Dan Siegel who has created an area of understanding known as Interpersonal Neurobiology makes the point that most mental health professionals have not been taught a definition of the mind, and, often, aren’t clear about what good mental health looks like.
He answers these issues as follows –
His definition of mind is that –
mind is an embodied, inter-relational process of regulation of the flow of energy and information
His definition of well-being is the integrated flow of energy and information. He explains that health is like a free flowing river with two banks, one of which is rigidity, and the other, chaos. We veer towards one or other of the two banks as we make our way through life.
He uses a three-aspect model of well-being to explore this, the three aspects being the mind, the brain and relationships.
I like this definition. What do you think? Is this an interesting way to think about the mind?
In some ways, this builds on the ideas of embodied and extended minds by writers such as Varela, Ogle, Clark and others.
I used to think it was one of those, and I couldn’t for the life of me manage to ever stop my mind. In fact, I couldn’t even figure out how I’d know if my mind had stopped! The same applied to emptying. My mind might often be full of trivia or nonsense, but that’s not the same as it being empty. Seemed too difficult to me.
Then I learned that it wasn’t about emptying the mind at all. It was about noticing what was going on, and letting it pass right on. I learned it wasn’t about stopping the mind at all. It was about enabling it to flow.
As Dan Siegel says, a healthy mind is an integrated mind. Like a river, it flows. He uses the metaphor of a river with two banks, one of which is rigidity, and the other is chaos. We veer towards one or other bank as we travel through life. When we’re well, we are neither stuck in a narrow, trapped place, nor are we falling to pieces, into disintegration. Rather, we’re flowing.
How do we do that? Well, one useful technique is to meditate regularly. I meditate twice a day, for 20 minutes each time, but there’s no strict rule about that. If you can, take a few minutes, at least once every single day, and quietly try a meditation exercise. There are many ways to practice mindfulness meditation. Essentially, it’s a method which allows you to become aware of the content of your mind. Dan Siegel in his “The Mindful Brain” (ISBN 978-0393704709) includes a script he uses with his patients to introduce them to a couple of ways to begin meditation. I’ve recorded his script here.
Just click on the link to hear it.
The basic technique is to become aware of breathing in, and breathing out, and to return the focus of your attention to your breathing every time you become aware that your mind has drifted off to consider something else.
Dan includes two great metaphors. The metaphor of the sea of the mind, where below the surface your awareness lies, calm and peaceful, and from where you can observe all the activities of the mind up there on the surface, coming and going and like the waves. The other is a “wheel of awareness”, with your awareness as the hub of a wheel, the spokes of the wheel being the direction of attention you send towards the rim, and the rim being made up of the five senses which bring the outside world into your mind, the sixth sense, which is the inner state of your body and its component parts, the seventh sense, which is the content of your mind, and even the eighth sense, which is your attunement to others.
I hope you find some of this helpful.
If you’d like to know more about Dan Siegel, and his understanding of the mind, I’d recommend you read “Mindsight”, or download it as an audiobook. (ISBN 978-0553804706)
Here’s one of my favourite activities – finding wild orchids. They tend to be really small and not so easy to spot, then when you get down on the ground to see them up close, they’re consistently, amazingly, beautiful.
As adults we tend to forget how good it was to just play.
Have a look at these orange balloons at play……they’ll remind you how good it is to play, and, especially, to play with someone else who you feel connected to!
(seriously, isn’t it easy to imagine that these two balloons are ALIVE?! Just watch they way they move)
(I made this little video in Cassis, Provence, then set it to a little of the soundtrack of Amelie)
I listened to a Thich Nhat Hanh talk yesterday. He said, without impermanence there is no life. I hadn’t thought about that before. He said, without impermanence the seed will not become a flower.
Without impermanence we wouldn’t get to enjoy these beautiful blossoms every year.
click on this photo and you’ll be taken to the original I uploaded onto Flickr. Click on it there and choose the “all sizes” option on the top left above the photo. Look at it in the biggest version available.
Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t it as if there’s a whole universe in there? In that single flower? Look at the colours. Aren’t they astonishing?
Every Spring in Japan the Cherry Blossom appearance is a great event. Thousands of people go out with their cameras and photograph the new blossom, the parks are full of strollers wandering around, stopping to look at the blossom-laden trees. The front pages of the national newspapers in Japan carry photos of the first blossom and the nightly TV news tracks the spread of the blossom through the country day by day. We don’t have anything quite like that in the UK, or anywhere else I’m aware of actually, but there’s a little village in the South of France which is named after it’s spectacular annual blossom and this year, after several years of wishing, I’ve managed to make a trip to see it.
Let me show you around.
The village is Bormes les Mimosa. Here’s what the village looks like during the blossoming of the Mimosa trees.
Let me share some photos of the Mimosa with you, then I’ll show you some of the village.
Sadly, I’m not very good at describing scents but the scent of this blossom is really lovely. It’s everywhere in the village making the whole place seem both sweet and fresh.
Here are some overviews of the village
The old village itself is a medieval village with winding, twisting little alleys climbing up the hillside. There are loads of tiny passageways and stairways making it a wonderful place to go exploring.
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