Mindsight
Contents:
We may have different aspects of ourselves that get shut down and shut off. And in these ways what happens is we are fragmenting our internal world. And there the mindsight lens becomes fragmented.
And as that child grows into adolescence and adulthood, under stress, things can become very disassociated. They can disconnect from their own bodily sensations, and fragmented in how they think. And in all these different ways our attachment experiences with our caregivers shape the lens through which we see the internal world of ourselves and others. And by giving us an acuity, what it means is it gives us a sense of wisdom about what the internal world is.
Contrary to what we used to believe we now know that the brain is open to change throughout the lifespan. But then our experiences actually sculpt synaptic connections in the brain itself. And experience stimulates neurons, the basic cells of the brain, to fire in particular patterns. One form of experience that we now know shapes neuronal firing, and also synaptic growth — changes in the growth of the connections among the neurons — is how we focus attention. And amazingly when you learn to focus your attention on the nature of the mind itself, you actually can rewire important parts of the brain that help regulate how your entire nervous system functions — so, for example, how your body regulates itself, how you balance your emotions — and also how you engage in relationships with other people.
It also changes the way you relate to someone very close to you, how you relate to yourself. So when we look at this connection among mind, brain and relationships, we become empowered actually to move our lives from unhealth to health. And this can be called the triangle of wellbeing. We can learn to promote relationships that enhance our lives.
And integration is where we take different parts and link them together. And then the mind itself, how we regulate energy and information flow, can be something that we learn to master and become in many ways, the captain of our own ship, where we actually instead of just riding things and being passive as a participant to just see where the mind takes us, we actually can become empowered to move our minds in a way that is healthy, enriching, and creates a much more flexible way of living. Knowing about the brain can empower our lives.
If I yawn yawns , like that, what did you notice you felt? Now you may have felt like you wanted to yawn. Did you feel anything with that? But now see how you feel when I do this. Now what did you notice? Well for some people they may notice they feel thirsty or they want to get up and get a drink. Or when I yawn you may want to yawn. What we now know is that in the brain there is a set of neurons called mirror neurons.
A mirror, which is something that reflects your own image, is the word that was used for these neurons that were found to allow you to take a perception that you see, for example seeing me drink some water, when you know it has an intention behind it, and getting you ready to do that same behavior.
So when someone yawns yawns you get ready to yawn. So we have behavioral imitation are enabled by these mirror neurons. But also something we call internal simulation.
Siegel is a practicing psychotherapist with an interest in understanding the neuroscience behind different techniques. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. I read a lot of these books because I find the brain and psychology endlessly fascinating. This isn't mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. The Mindsight Institute serves as the organization from which interpersonal neurobiology first developed and it continues to be a key source for learning in this area. They can disconnect from their own bodily sensations, and fragmented in how they think. That is part of how we move on and get over the past.
You may have actually felt thirsty when you saw me drinking. Mirror neurons are the gateway to compassion and the gateway to empathy. But what I was really interested in was what was a fundamental definition of mental health, not just a description. And what became clear in a number of ways of looking at it — from a scientific point of view, a clinical point of view, a societal point of view, was looking at something called integration. And integration is defined as the linkage of differentiated parts, so you allow separate things to become specialized in what they do in a system, and then you connect them to each other.
And when a system becomes integrated amazingly it moves toward a harmonious flow. It becomes flexible and adaptive.
You have a sense of connection and openness. This is a quality that you can feel when you hear a choir sing, that the singers are each allowed to be different, but then they link together. That vitality of harmony is what the subjective experience of integration is. So in the mindsight approach what we do is identify eight domains of integration, and walk through step by step what are the ways integration can be promoted.
Major Helpful Concepts of Mindsight:
You also find vertical integration where you allow the consciousness experience of the cortex at the top of the brain to be linked to the areas below, like the limbic area, the brainstem, the body itself. And then the related one is narrative integration, how do we actually weave the stories of our lives, because research has clearly shown that if you make sense of our life your own life will have new vitality to it, and the way you interact with others, including your lovers, your friends, family members, your own children.
Other forms of integration include something called state integration, realizing we have different states of being, and how these link to each other. So within one state you can feel very conflicted, and finding integration within a state is important, and also knowing that for example I have one state that wants to be alone and another state that wants to be social.
What's Mindsight? "Mindsight" is a term coined by Dr. Dan Siegel to describe our human capacity to perceive the mind of the self and others. It is a powerful lens. A groundbreaking book on the healing power of "mindsight," the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. Mindsight allows you to.
Finding time for these many, many states that we have that compose a self, is a part of state integration. At Science of People, we love to write about how we make think.
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
Our bite-size science today is about mindsight. I just finished Mindsight The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel Siegel and wanted to summarize some of the main ideas into an easily accessible article. First of all, what is mindsight? It helps us to be aware of our mental processes without being swept away by them, enables us to get ourselves off the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses, and moves us beyond the reactive emotional loops we all have a tendency to get trapped in…The focusing skills that are part of mindsight make it possible to see what is inside, to accept it, and in the accepting to let it go, and, finally, to transform it.
In other words, mindsight is the capacity to label, analyze and clarify our internal emotional world and how it responds to the world around us. You might be asking yourself, as I did while reading this book: Siegel argues that when we are attentive, the neurons in our brain fire together and that part of your brain becomes activated. This firing amplifies neurplastcity in the brain, which helps us process our emotions. An example that Siegel gives to help demonstrate the idea of brain activation from mindsight is an experiment done with taxi drivers.
The hippocampus is actually enlarged in taxi drivers. This is the part of the brain we use for spatial memory. In addition, Siegel explains, the brain goes on neural pruning sprees and removes neural connections to hone down the various circuits that are unused so brain is more specialized and efficient.
One of the areas I truly struggled with was having more concrete steps to achieving or even practicing mindsight. Here are a few mindsight training activities I gathered from the examples he uses in the book: I have yet to try any of these specific activities, but could see how they are action steps for the principles of mindsight.
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About Mindsight
Malle, Bertram, Hodges, Sara, eds. Understanding Other Minds New York: Eleanor A Maguire et al. And How It Applies to You. Major Helpful Concepts of Mindsight: