Four Themes in the Mindfulness Pillar:
1. Refuge
2. In the Garden of the Mind
3. The Lizard, The Mouse, and The Monkey
4. Green Zone, Red Zone
Topics covered in this pillar:
- A quick tour of your brain, the foundation of your mind.
- How the mind changes the brain. Experience-dependent neuroplasticity: “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
- The critical role of sustained attention in changing the brain. Problems with attention.
- The solution of mindfulness: sustained present-moment awareness.
- How to train attention and steady your mind.
- Methods of meditation. Open awareness and other mindfulness practices.
- The three ways to engage the mind: (1) being with it, (2) decreasing the negative, and (3) increasing the positive. Why FWB focuses on the third of these: developing inner strengths.
- Why mindfulness must be present in all three ways to engage the mind.
- The evolution of the brain to meet our three core needs – safety, satisfaction, connection – through three overarching systems – Avoiding harms, Approaching rewards, and Attaching to others – that are linked to the reptile (brainstem), mammal (subcortex), and primate/human (cortex) phases of brain evolution.
- The two basic settings of the Avoiding, Approaching, and Attaching systems: the Responsive “green zone” that is the resting state of the brain – our natural home base – and the Reactive “red zone” we enter when we feel stressed or upset.
- The brain’s evolved negativity bias. Why the brain scans for bad news, over-focuses on it, over-reacts to it, and quickly stores the whole package in emotional memory.
- How to come home by getting out of the red zone and stabilizing in the green zone.
Also Featured:
Creative Activities:
Sustaining Attention
Staying Responsive with Challenges
Jack Kornfield Interview