight" book and she's listening, there is silence on the other end.

  • I said, wouldn't it be so great to really just address the issue of no one

  • on the planet has defined what the mind is?

  • Even the field of psychology, psychiatry, philosophy of mind,

  • they don't have any-- she's silent.

  • I said, "Wouldn't that be a great like part of this book?"

  • She goes, "No.

  • You're probably the only person in the world that's really interested in that," she said.

  • And then she would say things to me like, "Here in this paragraph you need an examples."

  • So I'd write up an example, she was, "No,

  • I mean example that a normal human being would relate to."

  • It was very humbling.

  • So, I want to apologize for my excitement.

  • But here is the bottom line about this part.

  • The word M-I-N-D, the word M-I-N-D, they are descriptions of the mind of course.

  • And in Buddhist practice, there are lots of descriptions of the mind.

  • And I've had the wonderful, wonderful opportunity to meet with all sorts of teachers,

  • His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, all sorts of Rinpoches that people wanted me to meet with

  • and I have spend-- I don't remember their names because they're so--

  • it's like law firms, I just can't remember their names.

  • Sorry about that.

  • But anyway, but I'll sit down and meet with them and it's very-- it's beautiful.

  • It's beautiful but ultimately my favorite was recently, I sat down with some people actually

  • to help start Naropa, and there would-- the one of the Rinpoches so I was just--

  • it was supposed to be like a 20-minute meeting, it went for 90 minutes and I started it with,

  • "Can you tell me how you would define what the mind is?"

  • And of course his comment was, "Don't you know?"

  • And it went on like that for 90 minutes.

  • So there are descriptions of course, mental life, different functions, 92 this, 92 that,

  • these all sorts of things but what's fascinating about it and this is to honor all that is

  • that the only definition, let's talk about science at least,

  • in science is to say the following statement.

  • The mind is what the brain does.

  • So the modern neuroscience view is they say that mind is brain activity.

  • And it may be related to brain activity for sure.

  • Well, I'm going to suggest you is that commonly held definition.

  • Short changes thus in a deep way.

  • So, one time I was giving a lecture to the retired professors of UCLA

  • and an unretired professor starts screaming, yelling me for what I'm about to tell you.

  • Saying that I was reversing science for what I'm about to say, so I want to apologize to him.

  • He chased me to my car afterwards and then he's yelling and yelling and yelling and I said,

  • "Do you really think that the anger you're feeling right now

  • in your mental life is the same as ions flowing in and out of membranes

  • of neurons and chemicals being released?

  • Even if they're totally dependent on them, why would you say they're the same?"

  • And he just looked at me and he said,

  • "You're going to probably use this discussion we're having

  • in one of your lectures, aren't you?"

  • I said, "Yeah, yeah I will, but I won't use your name."

  • I don't even know his name.

  • OK. So here is the fundamental problem.

  • Here is the fundamental problem.

  • By equating the mind with brain activity, you stick something very important like the mind

  • and one of its outcomes which is the self inside the head.

  • You stick it in the skull.

  • So it's as if the body is just being used as a transport system, right?

  • I'm going to transport this guy's mind around because mind is just brain activity.

  • So, we got to at least get out of the skull and save the mind is at least embodied, right?

  • But in 1992, I was on the faculty of UCLA running the Child Psychiatry Program

  • and I brought all these colleagues of mine, they used to be my teachers,

  • these scientists from all of these different disciplines together and it was the beginning

  • of the decade of the brain, we said, "Let's talk about the connection of mind and brain".

  • And there was an anthropologist in the room and sociologist in the room and all sorts

  • of other folks including physicist and every mathematician is

  • in the room, everybody was in the room.

  • How could you get everybody get along?

  • And the group is about to implode because everyone can agree what the brain is.

  • What's the brain?

  • It's an organ up in the head a hundred billion neurons,

  • trillions of supportive cells called glial cells.

  • If I'm an average neuron I've got 10,000 connections to other neurons,

  • that makes for trillions of connections and we think the brain works by on-off firing patterns.

  • Firing means ions falling in and out of the membrane called an action potential,

  • the release of a neurotransmitter at the end, there's lots of neurotransmitters.

  • Let's name a few.

  • Adrenaline, what else?

  • Cort-- Serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, exactly.

  • So there's lots of them.

  • That's cool, that's great.

  • Some are inhibitory, some are excitatory.

  • I mean, here is the thing.

  • There are more firing patterns in your brain, on-off firing patterns

  • with that various combination than atoms in the known universe.

  • So you should never get bored.

  • Just try it every firing pattern.

  • That's the secret to life.

  • End of story, any questions?

  • So here is the story.

  • What is happening in the brain is the flow of electrochemical energy.

  • Its electrochemical energy transformations

  • and the neuroscientists, you know, we're happy with that.

  • That's what they do.

  • What happens in a group is relationships are the sharing of what?

  • Energy and information.

  • An anthropologist studies how patterns of energy and information flow are institutionalized

  • in various totems and cultural practices that not only happen in the present moment

  • but how they are passed across the generations.

  • That's what cultural evolution is all about.

  • Changes in ideas that help mediate changes in energy and information flow.

  • So here I had this group, and the only way to get them to get along was to figure

  • out how do you connect culture to the cortex?

  • Right? So, I'm-- rather than spending a lot of time with this, here is what I said to them,

  • 100 percent of them agree with this.

  • We went on to meet for almost five years.

  • This definition has been very useful, this definition has allowed us

  • to predict what future science and empirical studies will actually show

  • and you read about that in "Developing Mind".

  • So, from a scientific point of view, we wouldn't never say its proven but so far it's supported

  • by the science and there hasn't been a single thing to disprove it.

  • But that was offered up in 1992.

  • You can see how many people were excited and embracing it like no one.

  • So, here is the definition that said predictive value and that helps us understand the wheel

  • of awareness practice and that gives us a foundation for moving

  • in to the idea of radical compassion.

  • The system that we're looking at, when we look at the mind as an anthropologist or sociologist,

  • or attachment researcher studies in terms of parent-child relationships is about energy

  • and information flow and how it's shared in a relationship.

  • A neuroscientist who's very interested in also studying the mind equally devoted and dedicated

  • and brilliant in all sorts of hard work and wonderful things, is studying energy

  • and information flow often just up in the head, I don't mean just meaning that

  • but that's all that fits in the scanner.

  • So-- and that's great.

  • The brain structures are really, really important.

  • But what they share in common is what did I say?

  • Energy and information flow.

  • OK. So, it's not like rocket science, it may be brain science but what we're saying is

  • that energy and information flow is what an anthropology, sociologist,

  • and relational psychologist study and energy and information flow what the brain scientist study,

  • and what a physicist will be interested and even a mathematician.

  • So how do we talk about the system of energy and information flow?

  • If relationships are the sharing and the word brain, this could be the embodied mechanism.

  • So, we have a place for brain and its whole body so we can talk about the embodied brain,

  • but my daughters says that's redundant.

  • I said why is it redundant?

  • She says, "Have you ever seen a brain not in a body?"

  • But you get the reason we'd want to say

  • that because we don't want to forget about the whole body.

  • But if you just say body, there is so many studies in what's called neuroplasticity

  • that look up in the head that people would forget you're really talking

  • about really, really, really hard science.

  • So, we'll just call it brain but we mean the embodied brain.

  • OK. So, you have an embodied mechanism, that's the inside,

  • you have the sharing, that's the-- between this.

  • What would the mind be?

  • What kind of thing would be both within you and between you?

  • Between you and other people and between you and the planet.

  • What would it be?

  • Its energy and information flow, but what about energy and information flow?

  • So the system we're talking about has three features.

  • It is open to influences from outside of itself, so it's open.

  • It's a system that is called nonlinear, which means that small inputs--

  • how many of you feel this in your mental life, small things that happened

  • in the morning have a large and unpredictable results.

  • Any of you feel that way?

  • So it's nonlinear that's, just the definition of nonlinear,

  • small inputs lead to large and unpredictable results.

  • And the third characteristic is it's capable of being chaotic, pretty much unpredictable.

  • Any of you feel that way about your mental life?

  • You are what's called a nonlinear open chaos capable system.

  • And in math, now we're going to math

  • that has a very particular definition it's called a complex system.

  • And a complex system doesn't mean you're complicated.

  • It's actually quite simple.

  • Complex systems are incredibly elegant in how they function.

  • Like a cloud floating across the sky is a complex system.

  • What I'm going to suggest to you is the mind is a particular aspect of that complex system.

  • And what is it?

  • Complex systems have something called emergent properties.

  • And that's not just some California feel good term.

  • It's actually a math term that the interaction of the elements

  • of a complex system give rise to a property.

  • And one of those properties has a very cool name.

  • It's a math term.

  • It's called self-organization.

  • Self-organization is what we're going to say that among many other things

  • in mind might be one of those things is this, the self-organizing emergent.

  • So it's self-organizing process.

  • Where is it?

  • It's both embodied and relational.

  • What does it do?

  • It regulates energy and information flow.

  • So it's the self-organizing emergent, embodied and relational process

  • that regulates energy and information flow.

  • Now when you're a regulator process, what are you doing?

  • You're doing two things.

  • You are monitoring something like when you're driving a bike.

  • When you're steering a bike, you got to watch where you're going and feel your body.

  • But the other thing you have to do besides monitoring is modify.

  • So the way you strengthen the mind is you stabilize the monitoring capacity,

  • which is what I think mindfulness Shamatha practice does.

  • And then what you do and this is the proposal to make this mind not only stronger

  • but make it move toward health as you say to yourself,

  • how am I going to modify energy and information flow?

  • I can do it by altering what I send out in terms of photons, right,

  • because that's modifying energy flow.

  • I can change what I say, that's the energy of air molecules moving.

  • I can change the movement of my body, that's the kinetic energy of my body, right?

  • So we're not talking about something mysterious when we talk about energy.

  • And what's information?

  • Information is a pattern of energy that has symbolic value.

  • It has meaning.

  • [ Foreign Language ]

  • That was energy, right?

  • Air molecules moving, but no information, let's just speak gibberish.

  • So, we extract information from energy patterns.

  • In fact, that's what a learning difference is some kids can't do it in the classroom.

  • That's a whole another topic.

  • But the issue here then is mindfulness practice does two things.

  • It strengthens the monitoring capacity by stabilizing with what I call a tripod

  • of this mindsight lens, mindsight is see energy and information flow within you for insight

  • and within other people in between you for empathy.

  • And then mindsight is the third thing.

  • So it's inside its empathy and its integration.

  • So through a long line of raising and exploration,

  • the mathematics of self-organization says this incredible thing.

  • It says this, it says that a system that differentiates its parts are complex system

  • that allows different parts to be unique and specialize in what they do like the left

  • and right side of the brain being different or the cortex and the lower part

  • of the nervous system being different or two people in a relationship.

  • Honoring differences and promoting compassionate linkages for a relationship

  • or having differences in the brain and promoting linkages, in common language terms not in math,

  • but in common language term we call that integration.

  • So integration is defined as the linkage of differentiate parts.

  • The mathematics of complexity says, when a complex system is self-organizing

  • to do something called maximizing complexity, which is basically creating harmony,

  • for it to optimize it's self-organization to be flexible, adaptive, coherent,

  • energize and stable, it must-- not in math terms are we going to use this word in English,

  • regular language, it integrates the system.

  • Amazingly, and this is what was really disturbing me back in the early '90s,

  • all of my patients came in with either chaos, rigidity or both.

  • And when I looked at the DSM, I could reinterpret it as every symptom

  • of every syndrome in the DSM could be seen as examples of chaos or rigidity like the many

  • of manic-depressive illness would be chaos, the depression would be rigidity

  • or in experientially caused problems because manic-depressive illness is not believed

  • to be that, but an experientially cause-like posttraumatic stress disorder.

  • What would be chaotic symptom of PTSD?

  • Flashbacks, intrusive feelings from past traumas.

  • What would be a rigid symptom of PTSD?

  • Freezing, numbing, right?

  • Shutting down, being disconnected from your body,

  • avoiding situations that are related to the trauma.

  • So a given person can have both chaos and rigidity.

  • Here is the amazing thing.

  • Integration when it's present is harmony.

  • It's like a river going through.

  • And when integration is impaired, if you block linkage or block differentiation,

  • you get either chaos or rigidity, so there was a science that explain the patterns

  • of understanding all mental disorders.

  • So the hypothesis from this definition was when we looked in the brains of individuals

  • with difficulties, you'd see impairments integration.

  • And what was found at Harvard University?

  • Martin Teicher found people who are severely neglected or abused, there's various forms

  • of developmental trauma, impairments to the integrative fibers of the brain.

  • The fibers that link widely separated areas to each other.

  • What about in non-experientially related disorders?

  • Hilary Blumberg at Yale University found the integrative fibers from the prefrontal cortex,

  • the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex to the right amygdala

  • in the limbic area deficient, deficient integrative fibers.

  • What did Marcus Rico [assumed spelling] find at the University of Washington in St. Louis?

  • Impaired integration only in manic-depressive illness,

  • also people with schizophrenia, people with autism.

  • The implications of these are huge because we know from the study of neuroplasticity

  • that you might be able to do interventions by doing something

  • that promotes the growth of the integrative fibers.

  • So this book I wrote called Mindsight is all about that.

  • It says, "If mental disturbances in an individual or cause by impairments integration,

  • could you use neuroplasticity to focus attention and drive energy and information flow

  • through the nervous system based on the inspiration of a relationship

  • that could inspire a person to rewire their brain toward integration,"

  • and that's what you'll see in that book.

  • Case study after case study and now a similar controlled study is being done for example

  • with people in manic-depressive illness with mindfulness meditation in individuals

  • with bipolar disorder, manic-depressive illness.

  • David Miklowitz [assumed spelling] is doing that at UCLA.

  • What's being done by Kiki Chang at Stanford?

  • Taking adolescence what risks of drawing manic-depressive illness,

  • and giving them mindfulness practices.

  • Why? Because if you have to say in a nutshell what is mindfulness training do?

  • It integrates the brain.

  • It increases what's called the connectome.

  • Connectome is just a fancy word that scientists are using these days

  • for how differentiated areas are linked.

  • And there are three studies that have come out in the last four years

  • that show mindfulness training increases the connectome.

  • And we can get into the details but it doesn't really matter for our purposes here.

  • But the bottom line is mindfulness is a training that integrates the brain.

  • Now you say, "Well, who really cares about that?"

  • If you care about health, here is what we need to know.

  • Every form of regulation that we looked into, I had 15 interns worked

  • with me to revise a developing mind.

  • And we looked into this in great detail and I said, "Prove these ideas are wrong."

  • It's easy to say they're right, prove they're wrong.

  • Let's write a new book.

  • They thought I was nuts.

  • I said, "That's the only way you could precede."

  • But here is what we found.

  • Every form of regulation, regulating attention, regulating effect or emotion,

  • regulating thought, regulating behavior, regulating relationships,

  • all those come under a general term called self-regulation.

  • All of those forms of regulation depend on integration in the brain.

  • And here's something that took 20 years to figure out.

  • And I told my interns this is too simple to be true,

  • but we couldn't find a single thing to disprove it.

  • Tons of things to support it so we can't say it's proven, but here's the hypothesis.

  • Relationships where the sharing of energy

  • and information flow is integrative stimulate the growth of integrative fibers in the brain

  • that are the bases of all self-regulation.

  • And that's just-- we can't find anything to disprove that, lots to support it.

  • So then you go, "Whoa, that's kind of freaky."

  • Integration is like outside of you and it's within you

  • and that's the amazing thing about this concept.

  • So let's come now to radical compassion

  • and weave together the practice we did in the wheel of awareness.

  • The statement we made that we now finally have in the field of contemplation or science

  • or mental health or parenting or whatever, where this recent book I wrote

  • for adolescents themselves, Brainstorm.

  • It's all based on this idea that you can define what the mind is,

  • not just described it but actually define it.

  • And you can actually say where it is?

  • It's within you and between you.

  • So let's go through some of the take home principles based on everything we've just said

  • across the wheel of awareness practice, giving a definition of the mind and mental health,

  • the notion of integration and now we're going to move into radical compassion.

  • So, here we go.

  • And I'm just going to start with a disclaimer.

  • I feel so optimistic that with the kind of work all of you were doing, all of us are doing

  • by saying you got to start with an inside job and then bring it out.

  • I feel so optimistic that we can make massive changes on this planet for the good.

  • So, I'm going to--

  • [ Applause and Cheers ]

  • So it's an incredible time for all of us from, we, to make this happen.

  • I'm serious.

  • So let's take this apart one by one.

  • The next disclaimer I want to say is that when we look at modern society

  • and see that in just our larger culture, the self is placed inside the body.

  • And scientists these days, neuroscientists are putting the mind which creates itself

  • up in the head so it's not even just the whole body.

  • But even if you just limit it to the body, so let's see a loving parent treats an infant

  • as if the infant self is only in the body

  • and the made relationships there are important, but not a part of the self.

  • In school, what happens to kids when they get to school?

  • They say this is a really rough world.

  • You got to really work hard, get your grades up, you know, take the standardize test.

  • You got to get those test scores up, get your GPA up.

  • And then you're going to apply to this kind of schools so you get

  • into the middle school that's really hard to get into and then hurry up and work hard.

  • Compete with that person, compete with this person,

  • hurry up and get to the best high school you can because you want to get

  • into the most competitive college you can because you want to get

  • into the most competitive graveyard you can get into.

  • [ Laughter ]

  • And everyone is freaking out.

  • And the implications of a self that is constrained by the boundaries of the skin are

  • that I, me, mine as we know in contempt of practice is a source of not such a good things.

  • But from a science point of view, what it means is I am going to assume that I can consume

  • as much as I want and I have this belief that I've been told

  • that the more stuff I have, the happier I'm going to be.

  • So I'm going to try to get a lot of stuff [inaudible] competing to get

  • into these competitive, competitive, competitive things

  • and then I get things and I get this amount of stuff.

  • And then what do we know from research about people who are focused on getting stuff?

  • You want more this is what's called an insufficiency state of mind.

  • So I get this much and I take a moment to say, "Am I happy?"

  • And I say, "No."

  • So, what's my conclusion?

  • Get more stuff, I get more stuff, and then I get more stuff, and then I get more stuff.

  • [Inaudible] obesity of stuff, right?

  • And I'm miserable, which is all the studies are showing that.

  • Now we know that acts of reaching out to other people feeling connected something larger

  • than a self-defined by your body, feeling a sense of compassion,

  • feeling empathy toward others and then feeling the suffering of others and then reaching

  • out in wise and skillful ways to help others, that's the definition

  • of compassion, one definition of compassion.

  • Compassion brings happiness.

  • Not focusing on stuff and not focusing on the idea that this self is in this body.

  • That's actually the source of well-being.

  • It's called Eudaemonia.

  • That's what the Greeks called it.

  • And what do we know from Barbara Fredrickson's study, understands controversial

  • but that and other studies have come out.

  • It actually improves the epigenetic molecules, these non-DNA molecules that sit on our genes

  • that help prevent inflammatory diseases like some forms of cancer and some forms of diabetes.

  • We know that developing this kind of presence to be in the world

  • where you say it isn't just about me and accumulating stuff.

  • It's about me entering this receptive state, and we're going to get to the wheel

  • in just a moment, this open space where I realize you and I actually part of one whole

  • like that guy said when he went out in the engineer when he went out in the garden.

  • That state is a hugely integrative state.

  • These little encapsulated self-states are impaired integration,

  • so of course modern society is filled with chaos and rigidity and people feel horrible

  • and they don't even know what to do about it.

  • Compassion is, yes, feeling the suffering of others and reaching out.

  • But when we did a conference call the Seeds of Compassion, you can watch this online,

  • and I was asked to be on a panel with Richie Davidson and Andy Meltzoff and Alicia Lieberman

  • and Dan Goleman and His Holiness the Dalai Lama,

  • to present to His Holiness the science of compassion.

  • And I said to His Holiness, this in 2008, I said this is really a troubling time

  • because science shows us that when we're threatened we increase the biological thing

  • we've inherited which is to live with in-group, out-group distinctions.

  • That allowed us to survive in the past, so if you're in cave A and the other folks were

  • in cave B, if cave B came to get your stuff you would kill them or you'd die.

  • So those of us who had this in-group, out-group distinction we survived the cave B assault.

  • That's just our history.

  • We're not at fault for the brains we've inherited from millions of years of revolution

  • but we are responsible for rising above their innate tendencies

  • to make us act in certainly ways.

  • So I said to His Holiness.

  • I said the first thing to say is that science shows in over 200 studies,

  • that the more threatened we are the more in-group, out-group distinctions pervade us

  • where we treat people who are similar to us in our in-group, we treat them with kindness,

  • and compassion, "Oh, sweetie come here."

  • That's wonderful.

  • But if someone is in the out-group,

  • we treat them with more hostility, under threat especially.

  • That's called terror management studies, if you want to look that up.

  • Second state of studies, if you give a photograph of a person's face

  • and just have a little paragraph where you can identify with the paragraph or not, same face.

  • The circuitry of compassion that we know is somewhat involved with feeling empathy

  • and compassion toward others, it turns off when the paragraph is not even related to.

  • In this particular study, these are a bunch of Dark Myth undergraduates.

  • They have the same picture but in one picture it said, "OK, this person graduate from Dark Myth.

  • He went is now working at Startup.

  • He loves playing video games, you know, and he likes this kind

  • of music which is popular that time."

  • The other paragraph with the same photograph said, "He dropped out of high school.

  • He loves to move the grease around in garages and plays with Barbie dolls while he listens

  • to classical music", something like that.

  • No circuitry of compassion, right?

  • So I said to His Holiness, I said, "What are we going to do?

  • This is a problem."

  • And he said this beautiful thing which he said there's two kinds of compassion.

  • There's personal compassion for people, your friends and family and you learned

  • that from being loved by your parents and that's a wonderful thing,

  • that's a necessary thing but it's not enough.

  • We need to have practices of universal compassion.

  • What does he mean by universal compassion?

  • It means that you can even embrace the suffering of your enemies

  • and you can move beyond in-group, out-group distinctions, is really what he's saying.

  • So then he said, "But, you know, in religion we haven't done a good job trying

  • to make the world more compassionate place."

  • Then I go "Oh my God, he's going to get everyone mad at him."

  • He goes, "So, you guys figure it out."

  • Come up with the secular approach that everyone can embrace by well-being.

  • And then 14 months later, I was with him in Vancouver

  • and so I gave him my homework assignment, which I'm going to give to you right now.

  • Integration is the basis I believe of health.

  • Every living being on this planet has a right to health.

  • Therefore, the universal, that secular, is everybody has a right to integration.

  • Now, well how does that relate to compassion, and especially radical compassion

  • which I would define as universal compassion.

  • This idea that we rise above just reaching to people we know

  • and that's why we did the eighth sense of trying to move beyond that.

  • Integration when it's made visible, rises above that and brings out kindness and compassion.

  • Integration made visible is kindness and compassion.

  • What's kindness?

  • I would define kindness as honoring and supporting one another's vulnerability.

  • So you drop beneath all the external adaptations of self-identity and self-protection

  • and all this stuff we'll talk about in a moment with the wheel.

  • And you drop to an open place, where you live an authentic life.

  • Now, you have to have the courage to be vulnerable but that's would kindness permits.

  • And what's compassion?

  • Well as we define it, compassion is having empathy

  • so you understand the internal experience of someone else.

  • But then moving beyond just empathy to feeling their suffering

  • and then moving beyond just feeling their suffering

  • but actually imagining how you'd take an action to reduce that suffering and doing it

  • with wisdom, and Paul Gilbert writes beautifully about it.

  • And Paul and I were just teaching up in Seattle together last week.

  • And it was fascinating to actually think about that.

  • We're going to work together again in a couple of weeks in San Francisco on a whole conference

  • on compassion, the science of compassion.

  • And we're going to have one whole meeting with kids from middle school and high school.

  • Because this can't just be for adults and it can't just be for scientist.

  • So here's what want I to say as I bring this part to an end

  • and then we'll have questions and discussions.

  • The wheel-- and put on your seatbelt for this part.

  • I was asked to spend a week with 150 mostly physicists

  • at a conference called Science and Spiritually.

  • And I just kept on asking these physicists, what is energy?

  • What is energy?

  • What is energy?

  • And, you know, in various ways they would say things like "We don't really know," or,

  • "There's various forms of it, like light energy, the energy of sound, the energy of touch,

  • electrical energy, chemical energy, all the things we've talk about."

  • OK, so there's different manifestations.

  • I said, "But, what is it?"

  • "What is it?"

  • You could imagine what a nudnik I am, you know, because I would ask people about the mind

  • and other set saying, but here was energy because these are physicist.

  • And this is what they said.

  • And you won't really see this written so clearly

  • as what they described but this is what they say, "OK.

  • If you had to lay it out, energy is a potential to do stuff."

  • I said, "Energy is a potential to do stuff?"

  • They go, "Yeah."

  • I go, "That sounds pretty cool.

  • Tell me more.

  • How do you measure this potential to do stuff?"

  • They go, "Oh, that's easy."

  • I said, "OK, what is it?"

  • "It's like a probability curve."

  • I said "What do you mean?"

  • "It's a probability curve the goes between certainty and uncertainty."

  • I said, "Really?"

  • I said, "Yeah."

  • I said, "Cool, that's great."

  • So the conference ended and I'm riding this train back to the airport.

  • And I got three students with me who were there, and I said, "Dan, you know, no one ever talked

  • about what a mind was or what-- how that relates to the brain or anything.

  • We just missed that in all this whole week."

  • I said, "Well I think I got some insights from these physicists."

  • So I drew this picture that you'll see in the Pocket Guide or The Mindful Therapist book.

  • Basically, here's what I want to propose to you.

  • The wheel of awareness is a metaphor.

  • There's no wheel anywhere.

  • I mean, there's a table on my office but there's no wheel anywhere.

  • I don't want to disappoint you.

  • There's no wheel.

  • But what is it a metaphor for?

  • Here's what I think is going on.

  • This is a total guess.

  • It's building on the science.

  • It's trying to be consistent with all these first person accounts have been from hundreds

  • and hundreds if not thousands of people that have reported it.

  • And then we have lots and lots of people who've done it.

  • So, here's what I think is going on.

  • I'd like you to picture the energy curve,

  • its probability curve the physicist are talking about.

  • On one end, its certainty, and that's like when you observe a photon,

  • you say this is exactly where it is.

  • But at other times it's uncertain and its furthest distance

  • from certainty is complete uncertainty.

  • And if we graft that out, which everybody did on the train for these students,

  • and say it's got this dimensions where the zero point of this X axis, all on this X axis is

  • like a plain and that's zero certainty.

  • And what zero certainty is is infinite possibility.

  • By being unconcern, it could be anything.

  • So let's just call that a plane of possibility.

  • What arises from the plain are various degrees of increased certainty basically.

  • So let's go midway and say, that as you rise above the plane of possibility you get

  • to something like an intention or a mood.

  • And as you keep on rising above it you get

  • to something called thinking or remembering or feeling.

  • And as you move all the way up, so let's call it a peak of certainty,

  • you've arrived at a specific thought or specific emotion or specific memory.

  • And that mental life as we've defined it is the movement of energy.

  • Now what is it really mean to regulate energy?

  • If the physicists are right it means moving the energy probability curve.

  • And what that means, is that all these reports when people can articulate with the hub

  • of the wheel was is that the hub of the wheel of awareness knowing is the plane of possibility.

  • And that the experience of accessing a mood or an intention is your capacity to become aware

  • of this energy curve moving upward, not all the way to certainty, but moving above the plane.

  • And then, let's just call that a plateau, when it rise even further and it gets closer

  • to a peak level you get a feeling like you're thinking

  • about something but it's harder to detect.

  • Maybe you felt that way as what people describe.

  • And then bam!

  • When it's at thought, when a possibility has turned

  • into an actuality that's what our mental activities are,

  • and that in this continuum we have a proposal

  • of how consciousness itself relates to mental activities.

  • Now, that we can spend three days doing nothing but talking about that

  • but I want to relate this to compassion.

  • If this hypothesis is true that the mind is a self-organizing process that is both embodied

  • and relational, so it's within us and between us.

  • And then what is it doing?

  • It's regulating energy and information flow, then the experience of mind is

  • to move the probability curve continually back and forth and back and forth between the knowing

  • of awareness, the hub, which is the equivalent of this open plane of possibility

  • and all the things in between of your intentions, your moods, your thinking

  • and your thoughts, your emoting and your emotion, your remembering and your memory.

  • And then what we do in contemplative practice is we strengthen the mind's ability

  • to stabilize all that, I'll have you consider by strengthening the capacity of a person to bring

  • that energy curve to the open plane.

  • Now here is the thing for compassion, because obviously that's an entire year we could talk

  • about that has to relate to compassion.

  • The place where we have personal identity is the metaphor, it's on the rim so that your peaks

  • and your sub-peak values and your plateaus, your intentions, your moods,

  • they're different from mine and different from the person next to you

  • and different from the person next to you.

  • That's fine.

  • Personal identity emerges in these peak values and sub-peak values of the energy curve.

  • But here is the key experience I want to offer to you.

  • The plane of possibility would choose the equivalent of the hub in you is identical

  • to the plane of possibility in me.

  • Infinite possibility is the same.

  • And the place that we all find our deep connectedness is when you teach people

  • to drop beneath their peaks and plateaus and strengthen the mind's capacity to come back

  • to the wheel metaphor to the hub of the wheel of awareness.

  • And that when you do that, like that guy did in the park,

  • suddenly you've dissolve the way all the rim activity, all these peaks and plateaus

  • that keep us separate from each other.

  • And sitting in that hub for a guy who never meditated before a day in his life,

  • he is now realizing energy and information flow with that kind of presence

  • because this is the presence that arises from this plane of possibility.

  • That he now is not as a metaphor, not being poetic, he actually is aware of the truth

  • which is deeply are all deeply interconnected.

  • So when I was doing the practice with you and we're all doing different parts but especially

  • when we bend the spoke around, I did it myself

  • and I just had this feeling of unbelievable connection.

  • When I look out at all of you right now, we are all, in my suggestion,

  • we are all nodes of a larger system where the interconnection, the energy

  • and the information flow between us are the interconnection

  • of these nodes we get born in to which is called the body.

  • And what's happened in our modern society is we've confused the node for the self.

  • But it's the system that's the self.

  • And the only way to get aware of that is to do the internal work

  • because the brain has a vulnerability, as Einstein said, to develop a delusional belief

  • because of all the cultural practice we have, that actually the self lives in the body.

  • But the system is the self.

  • And when we do that, then you can enjoy the node of your body, that's cool.

  • Your body is real.

  • And you only get it for about a century, right?

  • But here is the thing.

  • Energy and information flow patterns that all of us are trying to create

  • in a movement toward radical compassion.

  • We need to support love and families, yes.

  • But we're talking about moving beyond that and saying we've inherited these bodies

  • with these brains, with these in-group, out-group distinction.

  • We've got to train people to drop to this open plane

  • of possibility, get to the hub of the wheel.

  • So they can actually not just hear it, but feel it from the inside

  • of how no matter what my rim points are saying that is all this thing,

  • oh your different from me, I drop beneath that.

  • And I have the strength to see beyond these evolved patterns of top down distortions

  • that keeps us from really being present.

  • So the work we all have to do whether we're scientist working with,

  • seeing where all this is happening in the brain or whatever or working in relationships in homes

  • or in schools or working with the larger culture.

  • The time is right now, because the self is distributed.

  • We are just nodes in the distributed self.

  • And this concept of we, allows you to have the joy of your body

  • and the joy of your interconnectedness.

  • And together we can make this a more integrated, kinder and more compassionate world.

  • So thank you so much for your kind attention.

  • [ Applause ]

  • Thank us, thank us, thank us.

  • So, we do have time for a discussion which is wonderful.

  • I invite you to reflect on these things and work together, you know, this is a together thing

  • as the saying goes, "It's better together."

  • And the wonderful thing for me trained as a scientist but working as a clinician

  • and being just a person on the planet is there is no need anymore for science and spirituality

  • and well-being and everyday living to be separate at all.

  • They are all a part of one thing.

  • [ Applause ]

  • And the work is also love.

  • This is hard work but it's also filled with joy because even when you reach out to connect

  • with other people's suffering, you increase states of integration, you know?

  • And we have to realize we are literally all in this together.

  • It's not just some little saying it's something we can make happen.

  • So there are two microphones here.

  • I again want to thank you so much and let's have a discussion.

  • >> Hi Dan.

  • >> Hi.

  • >> Welcome to Naropa.

  • >> Thank you.

  • >> I discovered your work in 2008 in an undergraduate class here.

  • Studied stuff at Naropa University that you can't study anywhere in Australia.

  • I know you've been there but anyway.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> So welcome.

  • I'm so excited.

  • >> Thank you.

  • >> This whole weekend has been full of my heroes.

  • But just a little request, you didn't teach this today and I think you should.

  • >> No, no.

  • And the hand model of the brain, I was kind of referring to it but you're aware of it.

  • >> I saw the gestures, yeah.

  • >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I could do it quickly but it's in all the different books.

  • But the idea that's being asked is, you know, that when people have a model of the brain

  • and if this were more focused on, you know, well-being and stuff like that.

  • By knowing about the particular surface of the brain and how to differentiate it,

  • you can stream energy and information flow within your inner life to promote integration.

  • And the Mindsight book goes through that in great detail and it starts

  • out with a hand model, but basically it's--

  • your body is down here, your wrist represents your spinal cord, you brain stem is here,

  • your limbic area here, two thumbs be a good model and your cortex is here.

  • So, you learn the different functions as you're suggesting.

  • And by knowing the functions as one of my--

  • as a mother in on of the workshops I was teaching said,

  • "I realized it's not my fault but it is my responsibility."

  • She was flipping her little art, you know, saying not going to do so well.

  • So she realized instead of beating up on herself,

  • by understanding the brain you could be kind to yourself and have more self-compassion.

  • So, that's just a quick model but thank you for being here.

  • Yes.

  • >> So a certain feeling that I've been getting throughout the weekend is for most

  • of our presenters is that here at Noropa particularly and probably a lot

  • of the people tuning in, we're basically preaching to the choir.

  • And as you said, this works is not just for scientist and for--

  • I'm not sure who else you were saying, scientists and--

  • >> Clinicians, parents--

  • >> -- clinicians, meditators--

  • >> -- human beings.

  • >> -- yes, human beings.

  • >> Turtles and--

  • >> And it seems like a lot of the presentations are for people who are

  • from highly educated communities and I'm wondering, you know, how--

  • and I'm not sure and I think this is a we, you know, question it's not just to you

  • but how do we take these kinds of concepts and this kind of learning into communities

  • that don't have the language, don't have this highly educated experience

  • to support the understanding of some of what we're talking about here.

  • >> Well, a lot of, you know, a lot of the books for example that I write

  • with my colleagues Mary Hartford [assumed spelling] or Tina Bryson are to do exactly that,

  • so we don't talk about all the science.

  • This is a university.

  • Here, it's a very deep learning so I covered a lot of the very deep science.

  • But for example we're teaching the wheel of awareness practice

  • in the book called The Whole Brain Child just so you had to teach to kids.

  • We're teaching it to kindergartens all over the place.

  • And by kids learning to distinguish the knowing from known, they're able to achieve all sorts

  • of shifts in the way they comport themselves at five years of age,

  • they never hear about the plane of possibility and all that kind of stuff.

  • So you can do the practices without all the scientific background.

  • I mean, I'm a scientist and I thought you guys might be interested, so we covered it--

  • >> I love it.

  • >> -- but you don't need to.

  • And in terms of the practice I think there's a simple message that basically is this.

  • We've come into these bodies with brains we didn't invite but that we live

  • in that have certain proclivities.

  • It has a proclivity to eat a lot of sugar.

  • So you got to rise above that as we're going to need to smoke cigarettes

  • or whenever you're going to do to get addicted to it, you got to rise above that.

  • And like in the Brainstorm book, I invite the adolescents saying, "Hey, this is your life,

  • not the adults, but you got to know about your brain."

  • So I wrote a book for adolescents and it's the same thing for the whole planet.

  • We got to realized we've come in these bodies but we're going to kill each other

  • in the planet if we don't rise above that.

  • So, it's not our fault but it is our responsibility.

  • So the practice can be something in terms of universal practicing of radical compassion,

  • has got to be something like we have a brain vulnerability to be in-group,

  • out-group distinction and be towards materialism that we need to rise above

  • or we're cooked literally, with climate change issues.

  • So, when the climate change folks at the Garrison Institute asked me

  • to do the keynote presentation there, you know, I said I don't--

  • it's not field, they said, "No, come, come, come."

  • And I said, "What's the problem?"

  • They said, "Well we try to inform people, it doesn't help.

  • We try to scare people it didn't help.

  • We don't know what else to do."

  • I said, "Well if you-- informing them didn't work

  • and scaring didn't work, you got to transform them."

  • And, so this is basically a form of personal transmission to dissolve the delusion

  • of our separateness and realized were own this together.

  • And that does not have to be a supper sophisticated thing.

  • The good thing about it is everyone is going to benefit from that.

  • It's just the matter of doing it.

  • >> Thank you--

  • >> Thank you.

  • >> -- and thanks for your presentation.

  • >>Thank you.

  • Yes.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> We'll go back in forth.

  • >> Sure. So, I work with a group called Social Movements Research group that deals primarily

  • with individuals who suffer from dissociative identity disorder.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> And this has been, I mean, the main founder of it has been working

  • with people with DID for about 20, 25 years.

  • And has discovered that when one personality is in what you're calling the hub I think

  • that the other personalities are able to exist autonomously and consciously outside

  • of that space and I'm wondering how from your position you would reconcile that.

  • >> Yeah. So, you know, I've been working with people with DID for over 30 years and it's,

  • you know, the area I've used to write a lot about and still work with.

  • So, I'm very familiar with that.

  • Dissociation as you know is a fragmentation of the mind that the research suggest,

  • at least in over 90% of people happens when there's some form of early severe

  • and chronic abuse before the age of 7.

  • In my field in attachment research, what we've been able to demonstrate is

  • that disorganized attachment is at least one cause, maybe there are others,

  • of dissociation, of pathological dissociation.

  • So, there are lots of ways in which trauma literally impairs the integration of the brain

  • and so you can have all sorts to things going on.

  • I actually have a patient with DID who wrote me an e-mail about using the wheel of awareness

  • and you'll see it-- I can't remember which book it's in ,it might be in either Mindsight

  • or The Mindful Therapist or The Mindful Brain, one of those three.

  • I just don't remember which one, too many minds in there.

  • So, anyway, you'll see here the e-mail she wrote and she found it extremely helpful.

  • So you can absolutely have fragmentation of consciousness.

  • And it's an interesting question about, you know, the knowing.

  • You know, it isn't so much that I think there are different hubs.

  • It's that the fragmented personality states in my experiences are more like rim states.

  • And then you have a bunch of rim states that are separable and at least in the way--

  • they way I work with people, the hub becomes this universal

  • across all the different states that are more like on the rim.

  • And then the work becomes really workable.

  • There are certain challenges of course when--

  • anyway, it's a complicated thing to like the treatment.

  • But anyway, one thing I just want to say is that it's very clear at least in my look at in all

  • of the research, the clinical work.

  • The sad thing is that many clinicians don't think DID exist.

  • They think it's a distortion of the clinician who's making up the term,

  • but I think there's plenty of research that show it exist.

  • At least my clinical experience, and the research would support this,

  • you don't get a general therapy effect.

  • You got to specifically work with a different associative states in order to see improvement.

  • So, one thing you might find interesting to do is Richard Schwartz [assumed spelling]

  • and I are going to do for the first time, a conference together.

  • And Richard Schwartz is one of those internal family systems work.

  • And, so we're going to talk about interpersonal neurobiology and the frame on dissociation

  • and the work on internal family systems and that might be of interest to you.

  • Yeah. But thank you.

  • Yes.

  • >> Thanks a lot for this.

  • It's been amazing to listen to you talk about this

  • and using the language that you have for it.

  • I'm a wilderness therapist here in town and I work with--

  • we do a lot of community-based work with folks with addictions

  • and different issues that their working on.

  • And we're focusing a lot around technology and video game addiction

  • and being a wilderness therapist of course we do a lot of essential stuff

  • and just really realizing how it's a different kind of connection, you know, social media,

  • being video game, this kind of personalities that their working on online

  • and I was just wondering, if you could talk a little bit about that.

  • >> Yeah. Yeah.

  • >> You know, you talk about integration and connection and it's so great

  • that I can call somebody or face time somebody in Japan, you know, with this thing I carry

  • on my pocket but it's also-- so, you know,

  • especially video games, it's just visual and audio.

  • >> Yeah absolutely.

  • No.

  • >> Yeah.

  • >> It's a really important question you're raising.

  • There's a conference that I participate in every year called Wisdom 2.0 and you might think

  • about coming to that in San Francisco because this is--

  • your question is what we talk about like for four days just this one question.

  • So, I'll just briefly share with you some of the thoughts about it

  • and certainly Sherry Turkle's work both in her recent one, Alone Together

  • but also her prior one which I think it's called Screen Life,

  • would be an interesting thing for you to look at that work.

  • Here's the problem with-- I find with social media.

  • It isn't that there's something inherently wrong with it,

  • just to start with the social media piece.

  • It's that we want to really encourage what's called contingent communication.

  • That is not where you're posting something and then that's it, you just send it out.

  • You want to be in the moment having a nonverbal connection with another person, eye contact,

  • facial expression, tone of voice, your posture, your gestures, your timing,

  • your intensity of response, like let's all do those so we all know what they are.

  • Let's do it together.

  • Eye contact, say it please.

  • >> Eye contact.

  • >> Facial expression.

  • >> Facial expression.

  • >> Tone of voice.

  • >> Tone of voice.

  • >> Posture.

  • >> Posture.

  • >> Gestures.

  • >> Gestures.

  • >> Timing.

  • >> Timing.

  • >> Intensity.

  • >> Intensity.

  • >> So, thank you, thank you.

  • So, you know, when we don't have the nonverbal part we--

  • in chatting and texting all that stuff.

  • You know, you're missing out on that.

  • And my deep concern about the next generation is this incredibly deep loneliness

  • that people feel.

  • >> Oh that's exactly what I work with.

  • >> Yeah. So being in the wilderness and being, you know,

  • this idea that Mark Birkhoff [assumed spelling] is talking about, you know,

  • rewilding [phonetic] the idea of being in nature.

  • Even the idea just to play in spontaneity where you're connecting with people wherever

  • if they our interpersonal neurobiology conference this year is on play

  • and this importance of just being presents.

  • You know, being present so you can actually be there.

  • You're not really presents when you just upload stuff.

  • That's the thing.

  • Now, I once really got down on this in Australia actually and if someone said, "How you doing?"

  • I would have say, "It wasn't doing well,"

  • because one of the Australian researchers just blasted me in this knight--

  • whatever the equivalent of a female knight from England we were both saying,

  • "Yeah, yeah, be careful, be careful."

  • She said she had done a study of 100,000 adolescents on social media and for 80%

  • of them they actually increase face to face time through social media.

  • And I know for my kids, they do that.

  • My son was just traveling around the world and, you know, if he went to Ukraine,

  • he would type on his Facebook thing headed to Ukraine, anyone there?

  • And someone from college to say, "Oh yeah Beth is there."

  • And they would write a Beth and then bam!

  • He was staying with her for a month.

  • You know, now she's my daughter-in-law.

  • No.

  • [ Laughter ]

  • So, you know, all sorts of cool things can happen.

  • So, there is nothing wrong with this.

  • It's how we use it from what is keeping us from doing.

  • Same thing is true with video games.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> You know, video games could be very exciting.

  • Surgeons that do video games have actually better eye-hand coordination.

  • So, we can't just knock it, we just have to see--

  • we have to make sure that the fundamentals of life are not being missed.

  • And I think David Rock and I put together called the wheel--

  • the Healthy Mind Plater of seven things we should do everyday.

  • And, so for a kid or adolescent, they should be doing these things everyday.

  • I mean, sleeping well, interacting with each other face to face, having physical activity,

  • focusing well, and not getting distracted.

  • And all sort of things in there.

  • So there's a whole lessen.

  • But please come to the wisdom conference and-- -

  • >> It's called wisdom 2.0.

  • >> Wisdom 2.0 just put that in and you'll see the line up.

  • >> Awesome, thank you.

  • >> Yeah, great.

  • Thanks. And also it stream.

  • So if they can't make it to California, they just stream that whole thing, yeah.

  • Thank you.

  • Yes.

  • >> Hi--

  • >> And let me just tell you.

  • I have attention excess disorder, so I could just keep on going.

  • So, I may-- OK, we're in no hurry, cool.

  • Please.

  • >> First all, just so much gratitude for the contributions

  • that you've been making to our field.

  • It's just been so amazing to be able to connect with children and young adults

  • through what you're teaching and have ways to explain it to people as to what happened.

  • >> Thank you.

  • [ Applause ]

  • >> So I heard you mentioned the eighth instinct.

  • >> Yes, the eighth sense.

  • >> The eighth sense.

  • And I was curious if you could say a little more about that and where we might be able

  • to find more information on that.

  • >> Yeah. I mean, when I was-- you know, doing the wheel with my patients it was like just sort

  • of like simple math, it was like OK you got your first five senses and I knew as a scientist

  • that for over 100 years we've called interoception which means perception

  • of the anterior, the sixth sense.

  • So before it was co-opted, I mean, you're talking to the death.

  • So the sixth sense actually, you know, interoception.

  • So then when it got to mental life I said, all right well let's call

  • that the seventh sense, I don't know whatever.

  • And then I realized there was something more than that.

  • There was also an eighth sense which is the feeling you have of being connected,

  • so the people, the planet, stuff like that.

  • The sense of awe, gratitude, all these things develop this-- the eighth sense.

  • I really do believe that the eighth sense is one of the most under developed senses.

  • So like right now for example I just want to just pause for a moment

  • and let's think our interpreters for making this available for our understanding.

  • [ Applause ]

  • You know, so we have all, I mean, this is a beautiful way I've seen

  • with translation with American Sign Language.

  • Energy and information flow is how we connect with each other.

  • And so rather than just thinking of it

  • as many social neuroscience do, and I want to make this clear.

  • Social neuroscience is one branch of neuroscience which is a branch of biology.

  • Interpersonal neurobiology sounds the same.

  • I made up that term a long time ago just to mean everything from the personal,

  • meaning the internal and the interpersonal and I put

  • in some science thing in there too like neurobiology.

  • So, it's different from social neuroscience.

  • So a social neuroscientist that I talked to saying that this is just social stimuli

  • and that the mind is just brain activity related to the input of stimuli that leads to feeling,

  • thoughts and behavior, that's a quote.

  • So, if I say the mind is between us, they're going to know it isn't.

  • The brain is just social and mind is just brain activity.

  • So, I want to be-- make sure you're not going to get into trouble if you go to a party tonight

  • or tomorrow and you hang out with a bunch of card-carrying neuroscientist

  • and talk like we're talking tonight.

  • They're going to roll their eyes and they'll say, "That's not the way we think in science."

  • And so, I just want to be just forewarned and I don't want to protect you

  • because what we've been talking about I feel very deeply as a scientist,

  • thinking in this interdisciplinary way of interpersonal neurobiology,

  • that this has a solid foundation in subjective experience and also

  • in predicting scientific outcomes.

  • So, for all the criteria of science, I feel very strong about it.

  • But it's not what scientists are saying.

  • So just be aware of that.

  • So in terms of the eighth sense, for a society I feel like it's the sense

  • that we so deeply need to re-awaken.

  • Because for example, when kids are not out in nature, we had a wilderness person here

  • and you heard earlier in workshops about wilding and stuff.

  • To not be in nature just disconnects us from our connection to the planet, right?

  • And that's a serious problem.

  • So we treat the planet like a trash can.

  • >> Yeah.

  • >> You don't want to treat your living room like a trash can.

  • Why should we treat the planet that way?

  • So, we need to really open up this eighth sense seriously.

  • And there's no time like the present.

  • This is, you know, when my kids were younger, they would say, "Why are you traveling so much?"

  • I used to feel guilty but I said, "There's a lot that needs to be done in this planet."

  • And I felt it was for them and their generation.

  • We've got to take care as much as we can in expanding awareness, in expanding these senses

  • that you're talking about so that together, you know, this is a work that it's not going to come

  • from some president and it's not going to come from chair people of departments

  • of academic institution, it's not.

  • It's got to be a grassroots effort.

  • And if you read the book by Christakis and Fowler called Connected,

  • it was all about the science of how deeply connected we are.

  • That basically affirms what Gandhi said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

  • So that's the good news.

  • Start with yourself.

  • Work with other people around you, your friends, your family, you know, your clients,

  • your patients, your students, whatever nd let's get this out there.

  • It's a grassroots effort.

  • But I deeply believe that we can make this happen.

  • >> Thank you.

  • >> Thank you.

  • Yes?

  • >> Hi there.

  • >> Hi.

  • >> Thank you for being here again.

  • >> My pleasure.

  • >> And I'm just really curious about this concept of separateness that, you know,

  • we hold in our brains and that pervades, you know, culture and time for so, so long.

  • And the example that you gave about anthropology and science relating to, you know,

  • back in the days when we were cavemen and it was about survival, right?

  • And I get that as being some evidence.

  • But then I have to think about like the wisdom traditions that had been around for hundreds

  • of years and got a space societies where they knew deeply about this concept of we

  • and this idea of interconnectedness.

  • And how that also exist in evolution and just any other evidence or explanations that you have

  • about why separateness continues to be such a concept that we relate to.

  • >> Yeah. You know, in anthropology, there's two terms and I want to make sure I get them right.

  • One is called an individualistic culture and the other is called the collectivistic culture.

  • And so, what we see in fact in some cultures,

  • there is no word for I and everything is seen as we.

  • And then in our culture, modern western culture, you have to be very careful of that,

  • I was once a teacher of the Dalai Lama in German and my son was there sitting next to me

  • and we had this sort of small little intimate thing and so we were asking questions so I said

  • to His Holiness, "You know, what can you help us with, you know, western culture where, you know,

  • we're so individualistic and stuff like that?"

  • And so His Holiness goes, "You're really mistaken when you think it's just the west.

  • It's the whole world, the east, the west like that,"

  • and my son said "Oh the Dalai Lama got you," you know.

  • [ Laughter ]

  • So I wanted you have to be really careful, making generalization is the point of that.

  • So, I guess what this is an argument for is something in between that we haven't created

  • yet in our humanity, which would be not individualistic and not collectivistic.

  • Collectivistic, meaning, you lose individual stuff.

  • Individualistic is where there is no real sense of connection.

  • Some-- The we is the idea like I use to teach about these talks called Me to We,

  • and one of my online students who was in the workshop, she got really upset.

  • And I said, "What are you upset about?"

  • She goes, "You've taught us to be really in touch with our bodies.

  • That in attachment terms you want to have self-awareness,

  • that you want to have this presence of mind, you wanted, you know,

  • really take care of your self, that's me."

  • I said, "Yeah that's great."

  • She goes, "Why should we dump that and just go to we?"

  • I said, "I'm not really saying that."

  • She goes, "Look at the title of your talk, Me to We."

  • So I said, "Well, it's more like not only me but also we."

  • And she goes "Well that doesn't rhyme."

  • And so--

  • [ Laughter ]

  • And so I said, "OK."

  • And that's when I made up the word mwe [phonetic], and I said, "OK, they're both."

  • So that's the idea of it.

  • And in terms of the practice, those are contemplative practices that are being in touch

  • with the interconnectedness of everything.

  • That takes effort, you know.

  • And so there is a tendency I think to have this delusion that Einstein talked about and,

  • you know, His Holiness, my God, since what, he's six or seven years of age he's been meditating

  • from five in the morning till like 11 in the morning, you know,

  • six hours of meditation everyday.

  • And, you know, I'm sure he's still has all sorts of things that he struggles with.

  • So, you know, this is the idea of, can we weave into the culture, modern culture,

  • from a scientific grounding-- a statement that like this next booking I'm writing is kind

  • of look at-- it's an academic book, but it's trying to look at it head on.

  • Let's not put the mind inside the skull that that's a serious assault on what you're talking

  • about this interconnectedness of everything that there is a fundamental mental process

  • that is much interconnected as internal.

  • So, you know if there's any little way where science can contribute to that,

  • it's to stop saying those things.

  • The mind is just brain activity, because I think it really gets us into serious, serious trouble.

  • And then, you know, how we help parents expand that, you know,

  • by stopping this feeling of competition.

  • Because there are all sorts of ways that culture mediates this, you know,

  • and there are so many studies that show acts of compassion or generate health.

  • You know, acts of compassion, you know, the simplest study, you give someone 20 bucks

  • and you say, "OK, I want you to spend this 20 bucks on your self and I want you

  • to spend this 20 bucks on someone else."

  • And then you measure at the end of the day how happy they are.

  • One person is really happy, the other person not so happy.

  • Which one do you think is which?

  • The one who spends it on the other person, but that's not the way our culture is saying things.

  • So we got to get this message out there.

  • I think contemplative practice know this for a long, long time, absolutely.

  • It's a wonderful thing.

  • >> Thanks.

  • >> Yeah. And this is why when His Holiness gave the homework assignment, you know,

  • religion hasn't made it permeate society come up with a secular view.

  • This is where we all need to participate in this homework assignment.

  • Yes

  • >> Committee, let's have this be the last one.

  • >> Really?

  • >> OK.

  • [Inaudible Remarks]

  • >> How about let's do this?

  • How about if we do all five questions and then we'll end but I'll answer them as a whole.

  • OK, so--

  • [ Laughter ]

  • Yes, so let's have these five questions and-- but you all going to--

  • we have to have a collective mind here, so we're going track each five, we'll see they're going

  • to be all interrelated in some profound way.

  • Let's see.

  • Here we go.

  • >> That's really good.

  • I'll be happy to see how you do this.

  • >> Me too.

  • [ Laughter ]

  • >> Greetings.

  • I'm Jamie Amery [assumed spelling] and I worked

  • with an organization called Windhorse Community Services and we provide services,

  • home-based services for people suffering from acute mental illness.

  • And basically create villages for folks to get healthy, to get in line with their schedule,

  • with their rhythms of sleep, with their medications and so fort.

  • And one of the things that we've seen is the power of the tendency towards health.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> So, I know we've been talking a lot about that, but specifically in this--

  • in working with people with mental challenges, if you could talk a bit

  • about the tendency towards health.

  • >> Beautiful, thank you.

  • Yes? I'll remember that one, tendency toward health.

  • Integration is a natural push of a self-organizing system.

  • Yes?

  • >> I was hoping you would say a little something about what it is to understand versus knowing,

  • because you talked more about known and unknowing.

  • >> Absolutely.

  • >> And when you asked us to go back and take the knowing back

  • on the known, I saw there's understanding.

  • But I know you said a lot about vocabulary and how, you have to be very careful.

  • And I don't know if you see those two the same or if that process--

  • >> Yes.

  • >> -- which you can sense that probability is in fact different.

  • >> Great question, very different and I'm glad you bought that up.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Yes, knowing versus understanding absolutely.

  • Yes.

  • >> Hi.

  • >> Hi.

  • >> And, can you talk a little more about if this process towards integration

  • and self-organization.

  • Is that decentralized process on how it gets articulated.

  • Who are the structure that happening the mind to support that process of integration.

  • >> Absolutely.

  • Yes, we'll cover that.

  • This is the next semester in Neropa.

  • >> Right.

  • >> The concern behind my question is, is really has do to with the health of our planet

  • and the issue that you're raising for me was around self-regulating systems and whether--

  • or rather complex systems of that have a self-regulating activity and does

  • that mean necessarily that they have mindfulness, so.

  • In other words, does a blady grass which is--

  • I think is a complex system have mindfulness that couldn't be depressed.

  • And the question that comes up--

  • >> Yes. Yes, yes.

  • OK great. So we've-- The blady grass question is the last one

  • about this distributive self-organizing element, yes, and the element to this one question.

  • >> So on the same line is nonverbal communication that was talked about earlier.

  • What is you're view on nonsexual touch.

  • Any imports of that for interconnection with us and the world.

  • >> Yes, OK great, great OK thank you.

  • [ Laughter ]

  • This is to Gandhi, OK.

  • All right.

  • So, let's begin with the fundamental issue about the push

  • of organizing systems we have three question related to that, right?

  • We have one question about the natural push towards healing.

  • What's that about?

  • We have another element of that question of integration

  • which is how does a self-organizing system find this processes?

  • Are they distributed?

  • Are they localized?

  • How is that going on?

  • A related question was, where do we put this process?

  • Like is it in a plate of gras and what's going on?

  • We've got those three.

  • Then another one was about knowing versus understanding.

  • And then the fifth one was about touch, right, a nonsexual touch

  • and the value of that in human life.

  • So let's start with the first three and then we'll move on.

  • But to dive into them, let's all just put your arm around you're neighbor

  • and just realize we're going to now dive in this together.

  • So this is doing the last one first and just feel how good that feels and I'm sorry if you're

  • out and if we're still-- are we still streaming?

  • You know, if you're getting this then you hug yourself, actually.

  • Seriously, actually put one hand on your chest then one hand on your abdomen if you're

  • out in the streaming world, and this is actually a pretty good way to hug yourself.

  • So, yeah, it's nonsexual touch.

  • Sadly in our society of legal issues and actual abuse, we have to be super, super, super,

  • super careful about that for sure.

  • I mean, it's just a wild side we live in.

  • But with our friends, we can do what we're doing right now.

  • And with yourself actually this is a great move and I'm trying

  • to get some I'm going to get a PhD on this.

  • Because if you put one hand on your chest and one hand

  • on your abdomen you'll get some comfort,

  • and interestingly if you flip it the other way you'll see it may not be so comfortable

  • and I've done this now on 14,000 people.

  • And what you get with these numbers is you get 75% are right hand of top people are comforted,

  • a quarter of left hand on top, it doesn't seem to relate a left hand or it's right hand

  • on this, so much to get a PhD on this.

  • So any-- No one has figured out why.

  • And the second thing is I did one research study of myself and I'll just have you know

  • that I'm a left hand on to a person.

  • When I do it, my automatic nervous system becomes integrated when I do it this way

  • and when I do it the other way I become unintegrated.

  • And then you do that with the heart rate variability coherence

  • and I had the research director of HeartMath didn't know what I was doing I had him close his

  • eyes and put the gadget on him.

  • I put my right hand on his chest, he was completing unintegrated.

  • Took my right hand off with his formation, he didn't know what I was doing, I put my left hand

  • on his chest, he behaved completely integrated, a second PhD.

  • I'm serious.

  • Go figure it out.

  • Someone will do it because you have a built-in control, right?

  • You know what UI mean?

  • It's a controlled grid.

  • You say, OK do that and now do this.

  • All right, and study the person.

  • OK. So, yes, so the answer to the last question first.

  • Nonsexual touch is great.

  • We don't do enough if we touch each other.

  • That's great.

  • But watch legal issues.

  • And if someone's been abused it's not-- it's a serious thing.

  • So, in psychotherapy for example, super careful,

  • misinterpreting what touch means, I mean, it could be a disaster.

  • So you have to really honor people's boundary.

  • So, so important clinically and in the world too.

  • OK, so now let's do the second to the last question and then we'll get to the first three,

  • which was the knowing versus understanding.

  • So the quality of first person experience is what we're talking about,

  • and one way of describing consciousness is just it's a feeling, if you had this to put a word

  • to it, that I know that you're here and I'm here.

  • I just know it I'm conscious of it.

  • So the simplest way of describing what consciousnesses is,

  • it's knowing not understanding.

  • Understanding would be a point on the rim of intellectual analysis

  • and complex intricate interrelationships among things.

  • Understanding is fabulous, but it's not the same as knowing.

  • Now I totally get where you can put those two words together and I am going to try to think

  • about how to introduce the wheel practice maybe and try to avoid that,

  • although you have your experience then you can see what it's like.

  • So maybe I shouldn't make a big deal out of it.

  • But it's a really good question and thank you for addressing that.

  • In any of these practices, we have to realize when we convey them to some of the words.

  • Words can be interpreted in all sorts of ways and so you really want to explore

  • with people what was that like and then say, "Well I really understood, I understood that."

  • So I give you one little hint from me when I was first learning Mindful awareness, you know,

  • some of the people that taught it to me used the word observe your breath.

  • Just observe your breath.

  • And in the end it turned out to be not such a helpful thing for them to say.

  • They should have said, sense your breath

  • because now we know there are a two circuits in the brain.

  • One is the sensing circuit and one is an observing circuit

  • and they're are very different.

  • The observing circuit is mid line, the sensing circuit is lateralized,

  • this is the work of Farb et al in Toronto.

  • And even in the "Mindful Brain", I suggest there are even two other circuits

  • that haven't been discovered yet.

  • And they all spelled the word sock, I'm an acronym addict, but S-O-C-K.

  • I think there's a sensing circuit, an observing circuit, a conceptualized circuit

  • that conceives, that's the understanding part.

  • And then there's a knowing in terms of this deep sense of knowing something.

  • And that might be the same as sensing or not, we don't know, but that's--

  • I think there's actually four and then I think what mindfulness does is it differentiate those

  • four and then links them.

  • So thank you for the question about knowing versus understanding.

  • Now, that being said, the presence that arises from getting in touch with this pure knowing

  • and I say pure meaning, if you think about our model, when you can drop to the open plain

  • of possibility and there's a model by Rodolfo Llinas of the 40 cycle per second loop,

  • if you're talking about the brain between the thalamus and the cortex.

  • Now what I think when that happens in mindfulness practice is that you have this--

  • let's just use Llinas' model, you have this constant 40 cycles per second going.

  • So someone who's mindfully aware of something has a higher ratio

  • of however the nervous system is mediating this open plane of possibility.

  • Let's say just to make numbers easy, you've got 40 units of something.

  • So if I'm mindfully aware of something, I might have, you know, 28 units of this open plane

  • and I've got 12 of what I'm seeing.

  • So, I'm knowing and seeing with the sense of spaciousness.

  • Or I could get lost in the seeing and have one unit of consciousness knowing

  • and 39 of the seeing and Mike Csikszentmihalyi, would call that flow.

  • That I know I'm seeing something but I am not thinking I know it.

  • I just am in it.

  • So I'm playing tennis, I'm just playing tennis.

  • So, mindfulness I don't think is the same things as flow, there's a big debate about that.

  • I don't think it's the same.

  • I think you need to have both sensing and observing and probably these other things too.

  • But from a ratio point of view, there's way of scientifically to tap into it.

  • Because clearly you can have 40 units of knowing and that's this kind of thing where you can sort

  • of bliss out, where you aren't connected to your body

  • and you just feel this kind of expansiveness.

  • It's fantastic, but you got to live in the world.

  • When you see a red light, you got to press on the breaks.

  • So you can't just live in the hub all the time.

  • So I think a strong mind literally differentiates knowing from known and knows how

  • to balance the ratio of the peaks, the plateaus and, the plane.

  • And the other way to say it is, it knows how to balance what's on the rim and what's

  • on the hub, does that make sense?

  • And you do it in different ways.

  • If you're making love with someone, you want to be mostly

  • up on a rim and really floating in that.

  • And that's beautiful and that's great, you know, you don't want to be lost in other the parts

  • of the rim, you know what I am talking about.

  • So, I hope.

  • So you want to sense the experience of lovemaking not just observe it.

  • That's one of the risks.

  • That's one of the risks of mindfulness practice is

  • that people only develop the observing capacity.

  • You know, and they're just kind of not really in life and you talk to them and you go,

  • doesn't that person feel anything and they're just going to say, I'm just really mindful.

  • So, you know, you got to be able to be in it.

  • Now, we're segueing to the first three.

  • So the questions were, why does-- why is there a push for health?

  • How is this thing integrated and does it take place in a blade of grass.

  • So let's start with the grass thing first.

  • You know, I had an amazing conversation with one of the people who is a disciple of or--

  • I don't even know if he's a disciple.

  • He was a follower of-- in terms of taking his place in Paris,

  • Francisco Varela who I know was part of the founding of Naropa Institute.

  • And Francisco suddenly died a little bit about 10 years ago now, a little about 10 years ago.

  • And so Francisco had this view which this fellow and I were talking about which is

  • that the mind existed in an amoeba.

  • And that as long as there were these fundamental processes happening inside of a cell

  • that you had to attribute mental processes to them.

  • So, you know, I had a three-hour dinner over a lot of pasta and wine when used to be glutton

  • to talk about this because I said, that doesn't really make sense,

  • why would an amoeba have a mind.

  • But at the end after all that wine and past,

  • he convinced me that Francisco was really on to something.

  • So, in that case you would put a mind I think in a blade of grass too.

  • And you would talk about this self-organizing capacity of the blade of grass constrained

  • of course by the DNA that makes it a blade of grass and not a chimpanzee,

  • or a monkey, or a frog, or something.

  • So we live within this constraints, there are internal constraints

  • that govern certain variables of the system.

  • We're not all the same.

  • And the complexity that's achievable by a human is much greater, and I'm not trying

  • to play favorites towards species, but because we have so many variations

  • and epigenetic controls and the way neuroplasticity unfolds even more than chimps.

  • Even though we share 98% of our DNA, we've got just a lot more capacity for this going on.

  • Now, that doesn't make us better than a blade of grass.

  • It just makes different.

  • It means we probably can't ask a blade of grass to transform its identity.

  • I don't think and I'm not trying to put down the blade of grass, it's just different.

  • We have to really own that there is these different constraints over different bodies.

  • Now, that being said, coming to the other two questions, it's a really interesting issue

  • and just to highlight the important things about self organization.

  • Self organization does not require a conductor.

  • So I don't know if you want to take time to do it,

  • but if you can imagine there are choir up here, you know, singing.

  • But do we have time to do a choir, example?

  • Does anyone sing in a choir would be willing to sing in front of the camera.

  • OK, no. All right, so imagine if a choir up here, right?

  • And we did this thing where they-- we're going to make them not connect with each other.

  • So they plug their ears really tight and just belted out a song.

  • That would reveal the chaos or cacophony of unlinked parts of the system.

  • Well, let's say 10 choir singers or you have them sing the same note the same way

  • for three hours.

  • Boring is anything completely rigid.

  • But then, what I do in the example is, these are choir singers let's say,

  • sing a song together and I leave.

  • So I'm not going to conduct them.

  • This 10 person self-organizing system gets together and so far now, I've done this many,

  • many times, 75% of the time, they pick Amazing Grace.

  • And Amazing Grace is actually thought

  • to be the most harmonic song in the western canon of songs.

  • And then they sing Amazing Grace and imagine a choir singing this Amazing Grace.

  • And every one gets chills and feels the harmony of the integration.

  • Why is it integrated?

  • Because they're differentiating they're voices in harmonic intervals

  • but they're linking by singing the same song.

  • So the bottom line is there was no conductor.

  • I just say to them sing a song together and I take off.

  • And the point of that is to allow a system to have its natural self organization movement.

  • So in terms of-- we did the blade of grass question, turn to the question

  • about the distribution of this, there are all these systems and subsystems.

  • So we want to start with the first system which is the inner sense

  • of me, the node that you live in.

  • If people are not integrated that way, it's going to be harder for them,

  • there's a natural push, here is the secret to that last part of the question.

  • There's a natural push towards this integration, because a self organizing system wants to move

  • to link differentiated parts, that's what it wants to do, but junk gets in the way,

  • whether that's genetically something you've inherited, an affection you went through,

  • head trauma you experienced or, you know, trauma you experienced it does not-- it's not a--

  • it can be what parents did, it can also be not what parents did

  • and just something you happen to have to happen.

  • So you have to make sure this is not about parent bashing, but it is about integration.

  • So that's a natural push and part of what therapy does and maybe the organization

  • that you're talking about does this is to create the conditions to permit the blockages

  • to differentiation and/or linkage to be removed and then to allow the natural outcome to unfold.

  • You know, Mark was telling me earlier on about the study that just came out of an African grey,

  • the parrots, when they live by themselves they live 20, with a person, they live 20 years.

  • When they have another parrot with them, they live 80 years and the enzyme

  • that improves the maintenance and repair of their--

  • ends of their chromosome telomeres is higher when they're living with other parrots.

  • And this is interesting because Elizabeth Blackburn who won Nobel Prize

  • for discovering telomeres and telomerase, she did a study with Elissa Epel showing that one

  • of the best predictors of your telomerase levels is presence.

  • Presence is how you're aware of what's happening when it's happening

  • without letting judgments distort your perceptual experience.

  • You're just there, presence.

  • So with Elissa Epel and I did with two of my interns, Ben Nelson and Suzanne Parker,

  • we wrote up this chapter to say, why does presence they do improve relationships

  • and improve telomerase, and the only way the four of us can answer that was to talk

  • about the wheel of awareness, to talk about the plane of possibility and to use that as a model

  • to show how the integrative states that arise from that plane, where presence comes

  • from because here is the way I think about it,

  • presence is the portal for integration to emerge.

  • And then when you realize that then you say OK, that's why integration

  • within the body raises telomerase levels, it improves the immune system,

  • it shifts your brains to an approach state rather than withdraw state,

  • these are all the findings from mindfulness training and it also, this is controversial

  • but it's not just about Fredgerson's [assumed spelling] study,

  • but other studies that show even after a day doing mindfulness practice those epigenetic

  • controls on your immune system that is part that's fighting inflammation,

  • that area is optimized with presence.

  • So this is where you see energy information flow is happening within you

  • and your body improving telomerase levels, epigenetic controls, again some inflammation,

  • immune system functioning, as well cardiovascular and all that stuff,

  • but also it's improving relation of things.

  • So getting back to the parrots, the natural state for a social being is to elevate states

  • of what's called complexity, this-- elevate your state of integration by being with other beings.

  • So if you're a parrot just hanging around with this goofy human being,

  • you're not doing what your DNA has urged you to do, which is to be a part of a system.

  • You know, in our neighborhood we have this parrot that fly

  • around it must have escaped somewhere, but now they're in a whole group of parrots

  • and they have a lot of fun, they're very inspiring,

  • because they do things together as a flock.

  • I'm sure they have a differentiates set of interests and I hope they're differentiating

  • that way so they can link and as a truly integrated flock, I don't know I didn't talk

  • to them, but this is the issue of the telomerase for those parrots,

  • we would be able to predict that.

  • The same things through with our society

  • and this combines all those three questions together, whether it's the blade of grass

  • and self-organization or distribute to nature.

  • We want to see self organization happen within us and between us.

  • We want to see integration within and between, it isn't just one place to the other.

  • It's happening in the node that is your body and the linkages between you

  • that makes the whole system interconnected, a system is nodes and their interconnectedness.

  • The self is the system, but each component of the system like what's called fractals,

  • you know, each reflects these larger things, so we want to work at both levels.

  • We want to work internally with contemplative practice and we want to work relationally,

  • and together releasing those self-organization but restores integration is going

  • to give you self compassion inside and interpersonal

  • and planetary compassion in the betweenness.

  • And that's the promise for all of us in doing the work together.

  • So thank you very, very much for your attention.

  • [ Applause ]

  • [ Music ]

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