EP 106: The Relational Mind | Dr. Dan Siegel

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated.

To ridding the world of blame and.

Shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, Fleet Mahl here for the Radical Responsibility Podcast. In this episode, I'm happy to share with you an interview I did for one of our Global Resilience Summits with Dr. Dan Siegel from the UCLA School of Medicine, prolific best selling author, who.

I think has one of the greatest windows in this understanding the human mind of any of our scientists around today. And so in this episode, this interview we did for the Global Resilience Summit, we talked about many things and we really talked about how we can understand.

Not only our own neurobiology and the reality of neuroplasticity, and how we can actually begin to re sculpt our brain in a way that really serves us, but also that we're always doing that in an interpersonal field, in the relational field with others. We can't really separate ourselves out of the nested relationships that we live within. And really, even our sense of self isn't limited to the skin encapsulated body. We're actually. Our sense of self exists within all of our relationships, which is why when we experience a serious loss, there's a. Can be a tremendously difficult grieving process because there's been a tear in the fabric of our sense of self and we're reweaving that, like, who am I with this person? No longer in my life. So we deeply explore this emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology, which Dr. Dan Siegel is one of the pioneers. So please enjoy.

How are you, Dan?

I'm doing well. Fleet, how are you doing today?

I'm doing well. It's good to see you again. Good to see you again.

Nice to see you.

And are you at a standing desk?

I'm in a standing desk, but it's actually a walking desk where the walking part is turned off.

Oh, it's off today because I interviewed you once before and you were walking and it was a very interesting experience. We made quite a connection around that.

Yeah, I can, I can certainly turn it on if you want me to walk. I just thought maybe for your viewers, especially me being stable might be a little better.

Yeah, okay, maybe I'll show.

Everyone's probably curious now. What does it look like when I'm walking at 0.4 miles an hour? And this is, this is what it would look like. You probably can't hear the Machine. Can you. No, no. And this is what the walking looks like. So sometimes I'll do three, four, five hour lectures online and it really helps to walk and not just stand. Can you see that I'm even walking?

Yeah, yeah, I can feel it a little bit.

You can feel it. Especially if I go like this.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's a great, great tool for embodiment and resilience. Absolutely.

It is, it is great, actually. I really appreciate being able to move around a lot. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I'm sure most of you are already well aware of Dr. Siegel and his important work, but Dan is a clinical professor of psychiatry at ucla, and I believe your early work had a lot to do with attachment theory and adolescent development, psychology and health. And as you shared with me once before, you kind of came into the mindfulness world through science rather than through more one of the Dharma venues or something like that. And Dr. Siegel has written so many important books, it's hard to know where to begin. Brainstorm was huge in the world of understanding adolescent development. And more recent books, Aware and Mind. And I mean, they're just the science, the contributions to the science of mind, the science of consciousness, the science of being, really ought to understand ourselves from a scientific perspective. And you know, my sense is you come from a pretty, pretty hardscrabble neuroscience science perspective, but you don't let yourself be limited. You're pretty innovative and willing to look beyond what we might think are the confines of not the data, but the confines of a more limited view, for example, that were these skin encapsulated beings and the mind is limited to that reality.

Yeah, well, thank you for that, Fleet. And so I do come from a science background of a different number of sciences, biochemistry and medical science and then attachment science. But, you know, I'm also a clinician, you know, as well as being, you know, just a person on the planet and also a dad. So those humbling experiences of, you know, just going through life, I think invite you to realize life is a lot more than what science has to say. Science is really exciting, really important, really offers us great insights into certain aspects of life, but not all of it. And so. So yes, I come with a science background and I build in, you know, to the conceptual framework something more than just what the science says.

Yeah, well, thank you for that framing. It's really helpful. And thank goodness that you're not limiting yourself on the way. And part of that interdisciplinary background of yours has led to what you and others are creating is this field of interpersonal neurobiology. Is that the right term?

That's right, yeah. That's a phrase that we use for what happens when you bring all sorts of different fields together into one framework and then think about the nature of reality based on that. What's called, you know, what E.O. wilson would call consilience, that consilient way of looking at things.

Well, let's begin with the science. So from us, from a science background and that perspective, what is resilience? And we all have this idea, well, it's that ability to bounce back. But neurobiologically or in the brain or the nervous system, what exactly is resilience? Can we measure it? Can we look at it?

Yeah, well, you know, you can measure it. And many different people, for example, like Alyssa Epel, E P, P, E L, She.

No, I'm getting her name wrong. E, P, E L, two S's. And Alyssa, Alyssa Epel and Elizabeth Blackburn study resilience. And you can look at ways of measuring that psychologically.

In something, for example, called perceived stress, and look at the ways in which how our minds take on the view of what basically something meaningful being at stake gets activated. Do we turn it into something that is a challenge that we can try to wrestle with, how to deal with, and we have a very receptive state of mind, Or. Or do we instead interpret this meaningful thing that's at stake as a threat and then collapse in the face of it? Collapse meaning we become rigid in how we function or maybe even chaotic. And for me as a clinician, when I started seeing these examples of rigidity on the one hand, or chaos on the other, with virtually every patient I saw as a psychiatrist, I started asking myself the question, like, what might be going on where chaos and. Or rigidity seem to be every symptom of every syndrome that was described in the books, but also with the people I saw, even if you didn't try to fit them into what the books were saying, people were coming with suffering that was either chaotic or rigid. And yet when we do different interventions in therapy, they would move toward a more harmonious way of being flexible and full of vitality. So that back in the late 80s, early 90s, led to this thing I think you and I have talked about before, which is to ask the question, like, what is well being? What is resilience? And, you know, the Developing Mind, third edition, gives you this very current summary of that, with 18 interns working with me to try to prove this was wrong. But for me, resilience is something called Integration, it is a deep process of differentiating, on the one hand, allowing to be different and linking on the other hand. And this linkage of differentiated parts creates a system that through a long line of consilient thinking, but based on mathematics of complex systems, is basically flexible. It's adaptive, it's coherent, meaning it holds well over time or is resilient over time. It's energized, meaning it has a lot of vitality to it and it's stable. Not meaning unchanging and rigid, but stable, meaning you can depend on it, it's reliable. So for me, resilience is the basis of how we cultivate well being in our lives overall. And the fundamental mechanism of resilience and the well being it permits is integration. And that can be seen in a relationship and one, of course, with the physical distancing that people are calling social distancing is isolating people creates a challenge to resilience and well being because people are not integrated socially as they could be or usually maybe are. And for others, you know, it's an incredible assault on the ability to integrate yourself in terms of just eating and having shelter for others when they get ill. Or even the frontline workers, you know, who are facing working with people who are suffering so much with a contagious illness is not having the personal protective equipment that they need because of failings of the government create incredible anger. And part of what Elissa Epel and I are doing and what she's now spearheading through UC San Francisco and the Greater Good Science center and the mindsight Institute, are supportive ways of cultivating resilience for frontline medical workers. So we have a whole program that you can click through us or through UCSF to try to say, well, if you're a medical worker, how do you, in these trying times, cultivate resilience? So we have a whole thing, and I can talk about one way of thinking about that, but overall, I think it comes down to integration. And when people find, as they say, I forgot who the politician who said this was, but these are times that test men's souls. You know, it may have been one of the founding signers of the Constitution, maybe Thomas Paine, I don't know who it was, but this is a time that really tests our souls and resilience and the soul go hand in hand. And I find, I don't know how it is for you, Philippe, but I find some days are easier than others. And, well, no day is easier, but some days are smoother than others and some Days are really, really rough. A part of it depends on what's going on in my family. I take care of my 90 year old mom. Some of it depends on, you know, what I read in the news.

And you know, these are really trying times. So resilience and a summit on resilience that you're doing is so timely, you know.

Well, thank you very much for that and for the work that you're doing to bring some skill sets to healthcare workers. And I've been doing similar work with correctional officers, probation and parole officers and first responders for a while now, right now in the prison system. It's a really dire situation. I've been on the phone for the last several weeks with lots of correctional executives and you know, if the virus gets into one of these correctional facilities, it can spread like wildflower wild and then they're worried about their staff going down. And I watched a two hour special last night in an ICU and that was one of these tough moments for me, toughest moments. I was shaken really after watching what was going on, what these healthcare workers were dealing with and the patients in a really busy ICU with the halls full of beds and hospital. And I was literally shaken after that. It was kind of a rough night. So I'm glad that you and others are finding ways, some meet that and offer something. In a moment I'd like to kind of go into the relational collective point, but just in terms of what you were saying about resilience. So even in terms of a brain that neuronally it's more differentiated, more efficiently linked up and therefore more integrated. So is this something you can actually see on a brain scan or a series of brain scans or some of the research been done between non meditators, novice meditators and long, long term meditators or, or other means besides meditation practice, ways in which people through their thought process have ended up with a more differentiated, better linked up, more integrated brain. Is this something we can see? And then importantly then how do we help people move in that direction?

Yeah, yeah. So this is great Fleet, because I mean just a few minutes ago I was on a research summary call with a wonderful program in Portland called Peace in Schools and they were giving the soon to be published research data that showed that with this intensive program in schools you could cultivate literally resilience in high school kids that had high ACEs scores, Adverse Childhood experiences which challenge your resilience in many ways. Both your mental and medical well being get challenged when you have adversity early in life. So this was an intervention that was helping with that. It's fantastic. Another program actually in your state in Massachusetts called Calmer Choice.

Showed in a study by Bauer and colleagues in 2019 out of MIT that even just an eight week program, the Peace in Schools is an all year program. But in Commerce Choice, what you see after eight weeks in 12 year olds is that the brain's structure has changed with a mindfulness intervention. I actually call it three pillar Mind practice. Three pillars, meaning, you know, you're training focused attention, you're training open awareness, and you're training kind intention. And I was at a research meeting where half the researchers said, just call that, you know, mindfulness training. The other half said, no, you can't include compassion in mindfulness training, so you can't call it mindfulness training. And another one said, call it mindsight training. You know this term I use, I said, no one knows what that term means. So I said to them, okay, why don't we call this three pillar Mind training, just to be really specific, what do we mean by these terms? And so it cultivates a focused attention, an opening of awareness and a cultivation of an intention, an intentional stance of kindness and compassion and positivity of love, basically. So the Calmer Choice program, I went over this with the lead teacher of that is a three pillar practice program. What the MIT study from Bauer and colleagues showed was that you integrate the brain. They have brain scans before the study, these are 12 year olds. Brain scans after the study. And you grow fibers from the prefrontal region, especially on the right side of the brain, down to the amygdala, which in kids with adversity, the amygdala is larger in size and more activated because it's part of the brain that is a part of a network that mediates the threat reaction of fear. And if you continue with an excessive reactivity induced by your experience, you can have internally generated fear responses that are not helpful to being resilient. Right. So these fibers from the prefrontal cortex, the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, to be specific.

These fibers, what they did, and Let me turn that phone off, what they did was, oh, it is off. It came through my computer. Sorry about that. I don't know how to turn that off.

What it showed was that these fibers are likely, what are called inhibitory fibers, is that over time other studies would show in adults, the amygdala, if it's excessively differentiated, if it's too big and exerting itself more to differentiate, it becomes more a Balanced differentiation in the brain. It's not only the Bauer study, but it's a bunch of studies in adults that show you not only grow these prefrontal fibers, but you allow what's called the default mode network, which can be excessively preoccupied with the self, self, self. What are others thinking about? Myself. What do I think of myself? What do you think of me? What do I think of you thinking of me? All that stuff that gets you anxious and depressed with a separate self is an excessively differentiated default mode. So it challenges resilience. You can make it more integrated with the whole brain. That is, you balance the linkage and differentiation. For that, you grow the.

Corpus callosum that connects the left and right hemispheres, which are differentiated areas. They become more linked. You grow the hippocampus, which links widely differentiated memory systems to each other, and you allow the connectome to become more interconnected. If you look at the Smith and colleagues study out of 2015, you show that basically every measure of well being and essentially resilience they could find was predicted by one brain factor. And the way they phrase it is how interconnected your connectome is, which basically means how are the differentiated areas of the brain linked? So in our terminology, we would just say integration is the best predictor of well being. And it turns out that so far, at least, every study of impaired well being in the psychiatric bible that's been studied, you know, whether it's from experience or not. So impaired resilience basically is associated with impaired integration in the brain. So it's all of this reasoning summarizing the developing mind that I'll say to you, Fleet, A resilient mind.

Comes from an integrated brain within integrated relationships. So energy and information flow happens in our relationality and in our interiority. So it's like an embodied brain, fully embodied brain. And the mind is an emergent process coming from these relational and these embodied energy and information flow patterns. And when they're integrated, they have these five qualities that spell the word faces. They're flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. And to me, that's how you define resilience.

Beautiful. So, yeah, that's exactly what I was hoping to see into that, because I think it's really helpful to see the science there. So I'm really eager to move on to the relational and collective, which you already kind of leading us toward. But before that, you also, something you said, reminded me of a concept that you, I believe, coined the term for the window of tolerance.

Yes.

And sometimes it can be called the zone of resilience, maybe a little different meaning, but similar. And certain situations trigger us out of that, obviously. And we either get hyper regulated or we shut your shutdown, get hypo, hypoarousal. So we get hyper arousal hypoarousal. And unfortunately the impact of trauma can make that smaller, shrink it down. Right. And I know you mentioned the ACEs studies in our understanding of trauma often I think, really began with those aversive childhood experience studies. And one of the things that we saw with not only the question of recovering from trauma, but that some children seem to innately be able to not only recover, but thrive, go to a higher level of development, whether that was genetic predisposition or what.

So just to clarify my understanding of the window intolerance as you conceived of it, because you mentioned before that very often when we get dysregulated, it goes either into chaos or rigidity. And my understanding that both those manifestations are possible manifestations of, of hyper arousal and it can go either way. And then that shutting down or hypoarousal kind of disassociation will be something different. So is that the case that both rigidity and chaos can be manifestations of hyperarousal?

Yeah. So, you know, when I was first writing about this in the first edition of the Developing Mind back in the 90s.

You know, I was trying to focus on this experience I had clinically with patients where.

Depending on their state of mind and depending on the person and depending on the topic, there seemed to be this, you know, this, you can call it a zone or a window in which within the window they could function in an integrated manner. And as it burst through the window, it could become chaotic.

So if on one side or rigid on the other. So I never used the term hypo and hyper aroused. Then people who read that started just translating that as chaos was hyperarousal and rigidity was hypoarousal, you know, which maybe in many cases is true, but not in all cases, you know. So I'll give you an example. You know, I can be in a threat situation where rather than fighting back or fleeing, I just freeze. Now freeze is a temporary immobility that is huge rigidity and super aroused.

I am pumping out adrenaline like crazy. I'm putting a lot of energy into my muscles to tighten them up. This kind of freezing and working with Pat Ogden and Steve Porges around how to articulate this is very different from what, you know, we suggest people call, you know, fainting or feigning death. So you can use whatever f you wanted there, but you have fighting and fleeing and freezing are very activating. You can be rigidly in an anger state or chaotically in an anger state. They're both hyper aroused, you see. So this is where for me, I don't use the hyper and hypo like other people do. Now it may be just as valid, but it gets, but they don't overlap completely like this. So, you know, so you can say, for example, I can be super energized in a happy way, let's say with joy or sexual arousal or whatever. And that's hyper aroused, meaning I'm way aroused and I'm perfectly integrated. I'm having a wonderful sexual experience. Right. Another person, maybe we had a history of sexual trauma when they start getting a little bit aroused, that can throw them either way into like a rigid state of withdrawal. I don't feel anything or chaotic, meaning I'm just all over the place and I'm indiscriminately sexual. So, you know, because I do a lot of work with people who dissociate in my experience clinically over these last 30 years, you know, dissociation, you mentioned that term. Yes, Dissociation can be.

Either and both at the same time. That is, you can be chaotic and you can be rigid and you can be hyper and hypo within either of those, you know, places outside the window. So, you know, you just want to know you're outside of the, the optimal integrated harmony, basically. And I wouldn't worry too much, you know, because people say no, it's hyper and hypo. I say, well, it's not really that way. If you want to keep on talking about that way, do whatever you feel is useful to you, that's great. There's no right or wrong. I just find it much more.

Clinically useful to think about integration leading to harmony in the central flow. And when you've blocked differentiation and or linkage, you can go to either chaos or rigidity. And those can be even in not hypo or not hyper aroused, you can be non integrated and be kind of, you know, calm as a cucumber and not integrated. You know, I mean, we see that in some, you know, parents and families or leaders of schools or leaders of countries or whatever. You see this a lot. You don't have to be.

Out of an arousal level to become non integrated.

Well, thank you for this much more nuanced view into that whole idea because often the, you know, the various diagrams, different ways people use it, tend to Collapse it down to something that's simpler and maybe then less accurate. So I really appreciate that that's helped my own understanding quite a bit.

So moving into the relational a little bit, I've noticed really during this incredible.

Catastrophe and crisis and incredible stress testing of ourselves and all our systems, that we're in the middle of this pandemic. The bedrock for me has been my practice, my morning solid meditation practice that I do with my partner every morning. And then my relationship with Sophie, my partner. You know, sometimes I'm a little here and she's a little there, but we seem to balance out. We haven't both gotten totally dysregulated at the same time, fortunately. But you know that that relationship is really foundational to. To our resilience. I know that. And in my own meditation teaching, I am practiced for many years and ever more so over the years, focusing on a very embodied approach that really activates interoception, interoceptive awareness, as a way to really be deeply embodied and be picking up on a lot more data and then being able to drop out of the observer role into just being in that. And I understand there's some science that connects the activation or the depth or access we have to interoceptive awareness with our ability to connect as well relationally and create intimacy, create connection. So, you know, there seems to be some connection between. You already mentioned it before in terms of attention and altruism and, you know, about well being. But there's some connection between embodiment resilience and the ability to be in relationship, which creates further resilience. And then maybe that goes out to the collective eventually.

I think it's beautifully said, Fleet. You know.

I think.

I guess one thing just to start in responding to your beautiful way of phrasing it is.

I think many of us are taught as students to be understandably trying to logically understand the linear.

A leads to B leads to C kind of thinking. And we're all trained that way just to try to make sense of a really fascinating and complex world. So we think in these linear terms. And so the invitation, especially now with the pandemic, is to take a deep breath and realize, in fact, that that linear thinking may not be the fullest way of understanding reality. And there's something called systems thinking or system sensing or systems awareness, which basically just to think about the mind as an aspect of a system is the mind seems to be, as much as it's not defined by any field that deals with it. You know, the mind seems to be beyond the descriptions that those fields offer actually in what's called an emergent property. Now that's a math term that something is interacting within its own components and the interaction of those components of a system give rise to something. And that's in math called emergence. It's not a feel good California term, it's a hard science math term. Now if you're a linear thinker, you may make fun of the word emergence because it doesn't fit in your linear framework. And you may say that's not scientific. And you would be wrong. Even though you would have incredible conviction that emergence makes no sense to you, it doesn't mean that you're right just because it makes no sense to you, because emergence is a systems property, it's not a linear property. Now one of the emergent features of a complex system is called self organization. And you know, we can talk more about that as the source of resilience, which is where the idea that integration is resilience. Then you say, well, where is it? And then you say, okay, if you're really going to give us the systems view, where's this system?

So if you're a brain scientist, perhaps you might say the system I'm interested is inside the skull.

And that's a beautiful field of science, you know, brain science. However, if you're interested in the mind.

Then the mind as an emergent property of a system is both fully embodied. That is, it's not just in skull, it's in your whole body. And lo and behold, there's a lot of reasons to think that the mind, your feelings, your thoughts, meanings that come to you.

Your resilience, your well being actually are as much embodied as they are relational. And then you may go, well, that feels right, but it seems wrong. How could a mind be both inside and outside? That doesn't make any sense. Well, it doesn't make any sense until you become a systems thinker. Because when you're a systems thinker, you go, oh, if the system is energy and information flow, neither skull.

Nor skin.

Are impermeable boundaries of that flow.

So you go, well, wait a second, are you saying that energy and information flow is happening both within and between? And then we go, yes. And you're saying the mind is both within and in between. And we go, yes, but the principles of emergence and self organization would suggest then that that integration within and integration between are both integration of mind. And that's where resilience comes from. So when you're in a relationship where you honor differences and promote Compassionate communication as a linkage.

That'S an integrated relationship. And amazingly integrated relationships seem to promote integration within the body, including its brain. So there's a two way communication. Once you have integration going on in your embodied brain, it helps you more easily create compassionate, kind relationships with others. And that in turn turns back and supports the cultivation of integration within. Integration between, integration within. And that's called the flourishing of resilience and well being.

Well, I think anyone who's. I know just in terms of a personal intuitive experience of this perhaps, I think anyone who's been through a really tough loss, I've been through several.

One of the reasons that the journey of grieving is so deep and unpredictable and so difficult for me anyway is that there's a complete reordering of, you know, whether you want to talk about mind or consciousness or our self structures, I mean they're different things, but still just who we are as a being, who we were, is no longer. And there's a whole time and process of reweaving that relational field in which we actually exist and experience reality. So it gives us a direct window into that.

Well, thank you, Fleet. I mean that phrase you use, relational field, is so powerful. And you know, a group that I'm associated with at MIT with Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge used that phrase and you know, our view is that a relational field is a real entity. You know, just like I believe it was Maxwell who proposed, suggested there were these things called electromagnetic fields and people thought he was nuts because you couldn't see him with your eyes. Well, every electrical gadget you deal with has electromagnetic fields at its core of how it functions. So people thought he was nuts. Relational fields may be just the same thing. They may be something you don't see with your eyes, but you feel it with your heart. And you know it's true. So here what we want to say, especially with the pandemic, the term social distancing should probably be replaced with physical distancing.

Definitely.

Because even the linguistic phrase social distancing is an assault on our relationality. Right. So that's one thing we could just easily change. Let's call it physical distancing. And you know, as we, let's begin with that, then you go, okay, during this time of physical distancing, what can we do to create integration within? And we can talk about that like we have a practice called the wheel of awareness, which just one of many, many practices that can cultivate integration. This is a, an integration of consciousness practice. And you can do practices that make sure your connections with other human beings and with nature retain their differentiated and linked quality. And the reason to talk about integration rather than blending is that integration has this very interesting characteristic where you do not lose the differentiated nature of the elements as they're becoming linked. So like in a relationship with a close friend, significant other, you don't lose who you are when you become compassionately kindly communicating with them. In fact, you become more of who you are. You know, if it's a great loving relationship, but then there's something greater than the individual parts that's created within the relationality that does not eliminate the individuality. That's an integrated relationship. Now that's where.

That's your notion of mui, what you've called we, that you don't lose the. As you go into mui.

Exactly. That's the muy. And what's fun about muy is, you know, we don't have a word for it in most languages, but just a simple linguistic term reminds you, oh, yes, yes, yes. I need to retain my individuality. I need to work out my body. I need to make sure this body is getting good sleep and good nutrition as best I can, you know. And as I do that, you know, what I do is I.

Have a means of.

Really trying to.

Respect the individuality that is my, my birthright. And I don't, I don't lose that. So I say, okay, I'm a me, fine. But in the process, then what I do is I allow myself to join fully with another. And in that joining, what's absolutely exquisite about it and the we were just helps remind us of that is you can.

Feel almost like there's three entities. There's like there's a me, there's a we, and there's the experience of we. And it can, you know, once you start thinking that way, it's. As a systems terms, it's beautiful because then you can assign resilience to each of those three. You know, how do you make a resilient group experience? Okay, how do you make a resilient individual experience? Right. How do you make a resilient collective integrated relationship experience? And you know, for me, anyway, the integration as the heart of resilience notion.

Gives you, you know, we have these nine domains of integration you can work in. So then you see, okay, I need to work on integrating.

My different states. A child part of me, an adolescent part of me, an adult part of me. I need to integrate across the different relationships I have. I need to integrate my body with somatic practices, with my upper brain, which mediates consciousness and thought, I need to realize there's a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere that function quite differently because they're very differentiated. How do I link them? You know, on and on I can integrate my memories of childhood, adolescence, adulthood. And in integrating those, what are called implicit memories into a larger, explicit form, I then have the gateway for narrative integration, which is how do I find meaning? So even like with the pandemic.

How do we take this moment of collective experience on the planet, make meaning of it for ourselves individually and relationships we're in and collectively, and this is now temporal integration across time. How do we get ready for what hopefully will be? And many people are, I think, secretly hoping for this, but why don't we just say it? A new chapter in human evolution that embraces the reality of our interconnection, realizing how beautifully and profoundly interdependent we are, so that once we start consuming again, we don't consume as much. Once we start traveling again, we don't travel as much. Once we come back to some kind of non physically isolated way of being, we actually say, oh, do you remember the days as horrible and painful as they were because they were full of loss? Trips from death, loss of.

Jobs, loss of retirement. So many things that were happening that are so filled with suffering. So it's not to at all minimize that, but to find meaning in the grief that we're going through now so that as we move into a future, we are not passive to create what that future can be. You know, at the mindsight Institute, you know, we're starting these. They're like pep talks, you know, it's about the personal experience of the planetary pandemic and how we find meaning right now so that we actively embrace the experience.

For those of us that survive and stay alive. And in honor of those who won't be surviving and staying alive, we say we can do it better. The next chapter of human evolution, we can do it better. And if we don't take this moment of suffering and terror and uncertainty and take a deep breath and say, let's develop resilience and let's go forward and, you know, find a way through this, it'll be absolutely for nothing.

Absolutely. And hopefully this, this is the wake up call and that we will honor the tremendous suffering that's happening right now and the loss of life and families losing that. We will honor this by embracing the need to awaken and change. And I would like to move on to sense making and the Collective in a moment, but just first, maybe as a side or maybe not, maybe it's not an aside, but I do as well as in the way I practice meditation and teach it. And I do a lot of dyadic work of all kinds. And part of that has some roots in a dialogic process I've been involved in for three decades called consul. And people, besides doing that in a circle form, also do it dyadic. And there's a couple's work or relational work that gets done. And people who've really worked on their relationship in a deeply contemplative way, in that way talk about something called that. The relational field begins to manifest as what they call the third presence. Now this may be getting a little woo woo or behind us beyond the science, but sometimes they'll actually put a cushion there honoring that. And sometimes someone will suddenly feel they're speaking from the relational field. And when someone does that, whether it's the group or the couple, it is really different. You can feel it when it's genuine and when it's not. And so the work I've been doing, especially in recent years, even in training, training all kinds of people in general, but also training first responders and correctional officers, I do a lot of dyadic work where I train them first to get really embodied in themselves, take ownership, sovereignty in themselves and in a really embodied way, and then voluntarily entering into a relational field, but not losing themselves in the way you're describing and learn to weave through a process of eye gazing and dialogue and presencing each other and going back and forth between being able to sense themselves, sense the relational seal and develop that multi sensing capability to together weave themselves into profound states of at least a momentary state of resilience that is quite people experience it is quite profound. So I just wanted to kind of start there and think about how do we then, you know, if you think out to our healthcare system, that's obviously failing at stress test right now, and you know, our approach to the kind of neoliberal corporate view which has produced a lot of good things and a lot of science and a lot of prosperity, but it's also, you know, it's all about efficiency. So there's no backup, there's no redundancy and it creates very fragile systems that we're experiencing right now. So if we're going to do something different, it's obviously going to be created by resilient people with resilient relationships. So wondering if you can just help us imagine our way a Little bit from our own personal practice to the quality of our relationship, to the teams, organizations we're part of, and how we might take this as the wake up call and begin to contribute to something more resilient, more integrated, arising at the larger levels of scale.

Yeah, I think that's so fabulous. You know, Fleet, I guess I would start with a resource. There's a fantastic book called the Gift of Presence by Caroline Welch that identifies, and she's our CEO. It identifies how presence, this idea of being receptively aware in a way that would permit us to feel that relational feeling you're talking about, is a foundation for three other things that begin with a P. But the first is to get to right to your point, is to find purpose in what's going on. The other two are to pivot to change when you need to, which now the pandemic is asking us to do. And the other one is to pace ourselves, which we need to do. But let's look at purpose, this first of these P's that come from presence. So for me, I'll just say personally, if I start worrying just about my 90 year old mom, who I'm taking care of, or you know, my adult kids, or, you know, people I love and worry about the virus or myself, you know, ending my life, it can be absolutely terrifying and feel completely overwhelming. If I take that experience of hopelessness and as some people would say, you know, turn into helpfulness, you know, and I figure out what, what can I do now, not just for my loved ones that I want to protect and take care of, delivering food for my mom, getting her medicines, things like that, you know, helping my neighbors with stuff. But what can I actually do in what I prepared for my whole life? Even if it's just a small gesture to a neighbor or a larger gesture of our neighborhood or, you know, in our case, you know, working with resilience issues, if I can then see in the present moment how I might be able to be of service to other people, then it has meaning to, it has this deeper life's purpose. Another side of purpose is to envision that who we are is beyond just these bodies we're living in. And that sadly, you know, if the virus were to get this body and this body weren't able to breathe and didn't have, you know, the ventilators that the government should have prepared for and the hospital workers, as hard as they're working, either can't help me or they decide because of my age that they're going to go help Someone who's younger, which is understandable, you know, and this body dies. My deepest hope is that anything I can do between that day and this day, you know, will be of service so that the human beings and other living beings of our planet, you know, we'll find a better world because of some little thing I did. And that gives me a sense of purpose. It says Caroline Welch says, you know, it's the reason to get up in the morning because otherwise I would just stay in bed or, you know, try to distract myself with something or clean. This house is so clean. It's never been so clean. I'm constantly cleaning to get a sense of, you know, agency, you know, and being confident. Oh, my God, is it clean? And I'm working out like crazy. I'm like, with my few weights that I have in my little broken elliptical, you know, I mean, so, you know, I give in to that. You know, I want to feel like I'm achieving something. So, boy, just give me some dirty dishes. And I'm like in heaven cleaning the dishes, you know, dish by dish. And the purpose that Caroline beautifully talks about in the Gift of Presence is, you know, fundamental to our well being. If you look at the research she reviews in that book, it's incredible. And I wasn't aware of this until she wrote it in the book. You know, our health is dependent on us living with meaning and the purpose that it gives us. And if this pandemic makes us feel that life is meaningless, well, that's an assault on our resilience. You know, whether you define resilience in the simple way of you're bouncing back from a challenge or the ability to take something meaningful at stake and don't deal with it as a threat, deal with it as a challenge. So you activate these, you know, what Carol Dweck would call, you know, this growth mindset. That's a form of resilience. All those are ways of describing it. But the deeper level is, you know, can you be flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable even in the face of, you know, something really meaningful happening? That's resilience. And that integrated way of being requires you find meaning. So, you know, at the Mindsight Institute with these pep talks, you know, it's going to be about mui. You know, it's going to be about the idea that maybe this is a wake up call. And what are we waking up to? Well, mui is for us.

A way of, in a very simple little word across all these languages that we have, you know, making up in your own language, a way to become resilient even.

Through the pandemic and beyond.

Wow, thank you. So it reminds me when we talk about resilience in our work with correctional officers, we talk about physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resilience and skill sets and strategies for becoming more fit and resilient in all those domains of life. And when we talk about the spiritual dimension, where spiritual distress can really be.

One of the real avenues into suicidality, which is a real issue in first responders. And so we talk about spiritual fitness and resilience as that felt sense of connectedness within ourselves, with others, and with some greater dimension that gives our life meaning and purpose, but then also all the other things that give our life meaning and purpose. Really, to have that sense of integration and meaning and purpose in life. Is the definition of spiritual health in some ways that you are pointing to?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, spiritual is so. Interesting word, Fleet, because, you know, I wasn't raised in a spiritual home at all. And for some reason, I don't know why, people took some of my books, says, oh, these are spiritual books. And I go, what? You know, what do you mean? And then they said, yeah, come to this conference. I went to a conference on spirituality and education. And, you know, they gave me a workshop to do on the subject. And they. And so I just. I confessed them. I said, I think it's a mistake. I'm not supposed to be here. I don't know anything about spirituality. What's spirituality? 75 people in the room, we went around, Everyone said what for them spirituality was. And amazingly, they all said the same thing. For each of them, there are various subtle differences, but it came down to these two things. For these folks, spirituality meant.

Having meaning beyond survival.

And having connection beyond the skin.

And I went, whoa. Meaning beyond survival. Connection beyond the skin. That's. You're saying meaning and connection are what spirituality means? They go, yeah. I go, okay, then let's talk.

If that's what you mean by spirituality. So ever since that time. That was a long time ago now, you know, I have felt more comfortable using a word that, you know, I was banned from using as a kid and never had as a scientist. But I don't have any problem using it. I mean, if you. As long as you define it, you know, even. Even Jon Kabat Zinn, you know, who doesn't use the word spirituality. He says, mindfulness is ultimately relationality. It's not just awareness, it's relationality. And, you know, it's a beautiful way of talking about mindfulness. So I know John doesn't use the word spiritual, and I. If someone uses it with me, like I would say to you, Fleet, what do you mean by spiritual? I'll ask you, what do you mean?

Well, I mean, just what. Just what we just talked about. It is that sense of connectedness, I think, within ourselves, with others, and also maybe with some transpersonal dimension, whatever. It's just something bigger than ourselves that gives our life meaning and purpose. And then it's also the ways we stay engaged in our life, the activities we do, they do give us a sense of belonging and meaning and purpose. And, you know, of course it overlaps with psychosocial health and other things, but there does seem to be, as greater dimensions of which religious values and religious practices are a subset, an expression of what there is, does seem to be this domain of human life that's about connection and meaning and purpose.

Beautiful. Yeah, well, we're in that together, Fleet and I, you know, I think the research would support it. And I'm just thinking what Caroline wrote in the Gift of Presence.

I don't. I'm not sure she uses the word spiritual. I'm trying to rewrote in my mind, but certainly purpose and meaning and connection are the heart of well being. And so there is a beautiful book on spiritual and religious competencies in clinical practice that I was given the opportunity to write the foreword to. And in that beautiful book, they reviewed the science of what it Means to Live, distinguishing religion from spiritual, which I thought was really interesting. But ultimately seeing how research on both those fields show that it has to do with resilience and well being.

Absolutely. Actually, where I came to it was really through clinical literature in the nursing and hospice fields, because I was very involved in hospice all those years in prison and so in doing my research and so forth, that there is this clinical literature around that dimension. And. And it was really actually very important in a hospice field because hospice came to the US from a very monolithic religious culture in Britain with the Church of England, came to this very pluralistic country. And so people avoided the whole spiritual dimension for a long time until they realized there was something really missing and they had to kind of reinvent. Okay, how do we talk about this clinically and in a way that can include religious expression, but not be limited to any particular religious expression?

Oh, beautiful, beautiful.

So from what you're saying, it sounds like we're in the middle of this. I don't think crisis really even.

Describes it sufficiently, but we're in the middle of this global pandemic being stress tested on every level. And we know this is all happening within the looming or already present climate emergency and all kinds of disruptions that may be coming our way. So.

How do we each do our part to learn the lessons, to wake up and to create meaning through the way we respond to this. And that might be an avenue into how we collectively start to mood. So it's something that wants to emerge.

Yeah. You know, in this textbook, the Developing mind, the new third edition, in the last chapter, chapter 10, new chapter for the book, that's. The whole chapter is about that. And what I tried to review is the Science of Identity.

And you know, there's a. In the book, you'll see there's a. An acronym nut. So the acronym I use is the acronym sibling, meaning, you know, if there's a way for us to live on Earth as brothers and sisters together with all living beings, that would be cool. What's the acronym? Sibling? It dives deeply into the science of S, which is the self. And realizing the self is actually a part of a much larger system than the skin that, that we usually use to define, oh, my self is here. Your self is there.

So part of the answer that I would offer you as something to reflect on, Fleet, is we need to open up our thinking about what self really means. The next part of the sibling acronym is identity. And what that means is that, you know, human beings do have a need to say, this is my identity. This is who I am. Now, if we can allow the next chapter of raising children, adolescents, and even revising our adult perspectives, which I think is possible based on the science, to say my identity is beyond the skin defined body I was born into, you know, then you can realize that we can actually have this more integrated identity. You go, wow, I can be differentiated in a body, but also have a we that's a part of. And that's like the introduction of the we idea. And then the be of sibling is belonging. Like you mentioned, you know, that, that the need to belong is a deep, deep human need. You know, maybe it's for 200 million years. As mammals, we've had it, but we need to belong. So what do you belong to? Whom do you belong to? So if you're only belonging to your family, then that's still a part of kind of a separate selfhood that creates us versus them. If you only belong to humans who share your same religion or skin color, that's still an us versus them thing. And even if we only identify and use Self as human and our belonging is only with humans. Well, that's going to be a problem because we actually are part of nature. So this belonging to all of nature becomes a pressing need for how we go forward. In chapter, the next chapter, I think of human evolution. The L is a word, you know, I wrestled with and, you know, putting this together as a scientist, but I'm just gonna go for it. It's love. That love, you know, is a vital force, your. Your. Your experience. When we do this wheel of awareness practice, where you integrate consciousness and get into pure awareness. In the Hub, I've done this now with 50,000 people in person. The first 10,000, I did a survey of them and recorded all the results. Love came up over and over and over again. A kind of deep, binding connecting force along with interconnection and the sense of presence. So interconnection, presence and love are like three threads of a singular fabric of life. So that's the love part is something we cannot ignore and shouldn't shy away from. So b L love. The I is interconnection. You know, I think a linear thinking way makes you think, oh, Fleet is in that body and okay, he's going to interact with his friend there and friend there, whatever. But a systems view makes you realize we're all interconnected and interdependent, interlinked and inter are and inter being and all these inter things that many people have written about.

That is not a part of linear thing. It's just really embracing a systems view. So we have to become systems thinkers. That's the. Where we at I and the N and G. N is noesis, which is the kind of scientific knowing, factual knowing. And I think there's a science to all these things. To self, to identity, to belonging, even to love. And when you realize the interconnection of everything, I think we can raise the next wave of humans to actually ponder how we could have been so limited in literally socially constructing a shrunken solo self. They'll marvel at how we could pollute Earth as if it was like a spherical trash can and say, wow, you were so distorted in your thinking, weren't you? Distorted in your perceiving, weren't you? And we go, yeah, we're sorry. And thank God we had the pandemic, as terrible and terrible and terrible as it was that it slapped us in the face. So we got up, and that's the noesis part. And then the G is gnosis, which is, you know, a deep way of believing because of direct experience. Some people call it wisdom of spiritual knowing, you know, and this wisdom of spiritual knowing, this gnosis, Greek term, you know, I think is what we have to support, you know, and, you know, in these pep talks. My hope is if we start with a small cluster of motivated people in the midst of this pandemic beginning, because surges are about to happen and it's going to come back next fall, you know, we need to start working together to find collective meaning and be siblings with each other as we go, you know, and if we can, if we can create a collective process like that, that if any individual, this body included, doesn't make it through, there will be members of our collective identity as we, that will take this forward so we can make a difference in the world ahead.

Sibling. I love that. You definitely are the master of acronyms.

It's an addiction.

Yeah. You know what? I'm hearing a lot of things there sometimes in my consulting work, I've done a process called back casting. So you envision where you hope to be that transformed world we would all like to imagine. And then you, you go back to some event and, okay, describe how you got there. And it's a way to envision the pathway. So I could imagine doing that to that back there. You know, that is that wake up call when that pandemic happened. And here's what we did, and then we did this and then we did that. Right. And so that's a, it's a beautiful thing and way of thinking about it. And also what you said about a new generation that could, you know, that would look at how we've been and just would marvel at that we could have collapsed things down in such linear ways and egocentric ways. And, you know, I sometimes think with this, the combination of my own practice and teaching work with what I'm learning from science, and especially in this quality of interoceptive awareness, embodiment and connection with others, I'm beginning to feel that we could be on the cusp, especially people that learn this at a very early age. We could be on the cusp of an evolutionary leap in profoundly different capacities for self regulation and relationality by becoming truly embodied in that way.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm, you know, as some days, you know, it's overwhelming and feels just so profoundly sad and everything and, but within that even is this kernel of light, if that makes any sense. Kernel of light. Does this make sense? But a kernel of hope, you know, that, you know, then on other days, like talking to you, Fleet, you know, and I think together we can make this happen, you know, that, you know, on other days like right now, I feel, you know, something.

Whatever the individual experience is, and there's going to be a lot of grief and a lot of sadness.

We need to turn that grief, that sadness into meaning. And meaning is not something that just happens. We need to collectively construct it in a way that will serve all living beings through these really harrowing times we're just beginning.

And I think if we can hold that meaning in our hearts, I think it's going to really give us a collective.

Sense of purpose that will carry us through.

On that genuinely hopeful note, I'd like to invite you, Dan, to lead us in a brief practice, as you would. I've been thinking all along about your wheel of awareness practice, but whatever you'd like to lead us in some kind of sort of resilience enhancing practice, just briefly, a few minutes if you'd like.

Yeah, well, the wheel, you know, takes a good, you know.

12 minutes. But that's, that's not fair to do it if it's your first time. Come to our website, you know, drdansiegel.com and do the wheel for free. You know, try the longer one, the 24 minute one here. I'll just give you, given what we've just been talking about, just a brief view of the wheel to get you a sense of it. If you imagine that the hub of this wheel represents awareness itself, the knowing of consciousness. And if I say hello fleet, you know, you have the experience of both the hello fleet, which we put as a rim point for sound, and your ability to hear that sound so beyond the rim. But the knowing that I said hello Fleet would be in the hub. And then we take a singular spoke of attention and basically divide that rim of the knowns of consciousness like sound and your ability to hear the sound into the first segment would be the first five senses of energy patterns from outside the body. Sound, light, smell, taste, touch. We move it over the inside of the body, muscles, bones, organs. We move this book over to a third segment which is our mental life of feelings and thoughts and memories and hopes and dreams and longings and memories, meanings and intentions and all that. And then we move the spoke over even to a fourth segment which is our relationality. And in an advanced stage of the practice, we actually bend the spoke around right into the hub. So I'll just do a brief little, just allusion to that visual metaphor of the mind. And just if you want to keep your eyes open, that's fine, or gently close them And I'll just say a few things based on what Fleet and I have been sharing with you, and that is that you have the power to focus this spoke of attention, this metaphor of a wheel, to anywhere on the Rim, and to also not only choose where to focus that attention, but to actually realize that the Hub of knowing is actually distinct from the Rim of the Knowns. And that is is a deep source of resilience and well being. It's a source of empowerment because you can even be aware of a feeling, let's say on the third segment of the Rim, of profound hopelessness. And yet in the Hub with the spoke out to that third segment you go, welcome in hopelessness, I see you. I am not hopeless. There is a hopelessness feeling on the rim. I welcome it in. And just like Rumi's poem the guest house, you invite anything in. Now, if you do this wheel practice over time, especially when you start bending that spoke around, you may find, as literally thousands and thousands of people have found, that giving yourself the resilience, training to distinguish the Hub from the Rim with this simple practice, there may be other practices that you do this too. But with this simple metaphor of a wheel, you learn, wow. The knowing of awareness represented in the Hub is distinct from, is differentiated from the Rim. And what you may come to find, as so many people have.

Is that that ability.

Changes everything. And you may come to find, as so many have, that the sanctuary of the Hub gives you direct access to what in the book Aware I spent a hundred pages talking about, and here I'll just say in a couple of sentences, looks like that the source of awareness is what you can call a plane of possibility, generator of all things that could be what physicists call the formless source of all form. And that in accessing this formless source of all form, the quantum vacuum or sea of potential, for reasons that I don't think anyone knows, but seem to happen over and over again, you will tap into this incredible source of not just awareness, of course, that's what the Hub is, but this plane of possibility, the sense of presence being present. But you will also tap into the reality of interconnection and this incredible source of vitality that many people use the word love to describe. And as you do these practices, you may find that love, interconnection and presence are the foundation for resilience. And that as you then move the spoke over the fourth and final segment of the rim and opened up to your connections to people you know, people you don't know to all of nature.

You come to realize that this journey is not just a journey of this body that gets, you know, about a century to live on this earth. This journey is a journey that involves all living beings that existed before this body you're in was born. And this journey of yourself is more than just the skin encased body for all living beings that will exist after this body is gone. And when you come to walk on earth with that reality of integration, all the elements of the Rim available to you, the hub distinguished from the Rim, love, interconnection and presence, is the way you can walk through life. And that is a deep, deep grounding in a resilient way of being.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And people can find the Wheel of Awareness on your Mindsight website.

If you want to take a course, it's on the Mindsight Institute, things where we have like a 36 hour course you can take and stuff like that. That's our educational institute. And for things like the Wheel free resources, you can go to the Mindsight Institute and check some out there. But also the Wheel I believe is on the Dr. Dan Siegel website. Yeah, right.

Great. So is it dan siegel.com or drdansiegel.com.

Dr. And then D a N for Dr. Dan and then Siegel S I E G E L dot com.

Great. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. This has really been enlightening and very meaningful for me. And you know, I think just having a conversation like this is resilience building obviously and meaning producing and so forth. So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thank you Fleet. It's great to be with you and best to you on this summit and great to see you and I'll see you again soon.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

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