Because of how human brains develop, the only way for maturity to emerge is in the presence of maturity.   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts   I remember the first time I gave a presentation to parents, many years ago, about how children’s brains develop. One of the first concepts I introduced was the fact that young brains simply have not developed enough architecture to help them self-regulate, think about long-term consequences, control many of their impulses. As I showed graphs and had the parents reflect on various experiences, I remember seeing tears in the eyes of a few people. They realized that a lot of their upset with their child had come from a misunderstanding of what the child needed in moments of distress. They realized that they were punishing their child for being dysregulated. (this is called misplacing emotions, and I go into this in this episode) Their anger and punishment seemed to make things worse but they couldn't figure out why. Understanding brain development shifted how they saw their child. Instead of seeing them as a jerk who was trying to piss them off, they saw their child as someone who didn’t know what to do with overwhelming emotions. I had many parents report improvements in their interactions with their children after understanding this. It also gave them compassion for what they had gone through as children. Many of them realized that they also had been rejected, ridiculed or punished for being dysregulated. It gave them a new understanding of their own childhood experiences.   Knowing how our brains and nervous systems develop helps us see a universality to human needs. A sense of safety comes from knowing that someone understands us on a deeper level - that they can see through the dysregulated and defensive behaviors we might express when we don't know what to do with our emotions. This is the essence of secure attachment. One of the most important and intensive trainings I had as a school counselor was through the Neufeld Institute.  We discuss the importance of Neufeld’s frameworks on attachment and maturity in the interview and I explore these teachings in the introduction.   This picture is from when I worked as a French school counselor in Canada   We go into these topics and more in my interview in Episode 10 with Noor Sayed, where we cover the idea of adult-child ratios, what education is for, systems thinking and the importance of presence and attachment. We also discuss the neurological (and mammalian) mechanism of play as a simulation for adaptive behavior. By play, I mean some of the things we usually associate with play (like games, playfulness, sports, rough & tumble play), as well as role play.  Something I have done a lot with children over the years is role play for social situations, where we use dolls or just the children themselves (and me) to play out scenarios of social and emotional challenges, such as being rejected or not getting something we want.  By practicing different responses and trajectories within these simulations and role plays, this allows for flexible responding features of the brain-body system to be more readily accessible in 'real life' scenarios. Noor is the founder of a homeschooling coaching and consulting program - Leaders Among Mothers - an insight-based framework for helping parents use the platform of teaching,

  A quick episode that covers some insights gained over the course of my career in human communication and psychology, child development, teaching, and neuroscience.   Highlights include the importance of: * mindset, purpose and effective teachers * anti-disciplinary thinking and teams of experts from diverse fields * prefrontal cortex models and attuned caregivers for helping children reach their highest potential * understanding our power to control more of our thoughts, behaviors and reactions than we currently realize or have been taught.   A more in-depth article will be sent as a newsletter to subscribers later today or tomorrow to accompany the episode.   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify     “Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)” - Marcus Tullius Cicero     With Love from Me to You xoxo Stefanie   #mindset #neuroscience #resilience #podcast #perseverance #adventures #exploration #awareness #prepared #gohumans #newheights #newera   #heartbrainconnection #community #team #familyunit #powerpartnership #mission #purpose #endurance #warriorsheart  #behindthescenes  #offscreens #outdoors #wilderness #nature #longtermvision #love #love #love #unity #unifiedpurpose #cometogether #humanpotential #genx #awakening #unraveling #crisis #passingdownwisdom #futuregenerations  

“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” ― Shannon L. Alder   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify   How we distract ourselves from our deeper sources of pain In my interview with Warriors Heart Healing Center, we discussed the idea of 'presenting problems'.  These are problems that feel much more urgent and obvious to patients coming in (such as losing their job or getting a DUI).  As trauma therapists, however, they understand that there is generally something much deeper going on for patients than only that immediate and current scenario.  They understand that although there may be a lot of stress from something happening now, there are generally patterns of beliefs and reactions to things that have repeated over time... and the current situation may trigger some of those deeply held and invisible wounds and scars from long ago. Interestingly, in my wilderness first responder training that I attended recently, an important task during various emergency scenarios was to figure out the Mechanism of Injury (MOI).  Understanding how a person got hurt was important for figuring out further steps for assessing what to do next.  (sometimes we weren't able to to know the MOI, so we had to do our best based on our training protocols).   What sometimes happened during these scenarios was a 'distracting injury'.  This was something more obviously painful or noticeable to the patient (for example, an open fracture) but was not as critical as another situation going on (for example, internal bleeding).  In those situations, it was a challenge to help the team and the patient understand that certain things needed to be dealt with first before we could treat the obviously painful injury that was occupying their attention.  When we were able to assess the mechanism of injury, this also helped tune our awareness to pick up on other things in the situation we might have otherwise missed.   So much of what we think may be wrong in a moment is related to our level of awareness.  If our attention gets distracted by something very pinpointed or obvious, we may miss out on a lot of other types of information and noticing of patterns that could actually help us get to a deeper root of what is going on. An analogy I remember hearing a while back that resonates with this is:  imagine seeing people in a pool of water near a waterfall, and seeing some of these people falling over the waterfall to their potential death.  We need some focus to go to helping those people avoid falling over the edge.  And we need some focus to attempt to save people who may have fallen over the edge.  But we also need some focus to go to why people are jumping in the pool in the first place.   The other levels of focus will always draw our attention.  But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't also include the wider span of awareness needed to understand why problems keep repeating. This can include not just ideas about our past in terms of childhood or other experiences, but also for example our sleep patterns, what we are eating, the activities we are engaging in.   The more we can pause and take inventory of our habits,

  How we respond to danger (perceived and real, physical and social), and WHO we turn to (including ourselves and others) in the midst of uncertainty and threat is one of the most powerful foundations for future behavior and how we process information.   The level of self-regulating abilities in the people we have around us during times of danger, ambiguity and uncertainty are one of the most critical aspects of how accurately we predict, prepare for and respond to future situations.  This is especially true when we are young, but affects us throughout our lives.   Attachment (and our social behaviors) are about information processing: whether we distort, omit data, include erroneous information, or bias feelings over logic, or logic over emotions.   Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Blubrry   Danger - and how it is dealt with - is the central theme of attachment - and therefore human interaction. The concept of how we regulate ourselves and with others, and how we deal with social danger, rejection, status, comparison, the need for acceptance, and how we diversify our abilities to navigate our neurochemicals are topics we cover this Episode of the Mindset Neuroscience Podcast, where I interview Loretta Breuning of the Inner Mammal Institute. In our interview, we explore many intriguing and relevant topics including: The neurochemicals associated with how it feels to have social support - and how this differs from social dominance The fluctuations of neurochemicals, feelings and behaviors tied to threat, rejection, and constantly seeking external rewards and short-term gratification  Being more realistic about the ups and downs of all of our neurochemical states, rather than believing we should feel good all the time.  The biological purposes to the fluctuations and varieties of states we experience and why it’s helpful for us to understand this so we can get better at making choices that are good for our mental and physical health The life-threatening feelings people experience when it comes to social rejection, and social comparison How our brain and body store information about threats, and how this can significantly influence our current reactions to people The idea of ‘dopamine droop’ and our constant urge to seek reward and avoid discomfort   "We have inherited a brain that compares itself to others to promote its survival. It creates has a sense of urgency about how it measures up. If you don’t know you are creating this feeling yourself, you think the world is doing it to you. You feel bitter, resentful, and victimized. Instead, you can accept that the people around you are mammals, and you are a mammal too."" -Loretta Breuning     In this episode, I also go over the Dynamic Maturational Model of Protective Strategies. This model centers around the concept of danger and how the attunement and attachment we have to others during times of danger influence our information processing.   Challenges with information processing include distorting and omitting signals and cues from the environment, and biasing our thoughts and behaviors based on protective strategies that emerged in childhood.   

“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.” ― Esther Perel   “And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves. Adult relationships mirror these dynamics all too well. We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what’s safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what’s exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.” ― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts     Our past influences our present No matter how strong a connection we feel to someone, there is always a chance that our past experiences and insecurities may influence the current experience.   To increase our chances of honoring the incredible potential of relationships, we must stay open to learning about how our own distortions from past experiences may lead us to think and behave in ways that close off connection.   Closing off connection to ourselves and to others can lead us to stop exploring the world around us and hold us back from engaging in incredible experiences that are always available to us.  Having that sense of exploration, curiosity and wanting to be challenged are essential for building healthy connections, units and systems.    A connection to someone who shares a passion for growth and evolution, a shared vision and ‘dialect’ for how they see and understand the world can give us a chance to be a part of a partner-family system who can help us feel at home AND energize us with fuel and fire to soar beyond our ordinary lives into awe-inspiring pursuits. But we must stay open to learning about how our own patterns, thoughts and behaviors contribute to the overall functioning of the unit.  This can be said for intimate partnerships and family units, as well as a community and team.       The more deeply we can experience life in all its forms and moments, the more deeply we can experience another person.   Intimacy and bonding are not just about how you are when you are with a person or people, but how engaged in life and exploration of your own world when you are apart.  What can lead many relationships into a feeling of boredom, stuckness, or resentment is 'self-abandonment'... an abandonment of what truly brings us joy and lights us up, and an abandonment of paying attention to our innermost wounds and places for healing.  Building a sense of love for yourself and wonder and fascination with life is what can help create a life-enhancing relationship for both people.  When we get clear about what our deepest needs and desires are and we find ways to support and nourish them within ourselves, we then get to share that with someone*.  They get to benefit from a perspective of happiness and sources of joy that are different than their own.  When each person in a partnership and family get better at honoring what regulates their nervous system and enhances their life force,

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” * ― Leo Tolstoy   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts We are in the most interconnected period that humanity has ever experienced. The potential for us to tap into and amplify collective intelligence is unparalleled. The potential for us to tap into and amplify collective trauma is also unparalleled. As we interact with others online and in person, and in all the moments in between, we have a chance to find new ways to react to people and events that help us become more intelligent, regulated and rational. Being able to regulate ourselves and achieve a desired internal state during times of distress and challenging situations and emotions is one of the most important tools for humans to learn and understand.  It is the journey to maturity and complexity for us as a complex, adaptive organism. Without an ability to self-regulate, we are more vulnerable to the reactions, insecurities and volatility of those around us.   As a species, we are still in the early phases of understanding how dysregulation and mental health challenges are passed on and perpetuated from person to person, generation to generation.  This means that in most of the interactions we have with other humans, we will be dealing with some emotional reactivity and immaturity. Immaturity is a degree of low complexity and is a state of a system (for example a human) that depends on more mature systems to help it meet its needs and achieve its goals.  As a system matures, it becomes more capable of self-organizing and finding new, diversified ways of meeting its needs and achieving its goals.   As humans, we do this by mastering our motor control over our bodies, our communication patterns (example language and social signals) and our problem-solving algorithms, which get more and more sophisticated as we have more feedback between us and the world around us.     The more self-regulating we become, the more we are able to take care of our own needs.  This doesn’t mean we are isolated beings while we do this.  It means that we are able to meet our basic needs of sustenance, shelter, survival and regulated internal states by collaborating and cooperating with other members to get the tools and resources and support we need to achieve these goals. Our maturity as a system is reflected in the diversification of our strategies and resources.  This means that we are able to navigate and master our ability to get certain types of support, resources and information from a wide variety of places. This includes our ability to regulate our stress and manage difficult emotions.     'Immature' systems have lower complexity, and higher rigidity.   When it comes to regulating our emotional states, immaturity would be reflected in attempting to use the same people and the same kind of activity over and over again to try to regulate our distress, and a lack of other tools to do this. Increasing our range and repertoire of strategies for survival and flourishing means that we are able to find tools such as online resources, books, therapists, community organizations, and tools and techniques like journaling, meditation, exercise, contemplation, stress inoculation training, physical movement training, etc., to help us achieve a desired internal state.

Learning is a gateway to power and freedom Learning increases our degrees of freedom by giving us new ways to move, communicate and adapt to challenges and capitalize on opportunities.   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts     True learning is a sacred process that is not honored in how typical classrooms are run.   I have seen many kids begin to believe that something is wrong with them. Not because they are unable to learn, but because of the teachers’ and education system’s outdated understanding of how humans actually learn and optimize their functioning. On a deeper level, because of outdated and ineffective education models that exist in schools, I think many of us were not given a chance to truly tap into our unique brilliance, and the effects of this linger in us today. The highlights of my life have been working with young people and watching them light up as they recognize their capacities to learn.  I love teaching them the magnificent systems-logic that exists in the world and in their bodies for them to use for their own sense of power and agency. It was an honor to speak with two professors who align with this and are taking action to transform and disrupt education as we currently know it.   In this episode, Drs. Sheila Macrine and Jennifer Fugate and I explore how our cognitive and learning processes are embodied as we discuss their book, Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning.   Their website is: embodiedcognitionandlearning.com     An example from the Movement Matters book is an expert bassoon player.  When this expert musician thinks of ‘bassoon’, their entire brain lights up with activity that simulates what it’s like to feel the smoothness of the instrument, the vibration of the sounds, etc. as they hear and play the instrument. Someone who has never played that instrument will not have the same areas light up when they think about a bassoon - there will be categories and words associated with ‘bassoon’, such as instrument or music, but that embodied, sensorimotor anchor of knowledge will not be there.  To learn something well enough to apply it, personalize and use it, we need to ‘play’ with the world, interact with it using our bodies and senses. As Dr. Fugate says in the interview, “the richer the initial experience , the richer the information that can be used for the simulation”.  Using more of our senses (including interoceptive and proprioceptive senses) during the learning process gives the brain-body more data to use later.   Embodied, Enactive, Embedded, Extended The idea of this process is aligned with 4E cognition. As described by Dr. Shaun Gallagher, this framework proposes that “cognition is not just in the head. it's something that involves the body in general and also the situation of the body in the environment …” As Schiavio and van der Schyff (2018) describe, there are 4 components of 4E cognition: * Embodied: Cognition cannot be fully described in terms of abstract mental processes (i.e., in terms of representations). Rather, it must involve the entire body of the living system (brain and body).

“Once again, the world seems to be less about objects than about interactive relationships.” ― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics   Studying human brains while a person is immobile and alone in an mri machine can only get us so far in truly understanding human brains and behaviors.  Because optimal brain development requires serve-return exchanges with conspecifics (members of the same species), affiliative neuroscience moves us into an exciting new era of understanding. Affiliative neuroscience is an emerging field that combines neurophysiology (including neuroendocrine and EEG hyper-scanning*) attachment theory, and highlights the evolution of social acts within mammals, nonhuman primates, and humans. My interview with expert rock-climber Alma Esteban parallels affiliative neuroscience research and how we coordinate, move and attune to others as a way to solve problems and ascend to new heights. Before we go into that, let's take a look at Affiliative Neuroscience Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts Resilience-by-affiliation Much of the current research on resilience focuses on fear physiology and stress neurobiology.  Affiliative neuroscience seeks to understand this as well but also what cultivates strength and stamina.  Within this, pioneer researcher Dr. Ruth Feldman defines resilience as the "hallmark of human achievement", which includes the ability to*: Face life’s hardships with courage and perseverance Enjoy intimacy and wider social circles Have empathy and compassion to others’ misfortune Foster a sense of industry and agency towards long-term goals Access creativity, vitality and meaning Be free of debilitating symptoms despite early adversity or current trauma Affiliative neuroscience points to coordinated actions of sociality as a mechanism for increasing endurance, diversity and adaptation, thus optimizing us as a species. *Feldman, R. (2020) What is resilience: an affiliative neuroscience approach, World Psychiatry ;19:132–150) Humans are literally, neurophysiologically, 'better together' than alone Social neuroscience research shows that we achieve goals more efficiently and accurately when we coordinate our motor behavior with someone we have a long-term bond with, particularly couples.  One of the reasons for this comes from having high levels of exposure to the others’ patterns of movement, which helps each brain create better predictions and automations for reading and responding to signals.  Trusting, attuned, joint-problem-solving partnerships optimize our individual and collective functioning. Unfortunately, as children, many of us did not have parents with this type of partnership for us to use as guides for our own future relationships. We need more models of this for future generations. Affiliative neuroscience shows us that bonding and affiliation are embedded in our DNA.  Ignoring this fact will result in continued mental health challenges and depletion of well being and functioning.  We are wired to seek out connection.  This means that if a person is not getting it in their physically proximal environment, there is a good chance that they will seek it out in other ways.  For many people today, this will happen online.

The moment you learned to walk, the entire social and power dynamic between you and your caregivers changed. When you were an infant and lacked mobility, your caregiver would easily be able to track where you were. If they left you in the crib, they could be pretty much certain, you would still be there when they returned. As you began to move out of their reach, your caregiver needed to take on the role of ‘socialization agent’ and inhibitor of action to protect you from walking into danger or moving too far away where you were no longer visible. Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes     This meant two things: Your caregiver would start saying NO more and prohibiting your exploration You needed a way to stay safe as you moved physically away from your protector Which then resulted in two major changes: You and your caregiver would begin to have power struggles as you increased your degrees of freedom You would need to ‘check in’ to your caregiver to know if something was safe or dangerous.  This is called Social Referencing One key way a caregiver ‘prohibited’ your action is through a sudden disruption in internal state attunement.  Each time you began to explore your environment, your mobilization-energizing systems would have been active.   Depending on each scenario, your caregiver would need to use voice and face to get you to stop going too far.  The way to do this is to put a brake on your energized state.  Human caregivers do this by using the word NO and making facial gestures that indicate disapproval of your actions. This is the mechanism of 'shame' - an inhibitor of interest-excitement and enjoyment-joy to reduce exposure or exploration (Tomkins, 1963; Schore, 2003)*. *more on this in an upcoming article   How this relates to you now... Every caregiver has different levels of comfort and anxiety related to safety, danger and exploration Their comfort levels are based on their past experiences. Depending on what a caregiver perceives as dangerous, they will use a lot of prohibitory mechanisms to keep a child ‘safe’ (according to their perception). What the people around you were afraid of, disgusted by or avoided may not be things that are necessarily dangerous or inherently 'bad' for us. These include social types of danger such as rejection, failure, looking stupid, not fitting in, meeting new people, encounters with people who are very different or unfamiliar.  Another example I’ve witnessed in certain caregivers is an over-protection against germs, scraped knees, insects, and animals that will not cause them harm If any of these things feel aversive to you, part of your aversion may have some roots in the social referencing activity that happened between you and the people around you most when you were growing up. Your caregivers’ and social circles' perceptions of these things created an internal state within them which they would then transmit in the form of facial expressions, smell, voice frequencies, body posture, etc. - that became the reference point you used for your own algorithms of aversion, avoidance or approach. This is extremely important for actual dangers because as a child you also were not afraid of running into the street, sharp objects or hot stoves. Instead of learning in a way that can hurt or kill us,

"transformation begins with two commitments: the courage to try new things and act in new ways the honesty to no longer hide from or lie to ourselves". - yung pueblo   Much of my work to help others has come from integrating neuroscience research and application, and the journey of learning how to navigate life, particularly when it comes to challenges rooted in childhood experiences of unsafety... an unfolding work in progress. The last two seasons of podcasts focused on the internal world - emotions, sensations, and the interconnectedness of systems of past, present and future. This season, I'll be focusing on biomechanics and motor systems. Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes Listen on Blubrry   Movement and Communication: the basis of your survival Your first experience of life was in a liquid environment. There was nowhere for you to go, nothing in particular you needed to do to get your needs met. You floated and ingested. As you left the womb, you entered a new environment. The cord was cut. Air separated you from all things. You needed to find a way to get your needs met, and deal with gravity, inertia and momentum.  To do this, your machinery equipped you with two mechanisms:  movement and communication. Movement meant that, over time, you would move the bones of your body to grasp, climb, crawl and locomote. Communication meant that you could increase your chances of survival by sending and receiving signals with others to benefit from their abilities and resources that you were not able to obtain yourself. These two mechanisms, movement and communication, are what kept you alive. They’re what keep you alive today.  They are also the basis of vibrations that you send out into the world. Movement and communication are mechanical translations of your internal world into external vibrations* * Movement and communication are different than thinking, feeling and sensing; * They are mechanical outputs that cause vibrations in the air around you * These vibrations are caused by moving bones via skeletal muscles, such as in your voice, face, breath, hands, and body. * These vibrations can be perceived by others * These mechanical outputs are translations of what is going inside of you *Blood vessels, internal fluids and organs are all moving within you at every moment.  These are internal movements that send subtle frequencies into the air around you - detectable to us in unconscious and sometimes conscious ways (such as smell, pupil dilation and blushing), and sometimes by instruments we create that amplify the waves (eg., heart beat, brainwaves). These play a role in motor commands, but are different than movement and communication in the sense I am using, which is tied to voluntary motor control.  The control mechanisms of Initiation and Inhibition have powerful impacts on our daily life, mental health and relationships As we practice and understand the machinery of our body and what we can control and adjust, the better we can get at initiating when we want to initiate and inhibiting when we want to inhibit. This applies not only to movement of our entire bodies, but also the movements we make as we communicate with each other When it comes to initiation and movement, we can learn to move in ways that get closer to what we ...