Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Upaya Dharma Podcasts - Mindsight: The Psychology and Neuroscience of Awareness (Pts 5 and 6 of 9)

The excellence continues . . .

Dan's most recent books are Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (for general readers) and The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration (more scientific).

Mindsight: The Psychology and Neuroscience of Awareness (Pt 5 of 9)

Speakers: Roshi Joan Halifax & Dan Siegel
Recorded: Friday Jul 9, 2010

Roshi Joan begins the evening by reading a poem by Lisel Mueller. Dan Siegal then tells a story that affected his life and the development of Mindsight. Dan introduces a list of 9 functions that integrates the cortex, limbic area, brain stem, the body and the social world. The list includes regulating the body, attuning to other people, emotional balance, response flexibility, fear modulation, mental time travel, empathy, morality and intuition.

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Mindsight: The Psychology and Neuroscience of Awareness (Pt 6 of 9)

Speakers: Roshi Joan Halifax & Dan Siegel
Recorded: Saturday Jul 10, 2010

How do we make this world of a better place? Dan says that we need to understand relationships, but also need to understand the nervous system. Through this, it changes what we do with our attention. Empathy can be stimulated by focused attention. How we focus our attention harnesses something that changes synaptic connections, improves immune functions and changes epigenetic control of gene expression. Dan introduces the concept of the Eight Domains of Integration, and explains for first 3, which are Consciousness, Horizontal and Vertical integration.

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