Can we describe a ‘healthy mind’? In everyday life, we feel and think, remember and perceive, based on the flow of energy and information. When we view the mind as a regulatory process, we are able to see how we can strengthen the mind and create mental health by stabilizing the way we sense energy and information flow, and the way we then shape that flow toward a process called “integration”—the linkage of different parts of a system. DESCRIPTION OF WORKSHOP We can learn to create mental health by learning to monitor our emotions with more stability and modify our thinking toward integration with our actions. Dr. Siegel outlines strategies to monitor and modify energy and information flow with more clarity and power, and also describes how this concept of integration can serve as an organizing principle that illuminates mindsight, harmony, resilience, and vitality. Mindsightharmony, resilience and vitality.

COURSE TOPICS/CONTENT:

• Can we describe a ‘healthy mind’?
• What systems underpin psychological well-being?
• What do we understand by ‘the embodied brain?
• The healing power of emotion
• The psychological states of rigidity, chaos and non-integration
• The domains of integration
• The Mindsight, the ability to sense the inner mental life of self and others and create integration
• The significance of neural integration in creating mental health
• What constitutes mental health?

First part:

Can we describe a ‘healthy mind’?

Interpersonal neurobiology draws on a wide range of scientific, contemplative, and artistic disciplines to provide an interdisciplinary view of the human mind and the development of well-being. By viewing health—within an individual, relationship, or group—as emerging from the process of integration (the linkage of differentiated parts) we will explore how the rigidity and chaos of many mental disorders are examples of impaired integration.

 What systems underpin psychological well-being?

Three human experiences have been documented as promoting well-being: secure attachment, mindfulness meditation, and effective psychotherapy. In this session we will explore how these systems have similar neural mechanisms and the implications that this has for both attaining a state of well-being and transforming the brain. mindful and effective psychotherapy. In this part of the course, we will see that these systems have similar neural mechanisms and we will analyse the implications of this both in terms of achieving a state of well-being and in terms of transforming the brain.

Psychotherapy: Mind, Brain, and Relationships

By viewing the mind as arising from both neural processes in the body—the embodied brain—as well as from interactions within relationships, we can see how trauma within families in the form of neglect or abuse can shape the ways in which the brain develops and the mind arises. The impact of trauma on the regulatory functions of the brain—the circuits that shape affect, attention, and behavior as well as the epigenetic molecules that control gene expression—will be reviewed.

Integration and the healing power of relationships in psychological treatment

Ways in which therapeutic interventions can harness the power of neuroplasticity, or how the brain changes in response to experience, will be discussed. At the heart of healing is integration that enables differentiated regions to be linked to one another. Integration promotes harmony and brings the individual from the chaos and rigidity of posttraumatic states into resolution, growth, and healing. Integration is defined as the linkage of differentiated parts of a system and when it is present, flexibility and harmony result; when it is absent, chaos or rigidity occur. When we transfer this model to the human mind, we find that that a lack of integration produces symptoms and syndromes that we might consider as the root of mental disorders. We will explore examples.

Part second.

Developmental trauma and the centrality of attachment relationships

Recent and ongoing research confirms the complex interactions of biology and environment that can influence our sense of attachment to others from the earliest moments of life---and throughout our lives. We will bring a comprehensive perspective---grounded in both neurobiology and psychology---to the theory of attachment. We’ll see that children have begun to incorporate relationship patterns in their brains, and their bodies, long before they’ve developed the capacity for language, which explains why neglect and trauma can have a lifelong impact on attachment patterns. You’ll learn that the brain’s neuroplasticity is such that change is both possible and ongoing. Specific techniques will help you use the latest knowledge of how the brain remodels itself to assist clients in building more comfortable, secure, and successful attachments in their lives.

The domains of integration

This presentation will propose that integration can serve as an organizing principle that illuminates the nature of resilience and well-being and as a central mechanism of health that can be revealed in clinical interventions. Specific “domains of integration” will be illustrated that enable us to direct therapeutic interventions in trauma treatment toward integration—the linkage of differentiated elements. These domains include those of consciousness, bilateral, vertical, memory, and narrative, state, interpersonal, temporal, and identity. Working in each domain entails specific therapeutic interventions that will be highlighted and explored. The ultimate outcome of integration is the movement of the individual from the presenting states of chaos and rigidity and into the harmony and ease of well-being.

Mindsight Mindsight and presence: The significance of neural integration for both therapist and client

Studies of physical health, emotional well-being, longevity, happiness, and even wisdom suggest that our ability to be aware of our own internal world and feel deeply connected to others is at the heart of both resilience and mental health.

Mindful awareness and the healing of the mind

When this capacity to see the sea inside is also focused on cultivating integration, we use the term "mindsight," a learnable skill that stabilizes the lens through which we come to sense energy and information flow within ourselves and among one another. Once this perceptual lens has been stabilized to see inside with depth and clarity, specific interventions to modulate the flow of energy and information toward integration can be initiated. This presentation will explore, through case discussions, how integration can be assessed, mindsight can be taught, and interventions applied across a wide range of domains. Ultimately, effective therapy stimulates neuronal activation and growth toward a more integrated state. From an interpersonal neurobiology perspective, we will see how the clinician can use the therapeutic relationship to cultivate the growth of new integrative processes at the heart of health and transformation.