Interview: Mindsight with Dr. Dan Siegel

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today, I'm thrilled to be chatting with Dan Siegel. In addition to being one of my favorite human beings on the planet, Dan is one of the world's leading neuroscientists and psychiatrists. He's a graduate of Harvard's medical school and a professor at UCLA's School of Medicine. And he's also the founder of the field of interpersonal neurobiology. He's written a bunch of books. We're going to focus on mindsight today, but I think most importantly for me, Dan is just a living embodiment of the wisdom that he teaches. The first time we connected, we were just chatting, whether it was 10 years ago or 12 years ago, but he was in a large audience around UCLA of practitioners. And just Dan's presence and his mindfulness is what has really inspired me the most over the last decade. Just a humble, brilliant, wise embodiment of these ideas. So, Dan, I appreciate you, and I'm thrilled to be connected and chat about these ideas.

Thanks, Brian. It's an honor to be here with you, and it has been a wonderful decade of knowing each other for sure.

Well, mindsight, we can obviously talk about a range of different ideas from all of your books. I'm excited to focus on mindsight in and walk through some of those practical ideas. Can we start at the top? And can you describe to us what mindsight is?

Sure. So mindsight is a word, and as a word, it embodies the process that human beings have to actually see. That's the sight part, the mind, which would mean your feelings, your thoughts, your memories, your beliefs, your hopes, your dreams, your longings, your intentions, all of that under the word mind. And so you can actually have those things like a thought, but not actually be able to perceive the thought as a thought. So mindsight is this kind of meta ability, this ability to take a little teeny step back from the very process of the mind that will allow you to see the mind itself. So mindsight has three components. It's seeing inside your own mind. That's insight number one, seeing the mind of someone else in something we generally call empathy. And then the third process would be honoring the difference between yourself, your mind, and another person's self, their mind, in a differentiated way. That is, you honor these differences, but then you link with compassionate, respectful communication. And that process of honoring differences and promoting clear, compassionate linkages is called integration. So mindsight is three things. Insight, empathy and integration.

One of my favorite things when I read books is to see the words that come up again and again. Integration. I don't know if it was the most kind of power, powerful, salient word in general, but it certainly was for me. And I know that it's the heart of your work. Can you tell us more about what it means to integrate?

Yeah, you know, it's a really interesting thing, Brian. I was just teaching in Europe and different countries and this concept of integration, whatever culture it is, you know, I've been teaching throughout the North America and then in Africa, in Asia and Australia. But it doesn't matter where you go. This process of integration seems to be at the root of well being, whatever cultural context, relational context, relational history you have. And so for me, the concept of integration came from a very odd observation that came to me when I was in training as a therapist back in the early 80s, that every person I saw for therapy came with either chaos or rigidity. Even though I know the psychiatric nomenclature of disorders has a bunch of different named things and with different symptoms of different syndromes. For me as a trainee it was like, wow, this person has chaos going on, this person has rigidity going on. And both those states are away from some central well being that no one in my field, psychiatry, even the broader field of mental health, was naming. They were just naming dysfunction instead of well being and thriving and flourishing. So I just took note of that. And a few years later, after being trained as a researcher in attachment, where I was studying, you know, how relationship between infants like your young son was, and now he's older now, but how the relationship between your son and you two, Alexandra and you, that you guys have a connection that goes on. And if that connection, in my view had a certain quality to it, the child would actually have less time in chaos or rigidity would be more likely to be in a kind of state of harmony. So around that time there was a group I ran with a bunch of scientists to say, what is the mind and what's a connection? What's its connection to the brain? And it's a long story, but I'll just give you the take home message of the outcome of that group was that no one could agree on what the mind was. The brain was easy, but the mind, I proposed to them to try to get them to get along with each other. This is everyone, from anthropologists to physicists. The mind could be seen as the self organizing, emergent aspect of energy and information flow. And as you see this process of energy, information flow within your body or between you and your choice child. Let's say it has these three qualities of being open, chaos capable and nonlinear, which that would take us a long time to describe that. But let me just say those three qualities describe what's called a complex system. And in mathematics, complex systems have emergent properties. They arise naturally from the elements of the system. In this case, we're saying it's energy and information flow. And one of those particular properties is called self organization. So the reason I'm going to this kind of detail is for the following reason. When you look at the mathematics of self organization, you find that when a complex system like a cloud or a person allows elements to be differentiated and then linked, it reaches optimal self organization, which basically is harmony. Harmony has a flexibility to it, it's adaptive, it holds together well over time, called coherent. It's energized, it's stable. That spells the word faces if you rearrange it that way, it's flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable. And for me, back in the early 90s, I thought, wow, that's like the best definition of mental health I'd ever seen. So from 1992 on, I proposed this group that a working definition of the mind, which no one still has except this definition. I'm about to give you this emergent self organizing. Where is it embodied and relational? So it's in your body, not just your brain. And it's not just limited by the skull, of course, it's in the whole body. But it's not even limited by the skin. It comes between you and other people. Why? Because energy and information flow isn't bounded by the skull or skin. And then you say, cool, what is it? It's a self organizing process. You say, well, how does it make for optimal self organization integration? And amazingly, integration could finally explain why people with certain disorders had problems with the experience of chaos or rigidity. Because when a self organizing system is not moving toward optimal functioning, it's either rigid or chaotic. So then you can imagine like a river of integration, which was this process whereby you were in harmony with integration, which we're defining as health, linking differentiated parts. Or you were, if you're not differentiating or not linking, you went to chaos or rigidity. And suddenly the entire view of the brain, the body, relationships, even spirituality started coming together without boundaries. And from that moment forward, 1992 onward, the hypotheses that are generated from that view are so exciting. Because, for example, subsequently in the last 15 years. We now know that an integrated brain is a healthy life. And that just came out about three or four weeks ago in the Human Connectome Project. Connectome is how you study the differentiated areas of the brain and how they're linked. And that study blew my mind. But then the other thing is, every psychiatric disorder, whether it's not caused by what parents do, like people with manic depressive illness or schizophrenia or even autism, not caused by anything anyone did, they have impaired integration in the brain. And the question is, can we help them promote more integration? But even in conditions where parents did cause it, like severe abuse or neglect, impaired integration in the brain is the outcome. So the amazing thing is, so far, every hypothesis that has been generated from this proposal from 1992 has been supported. And in the second edition of the Developing Mind, you'll see just this collection of research that you can't say proven, because that's kind of. You won't always be open to. That could be completely wrong. But so far, everything that's come up supports that proposal that mindsight actually allows for integration, empathy, and promotes integration. And when parents have mindsight, they have children who develop resilience and flourish. And I think this is because parents with mindsight are promoting integration that comes from within them and is in their connections with their child. And amazingly, relational integration stimulates the growth of integration in the child's brain. And integration in the child's brain is the basis of every kind of regulation, regulating emotion and mood, regulating attention and thought, regulating behavior and relationships. It's amazing. But that's. This is the long answer to your short question. This is why I am so excited about integration as a concept, because it's something anybody can learn about and then do something to create more integration in their lives.

It's so powerful. And there's so many different things we can flow down in that river. And that idea of the river of flexibility or integration where you have rigidity and chaos, and I remember maybe it was over lunch we talked about this and that you need some structure, you need some spontaneity. And if you over kind of flow on one side, you flood one side, you get into that rigidity or chaos, and we want to have that stream of flexibility. Can you talk to us about how we go about the process of integrating what some of the best practices you've discovered help us cultivate that?

Absolutely. You know, the first thing to say is that the way you're saying it is so important because every human being has the birthright of living an integrated life. So whether they're people are living in poverty and are struggling to just survive, finding a way to create more integration in their life will give them more resilience. And of course, we need to support people having healthy food and water and air all around this planet. So there's some basic survival needs we need to do. But as we move toward going beyond survival into meaning, you can look at how you can create integration. So there are nine domains of integration that we can talk about. And the thing about it is different people like to think in different ways. So some people don't want to have nine domains, they just want to have one integration, and that's it. And that's cool, that's fine. Other people like to have 158 different things and divide everything up into groups and that's cool, that's fine. So because I'm going to Describe to you 9, it's not the end of the world or like, oh, this is the absolute thing. It's just a bunch of words dividing reality up. So there is reality, I think, and we need to realize that. So like in this recent book I just finished last week called Mind, you know, I just say that in the very beginning of the book, I say, look, anytime we speak with words, you're already limited in how truthful it is because a word is not the thing itself. And if you want to say, well, it's more complicated than that, you can always say, of course, anything you do with a word, it's more complicated than that. Or you can say, it's not quite like that. Yes, anything you say with a word is not quite like that because a word is not reality. But starting with words is a good way we can chat with each other. And it's a good way you can actually move beyond where you're stuck and have ideas that you can share with other people and try to promote more well being in the world. So words are not bad. You just got to acknowledge their limitations. Okay, so for me, using words to define nine domains is just a helpful way to go, but please don't reify it. And like this is like some absolute truth or something. So the first one is called the integration of consciousness. Now whenever you hear a domain of integration and you say to yourself, well, what could be differentiated in this area of living? So consciousness is very interesting and it could be differentiated in a couple ways. But one simple way is to say there's the knowing. The experience of knowing is what consciousness can be defined as. And in the knowing there's Also the known. So right now, Brian, you may be conscious of me speaking, you have your own subjective experience of knowing. But the known is my voice saying, brian, Brian, Brian, like that. So there's the knowing and the known, and of course there's probably even the knower, if you wanted to go really wild on it. But let's just stick with the knower, the knowing and the known. Then there's many knowns that can be differentiated from each other, like what you hear, from what you see, what you smell, taste, touch. So those would be the five senses. You could also move inside the body to what in science we call the sixth sense. So the feeling of your muscles and bones throughout the body, the genitals, the intestines, the respiratory system, the heart, you can be aware of these things. And we've even done a study at UCLA showing the more aware you are of your internal bodily signals. The sixth sense interoception is what it's called perception of the interior. The more empathy you have and the more insight you have and the more you take time to practice that actually the thicker an area of your brain gets that's involved in self awareness and empathy. So that's very cool that you can do something to change the integrative nature of your brain. So then you also have of course, an awareness of the known, of the your emotions and your thoughts and your memories and your intentions, hopes, dreams, all things we mentioned before. Let's just call that mental activities and make up a term the seventh sense. And then you even have a sense of your connection with other people and the planet, which we'll just call a relational sense. So you've got these eight senses, if you will, and you can differentiate each of them from each other and differentiate them from the known. So we have a practice called the wheel of awareness practice that we've been giving out through our website. We've given away about three quarters of a million of them. And I've done it in person with about 10,000 people. And I've been recording the results and there's some really amazing universal findings. Whatever person's background, cultural background, historical background, ethnic background, professional background, educational background, doesn't matter. The results are amazingly universal. And so I'm working with a bunch of quantum physicists lately about the implications of this, what I call this wheel of awareness practice. It's got a central hub of knowing and the outer rim of the known, and a spoke that you move around to differentiate. Anyway, in doing all this, people have this kind of liberation from chaos and Rigidity in their lives just from this first domain of integration. So that's how you would integrate consciousness. And I can go through the other eight, which I'm happy to do. You tell me how, you tell me.

Your kind of favorite practical tip, or maybe the feedback that you've gotten of, wow, this one really helped transform my experience and cultivate my mindset. Is there kind of a most popular, if you will?

Well, awareness is super popular because it's incredibly easy to do and effective. And, I mean, it's my daily practice. I can tell you it's. There's something about it that's very grounding. It does serve as a window into the nature of consciousness, which is awfully interesting. But it's also a window into how to integrate your mind. So just to touch lightly on it. When you do the wheel, you also begin to understand issues about bilateral integration. The second domain, like, there's an aspect of my known on the rim, which is thinking in logical, linguistic, linear terms that we often call the left mode, versus a part of me that's more connected to my body, that's more aware of the context of things, that has a sense of myself across time called autobiographical knowledge, that's more in my right mode. And these can be really distinct. In fact, sometimes they can inhibit each other. So by honoring both, you start from this wheel practice, you actually get into the bilateral domain. So this is why the wheel is so useful, because it begins there but doesn't end there. So you say, okay, I have two modes of being. Left mode, right mode. They're both good. How do I differentiate them and link them? And the key thing about integration is it's more like a fruit salad rather than a smoothie. Integration, you're not blending things and adding them up. Integration is where you get the phrase the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Because when you integrate, you're maintaining the differentiated nature, let's say, of left and right, but you're linking them. And this is where it's so empowering because you get much, much more than you get when the two are separated from each other, or especially when the two are inhibiting each other. So this is the cool thing. And vertical integration is same thing. Through the wheel, you can say, how do I access my body? And you're kind of doing that when you're doing this sixth sense of interoception. Vertical integration is basically bringing the signals of the body, the brain stem and the limbic area, which are physically lower to the vertically higher cortex where consciousness arises. So you're even doing that in the wheel practice. So I said it was integration of consciousness, but that's just. It was, it's just, that's a part of the beginning of the story. You're also doing vertical integration. And then if you focus on the wheel, on memory, you start realizing that there's two layers of memory. There's implicit memory and there's explicit memory. So like, you know, my father passed away a couple years ago and I was giving a talk in Germany the other day and some things started arising inside my body and inside imagery, all sorts of sort of bodily sensations and images. And I was trying to give a lecture on parenting and they had some time to do some writing. And I took a pause, did a quick survey in my wheel practice, not doing the full 25 minute practice, but just, you know, because I do, I do it all the time. I can get into the hub, go explore my rim and say, what's this feeling in my body? What are these images? Kind of do a sifting process. Sensations, images, feelings and thoughts. And some of them were just these implicit elements of my relationship with my dad that were arising because the lecture topic was just about that. How do our parent figures impact us in ways that are not explicit? You know, which is the second layer of memory where you, you know exactly where it's from. You say, I'm remembering my father did this and that, or whatever. So explicit memory is autobiographical memory and it's factual memory. But in this case, when I was in Berlin, it was the arising of implicit elements of my relationship with my dad that I needed to sort through and integrate them, literally rising up into awareness, but then processing them into their explicit forms. And, and I was able to make sense of what that was. And that actually brings us, even in the wheel practice, to, I guess we have integration of consciousness, bilateral integration, vertical integration, memory integration. Now we're on the fifth, which is narrative integration. It's like, how do you take the memories you have and say, hey, what's the meaning of the madness? Memory doesn't do that. Memory integration just raises it from its implicit beginnings to its explicit integrated forms, which is great and important. Explicit memory is a little more flexible and fluid. That's great. But you want to take it. The next step, which is telling the story of your life event, is a way where you, yes, draw on the past to understand the present, to free yourself in the future. So it's what Endel Tolvan calls mental time travel. And in doing that, what's really cool about it is. You're integrating. I mean, in many, many ways. Narrative integration builds on everything else we've just talked about. Consciousness integration, literally left, right integration, vertical integration, memory integration. It's building on all that. So that's why it's so important to write in journals, talk to friends, have people you're close to. And that's narrative integration. And as you do that, I didn't think we're going to be able to tie all these together, but we're going through all of them as you do that. What's cool about it, even in the wheel practice, is as the narrative unfolds on the rim, you begin to realize, hey, I have these different states of mind. Like, I can be really receptive and open and connecting, which is beautiful. It's why I love people and want to be open. But I can get in a reactive state where I'm fighting back, fleeing, freezing, or even fainting. Literally. I have these four Fs of reactivity. And I notice I have at least a reactive state. That's one of those four things, or receptive, which. Where I'm responsive rather than reactive. And then I go, whoa. There's also states where, hey, I like to be with people, and another state, I like to be by myself. And both are good. All these things are fine. It's like the roomy poem, the guest house, you know, just embrace them all. And everything has something to teach you. So state integration is just like that. It's saying the purpose of healthy development is not to be homogenous. It's to respect the many states that make us up. The United States of me, you know, and how can I do that? So that's even from the wheel. You start getting access. Okay, you know, I'm just not one homogenous being. Integration, again, is not homogeny. It's not. Everything is the same. It's not blending, it's not addition. Integration is a very unique synergy where things maintain their differences and interact with each other. That's the synergy part in this beautiful unfolding that creates the whole. That's bigger than just the parts alone. Then you go from there. You go, well, hold on. What about when I'm connected to other people? I'm not just by myself. You go, yeah, yeah, that's a kind of state. And let's just call that interpersonal state. And then you can see some people have real problems with that because they have to dominate a relationship or they become completely submissive. In either case, they don't allow differentiation. And how do you maintain a kind of core you, but also giving in to being fully connected to someone else. So for some people, it's risky because they lose identity. Other people, they have to maintain this kind of very rigid. It's me, me, me, me. And they really don't connect. And you can feel that when you hang with them, right? I mean, they're not really listening to you. They don't really want to be open. And so I love the word resonance because it's like guitar strings. You know, where I have this acronym called part. When you're present for someone, when you focus your attention on their internal world, not just their behavior, that's called attunement. So presence. P A is attunement. R is resonance. This is where I'm changed because of you, Brian. And hopefully you'll be changed because of me. And then we're kind of a part of each other, right? And that takes a certain kind of strength. It takes a certain kind of strength to do that. And the beauty is there's a we that's created that is much bigger than you alone and me alone. And when you feel that, and I think you feel that in your marriage and you feel that with your kids, it's not that other people are becoming you. You're like guitar strings. They influence each other and shape each other's vibrations. They don't become each other. And this is why I really prefer the word resonance over the word mirroring, because mirroring is more like. You're literally like a mirror. You're just reflecting back exactly what you see. No, that's not resonance. Resonance is, I'm me, but I'm really changed because of you. I'm not the same person I would have been if I never met you, Brian. So we resonate with each other, which is actually true. So, you know, we. We resonate with each other, and then you feel it. So when you're with someone, you hug them, you go, here's the we that's even with me when I'm away from this we, because the we is created. And you feel the authenticity of that, right? So that's. That's the interpersonal integration. And the last two, just to finish them up, is, you know, one is just called temporal integration. It's just this wacko thing about being human that, you know, we have this kind of weird notion of time. That's the temporal part. And, I mean, time is really freaky. I've been in this last book I wrote Mind. I really dove deeply into some of what physicists are writing about. The time is a mental construction. It's not a physical reality. All you have is now, which is what a lot of the wisdom traditions of course, have taught forever. So then what do you have? You have nows that are fixed, and those are called past. You have nows that are emerging. That's called the present. And you have nows that are open, and those are called the future. So what was really fun in this book was to play with that reality and say, all we have is literally now. You never have anything, but now they have different qualities to them because as far as we can tell, everything changes always. So the nows are always unfolding, but that doesn't mean that there's time. Now. What happens when you have a mental construction of time is that you get existential angst, which I think at least the two dogs I have at home, one of them for sure does not have existential angst. The other one, I'm not so sure. But, you know, because our brain is able to make these concepts of time and creates this illusion of time, then what happens is you want things to be certain, but life is full of uncertainty. You want things to be permanent, but hey, unfortunately, nothing is permanent, and you want to live forever if things are going well and nothing lives forever, even people you love. So how do you embrace those opposites? That's really what integration is about. It's not getting rid of the longing for all things to be immortal and permanent and certain, but to embrace the opposites of all those. And that's what temporal integration is about. So it's the deep existential issues that are not so much problems as integrative domain. It's a. It's just something about being human. I mean, when I go for a walk with both my kids now in their 20s, I mean, this is what we talk about. It's like, wow. How do you embrace finding meaning in life when you realize it's relative and you're all going to die? I mean, how do you deal with that? And very deep, deep conversations ongoing. And it's beautiful. I'm sure you're going to have it with your son one day. But, you know, this starts around adolescence, when the brain starts being able to map that out. And then you start going, whoa. And the final one, the last domain, is just. I used to call it transpirational. I made up a word because trans means across spire is to breathe. And I noticed people I was working with, when they breathed across all these other domains, they started realizing that defining the Self by the boundaries of the skin was not very accurate. They started feeling that the self, who they were in their identity, was connected to things larger, not just people they loved and they knew, but like trying to make the world a healthier place, trying to make the world a safer place, a more loving place. You know, that's a part of this transpirational integration. But people respond to that word like it was pretty weird because it is a weird word. So I just changed it to identity integration. So now that's the more accessible word I use. But it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. Nothing has changed in the domain. It's just the word people didn't grok it. So in identity integration, you say, okay, you know, what Einstein said was we all have this delusion of a separate self. And when I think of it as a clinician or a dad or as just a person on the planet, I think there has been this weird cultural teaching from parents at first, then schools, then the media, and then even science that take the word self, S, E L F, and even the mind from which it arises, and they stick the self in the body. So then you go, okay, well, this body has got to get a really good result on the spelling bee. This body has got to get into a good middle school so I can get into a good high school, so I can get into the good college. So this body will what, get into a good graveyard or something. I mean, what. You know, there's all this separateness and this isolation, and I think it's making us really both unhappy and also feel like there's something more. And certainly in spiritual journeys, people want something beyond survival, meaning beyond survival, and connection beyond the body. And so for me, the spiritual journey that people have told me that they're on is very much a scientifically based effort, I think, to try to break through the delusion that we're separate, that the self certainly is not just in your head, but even that the self is in the body. And so when you look at where we started, that the mind is this emergent self organizing process that's both embodied and relational. It's emerging from energy and information flow. And we look at it that way, you go, whoa, Myself in quotes cannot be limited to my skull or skin. I'm an emergent property of this flow. I cannot control. So there's the uncertainty piece that arises in the moment. Because all there is is the moment. And what I can do is do what? What's the purpose of my life? And for Me, for me personally, and the way I try to live is integration is the natural purpose. Integration is the basis of not only health, it's the base of love, it's the basis of creativity, it's the base of kindness and compassion. So for me, it becomes really, really simple. You know, I was just watching the recordings of an event that happened two days ago here in la, and I wasn't able to go because I was teaching. But they got me the recordings. Amazing. They had. Ram Dass, who had had a stroke, you know, wrote Be Here now back in 1971. It was published, and, you know, basically his teachings and everything that followed from the people he influenced, you know, Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabat, Zinn, all these folks are in the mindfulness world. You know, it comes down to they don't talk about integration. And when I met Ram Dass in Hawaii, this is what I talk to him about. And it was so beautiful to connect with a guy who influenced me since I was 14, you know, and to say, look, these teachings, even though they don't talk about integration, all the wisdom traditions, as far as I can tell, fundamentally come down to teaching integration. And from a science perspective, what this does is it dissolves the boundary between wisdom traditions, that is spirituality and science. And what's so exciting for me when I realized we're all interconnected like this, it builds on what physicists are telling us. It builds on the math of self organization. It lets you look at the chemistry of it, the biology of it, the psychology of, the anthropology of it, the linguistics of it, the sociology of it. It lets you bring all these things together. In my field, interpersonal neurobiology, we call that, you know, when E.O. wilson used the term consilient efforts, you try to look for the universal findings. So it's so thrilling because then you realize the self. And this will finish up this domain of integration. The self is the system, and that the bodies we inhabit for the short period of time are just a node in a system. And if we mistake the node for the totality of the self, we're going to be unhappy and delusional. But if we realize the self is a system, then what arises is joy and love and compassion and connection. So it means giving up ownership, you know, like the self lives in this body, but it means getting everything. And that's basically what mindsight helps us embrace.

What a beautiful tour.

Thank you.

You've mentioned mind a number of times. When is this? I haven't seen this yet. When is it coming out?

Well, I just turned it in last week, so they tell me it'll be out in September 2016.

All right, well, I'm looking forward to seeing that and hopefully connecting for another one of these chats and helping get that wisdom out. Can't wait to read it.

Yeah, it's a fun romp through spirituality, science, inner reflection, personal relationships, and you know, I'm happy to get you a copy, Brian. You can't wait into it.

And then you mentioned your site. Where's the best people for people to go to kind of connect with you and also to learn more about the wheel and all that good stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. So go to drdansiegel.com so it's D R D A N S I E g e l doctordansegel.com and you'll get a bunch of goodies there related to all the things we've been talking about.

Fantastic. Yeah, well, thank you. I know we could talk about everything for a weekend. I also know that you have something coming up, so I want to respect your time and look forward to seeing you again in person. It's great to see you now.

Yes, great to see you. Great to hear you and joy to you and your fam. And joy to you and all your listeners. And let's do it again. This is really fun.

Look forward.

Great to see you.

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