Practical Brain Science For Coaching Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Practical Brain Science For Coaching Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Practical Brain Science For Coaching Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
For Coaching
Hudson Institute of Coaching
April, 2014
Experience-dependent neuroplasticity
Being on your own side
Growing inner strengths
The negativity bias
Taking in the good
Practical uses of the HEAL process
The evolving brain
Key resource experiences
Healing old pain
The fruit as the path 2
Experience-Dependent Neuroplasticity
3
4
A Neuron
5
Mental activity entails
underlying neural activity.
6
Tibetan Monk, Boundless Compassion
7
Repeated mental activity entails
repeated neural activity.
8
9
Lazar, et al. 2005.
Meditation
experience is
associated
with increased
cortical thickness.
Neuroreport, 16,
1893-1897.
10
Self-Directed Neuroplasticity
11
Being on Your Own Side
12
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life.
I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy;
I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Bertrand Russell
13
Self-Compassion
Compassion is the wish that a being not suffer, combined with
sympathetic concern. Self-compassion simply applies that to
oneself. It is not self-pity, complaining, or wallowing in pain.
Leonard Cohen
15
Growing Inner Strengths
16
17
Inner Strengths Include
Virtues (e.g., patience, energy, generosity, restraint)
18
26
The Negativity Bias
27
The Brain’s Negativity Bias
As our ancestors evolved, avoiding “sticks” was
more important for survival than getting “carrots.”
Negative stimuli:
More attention and processing
Greater motivational focus: loss aversion
29
A Bottleneck
For Growing Inner Strengths
Unfortunately, the brain is inefficient at turning positive
experiences into neural structure.
33
Taking in the Good
34
Just having positive experiences is not enough. !
!
They pass through the brain like water through a
sieve, while negative experiences are caught.!
!
We need to engage positive experiences actively to
weave them into the brain.
35
Learning to Take in the Good
36
Have a Good Experience
Enrich It
“Enriching” Factors
Duration
Intensity
Novelty
Personal relevance
39
Absorb It
Link Positive and Negative Material
HEAL by Taking in the Good
42
Have It, Enjoy It
Let’s Try It Again
Notice the experience already present in awareness
of some kind of strength . . . focus, determination,
vitality, endurance
Have the experience
Enrich it
Absorb it
Implicit benefits:
Shows that there is still good in the world
Being active rather than passive
Treating yourself kindly, like you matter
Rights an unfair imbalance, given the negativity bias
Training of attention and executive functions
45
46
Teaching the HEAL Process
18 hour course, currently formatted in 3-hour classes
spread over six or seven weeks
23
TGC Wait-list
Mean Score
22
21
20
49
Pre-Course Post-Course 2-Months Later
Combined Sample:
Depression (BDI) & Anxiety (BAI)
12
10
BDI
8
BAI
Mean Score
0
Pre-Course Post-Course 2-Months Later 50
Practical Uses of the HEAL Process
51
The Four Ways to Offer a Method
Doing it implicitly
52
Targets of TG
Specific
Fears of losing one’s edge or lowering one’s guard
Sense of disloyalty to others (e.g., survivor guilt)
Culture (e.g., selfish, vain, sinful)
Gender style
Associations to painful states
Secondary gains in feeling bad
Not wanting to let someone off the hook
Thoughts that TG is craving that leads to suffering 55
The Evolving Brain
56
Biological Evolution
57
Evolution of the Brain
58
Three Motivational and
Self-Regulatory Systems
Avoid Harms:
Predators, natural hazards, aggression, pain
Primary need, tends to trump all others
Approach Rewards:
Food, shelter, mating, pleasure
Mammals: rich emotions and sustained pursuit
Attach to Others:
Bonding, language, empathy, cooperation, love
Taps older Avoiding and Approaching networks
59
Each system can draw on the other two for its ends.
60
The Homeostatic Home Base
When not disturbed by threat, loss, or rejection [no felt
deficit of safety, satisfaction, and connection]
62
Coming Home, Staying Home
Positive experiences of core needs met - the
felt sense of safety, satisfaction, and
connection - activate Responsive mode.
65
Choices . . .
Or?
67
Some Types of Resource Experiences
Avoiding Harms
Feeling basically alright right now
Feeling protected, strong, safe, at peace
The sense that awareness itself is untroubled
Approaching Rewards
Feeling basically full, the enoughness in this moment as it is
Feeling pleasured, glad, grateful, satisfied
Therapeutic, spiritual, or existential realizations
Attaching to Others
Feeling basically connected
Feeling included, seen, liked, appreciated, loved
68
Feeling compassionate, kind, generous, loving
Pet the Lizard
69
Feed the Mouse
70
Hug the Monkey
71
Psychological Antidotes
Avoiding Harms
Strength, efficacy --> Weakness, helplessness, pessimism
Safety, security --> Alarm, anxiety
Compassion for oneself and others --> Resentment, anger
Approaching Rewards
Satisfaction, fulfillment --> Frustration, disappointment
Gladness, gratitude --> Sadness, discontentment, “blues”
Attaching to Others
Attunement, inclusion --> Not seen, rejected, left out
Recognition, acknowledgement --> Inadequacy, shame
Friendship, love --> Abandonment, feeling unloved or unlovable
72
Healing Old Pain
73
Using Memory Mechanisms
To Help Heal Painful Experiences
The machinery of memory:
When explicit or implicit memory is re-activated, it is re-built from
schematic elements, not retrieved in toto.
When attention moves on, elements of the memory get re-consolidated.
When memory goes back into storage, it takes associations with it.
You can imbue implict and explicit memory with positive associations.
74
The Fourth Step of TG
When you are having a positive experience:
Sense the experience sinking down into old pain and
deficits, and soothing and replacing them.
Approaching Rewards
Satisfaction, fulfillment --> Frustration, disappointment
Gladness, gratitude --> Sadness, discontentment, “blues”
Attaching to Others
Attunement, inclusion --> Not seen, rejected, left out
Recognition, acknowledgement --> Inadequacy, shame
Friendship, love --> Abandonment, feeling unloved or unlovable
76
The Fruit as the Path
77
Cultivation Undoes Craving
Taking in the good is an openness to positive experience while
letting go – allowing the experience in and through you.
With time, even the practice of cultivation falls away - like a raft
that is no longer needed once we reach the farther shore. 78
The Goal as the Method
Peace
Contentment
Love
79
Think not lightly of good, saying, !
"It will not come to me.”!
!
Drop by drop is the water pot filled.!
!
Likewise, the wise one, !
gathering it little by little, !
fills oneself with good.!
!
Dhammapada 9.122 80
81
Suggested Books
See www.RickHanson.net for other suggestions.
Baumeister, R., Bratlavsky, E., Finkenauer, C. & Vohs, K. 2001. Bad is stronger
than good. Review of General Psychology, 5:323-370.
Braver, T. & Cohen, J. 2000. On the control of control: The role of dopamine in
regulating prefrontal function and working memory; in Control of Cognitive
Processes: Attention and Performance XVIII. Monsel, S. & Driver, J. (eds.). MIT
Press.
Carter, O.L., Callistemon, C., Ungerer, Y., Liu, G.B., & Pettigrew, J.D. 2005.
Meditation skills of Buddhist monks yield clues to brain's regulation of attention.
Current Biology. 15:412-413.
83
Key Papers - 2
Davidson, R.J. 2004. Well-being and affective style: neural substrates and
biobehavioural correlates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
359:1395-1411.
Farb, N.A.S., Segal, Z.V., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., Fatima, Z., and
Anderson, A.K. 2007. Attending to the present: Mindfulness meditation reveals
distinct neural modes of self-reflection. SCAN, 2, 313-322.
Gillihan, S.J. & Farah, M.J. 2005. Is self special? A critical review of evidence
from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Psychological
Bulletin, 131:76-97.
Hagmann, P., Cammoun, L., Gigandet, X., Meuli, R., Honey, C.J., Wedeen, V.J.,
& Sporns, O. 2008. Mapping the structural core of human cerebral cortex. PLoS
Biology. 6:1479-1493.
Hanson, R. 2008. Seven facts about the brain that incline the mind to joy. In
Measuring the immeasurable: The scientific case for spirituality. Sounds True. 84
Key Papers - 3
Lazar, S., Kerr, C., Wasserman, R., Gray, J., Greve, D., Treadway, M.,
McGarvey, M., Quinn, B., Dusek, J., Benson, H., Rauch, S., Moore, C., & Fischl,
B. 2005. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.
Neuroreport. 16:1893-1897.
Lewis, M.D. & Todd, R.M. 2007. The self-regulating brain: Cortical-subcortical
feedback and the development of intelligent action. Cognitive Development,
22:406-430.
Lieberman, M.D. & Eisenberger, N.I. 2009. Pains and pleasures of social life.
Science. 323:890-891.
Lutz, A., Greischar, L., Rawlings, N., Ricard, M. and Davidson, R. 2004. Long-
term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental
practice. PNAS. 101:16369-16373.
Lutz, A., Slager, H.A., Dunne, J.D., & Davidson, R. J. 2008. Attention regulation
and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 12:163-169. 85
Key Papers - 4
Rozin, P. & Royzman, E.B. 2001. Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and
contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5:296-320.
Takahashi, H., Kato, M., Matsuura, M., Mobbs, D., Suhara, T., & Okubo, Y.
2009. When your gain is my pain and your pain is my gain: Neural correlates of
envy and schadenfreude. Science, 323:937-939.
Tang, Y.-Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., Yu, Q., Sui, D.,
Rothbart, M.K., Fan, M., & Posner, M. 2007. Short-term meditation training
improves attention and self-regulation. PNAS, 104:17152-17156.
Thompson, E. & Varela F.J. 2001. Radical embodiment: Neural dynamics and
consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5:418-425.
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