Brains On Purpose™

How do you listen attentively? Well, first you grab a paint brush, a pencil, or a piece of chalk

Being able to draw well can be somewhat like attentive and complete listening. For many people, learning a certain kind of drawing helps them to be better listeners. A receptive state that enables this kind of drawing, once learned, can be transferred to listening.

Good news: (Almost) anyone can master this state.

Today I will recommend two books to help you practice being receptive in drawing. In a later post, we will look at how to transfer that receptivity to situations in which you want to listen deeply. However, many of you probably will be able to transfer the skill as soon as you use it during drawing.

The first book is Your Artist's Brain: Use the right side of your brain to draw and paint what you see - not what you think you see. Don't worry. Despite the title, the author Carl Purcell does not include much of the inaccurate left brain/right brain "science." From the book:

I initiated a seven-year search to discover which functions of the brain artists use when drawing and the causes of the more common problems experienced by my students. I discovered that the right tools for drawing (and painting) are present in everyone's brains but we have other mental processes that subvert the activity of drawing.

The second book is a classic: Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation. The author Frederick Franck writes:

It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.

I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

One might paraphrase the two authors and say:

• The right tools for listening are present in everyone's brain but we have other mental processes that subvert the activity of listening.
• Listening is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.
  

Both drawing and listening can be vehicles for mindfulness and discovery, and I have found that the underlying state for one can be a door to the other. Moving easily between the vehicles will be the focus of another post later this month.

 

Posts about the brain and also about mindfulness/meditation often on my other blog

Once in a while, I run into someone who follows this blog but does not know that I also blog at idealawg. At that other blog, I often post about the brain or about mindfulness/meditation. Those posts are typically more general and, unlike most posts here, not specifically related to conflict resolution. Click for idealawg posts about the brain and posts about mindfulness/meditation.

Teaching kids about the brain: Foresight or flapdoodle? (Question applies to adults, too)

A new article in the New York Times about a school founded by an alternative theater troupe has resulted in some interesting responses; for example, on Twitter: click here or here or here or here or here. The school incorporates practices they claim are brain-based. I guess only time and some rigorous research will tell if the approach is effective in helping kids learn and achieve.

From "Making Education Brain Science":

[Y]oung children at the Blue School learn about what has been called “the amygdala hijack” — what happens to their brains when they flip out. Teachers try to get children into a “toward state,” in which they are open to new ideas. Periods of reflection are built into the day for students and teachers alike, because reflection helps executive function — the ability to process information in an orderly way, focus on tasks and exhibit self-control. Last year, the curriculum guide was amended to include the term “meta-cognition”: the ability to think about thinking.

...

For all the attention brain science is receiving in schools, experts say it is too soon to know whether its application will lead to improved academic outcomes. And some researchers say that while they embrace new ideas — especially around self-control — they personally prefer a more traditional approach to pedagogy.

“The older approach has led to some very good outcomes,” said Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University and co-author of “Welcome to Your Child’s Brain,” a child development primer for parents.

With brain science achieving much more time in the public spotlight, including in the arena of conflict resolution, some of the techniques and theories seeping out of research labs will be be bogus and some will be bona fide. Just a few years from now, we'll know more about what truly helps kids—and adults. In the meanwhile, as I have often warned, be careful, be conservative, be cautious.

In any popular application of neuroscience, you will find people who are careful, conservative, and cautious about what they say, and you will also find the people skilled at marketing. The latter group

Forthcoming Events in Mindfulness, Law & Dispute Resolution

From an e-mail compiled by Professor Leonard Riskin:

The Initiative on Mindfulness in Law and Dispute Resolution, University of Florida Levin College of Law
April 1, 2012
 
Forthcoming Events, News, and Resources Related to Mindfulness in Law and Dispute Resolution
(Note: This is not a comprehensive (or systematically prepared list of events related to mindfulness in law and dispute resolution. Other resources for information on events dealing with mindfulness in law and dispute resolution are listed at the end of this document.)
 
April 26-29, 2012, International Symposia for Contemplative Studies, Denver, Colorado. http://www.mindandlife.org/research-initiatives/sri/sri12/ [This is a better link.]
 
June 16-20, 2012. Mind and Life Summer Research Institute: The Embodied Mind, Garrison, N.Y. The Embodied Mind. http://www.mindandlife.org/research-initiatives/sri/sri12/
 
Tools of Mindful Awareness for Lawyers, Mediators, Negotiators, Judges, Arbitrators, and Managers
June 21-23, 2012. Malibu, CA
Oct. 14-16, 2010, Woodstock, VT.
Mar. 14-16, Baltimore, MD.
 
Sponsored by Pepperdine University School of Law, Institute for Dispute Resolution. Led by Leonard Riskin, Professor, University of Florida College of Law and Visiting Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, and Rachel Wohl, Director, Maryland Supreme Court Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office . See http://law.pepperdine.edu/straus/training-and-conferences/  or contact Lori Rushford at lori.rushford@pepperdine.edu.  [Note: Full-time law school professors may be able to attend for a nominal fee.]
 
June 27-29, 2012, Chicago (Downtown). Summer Institute on Negotiation: Critical Skills for Effective Negotiating.Northwestern University, School of Continuing Studies.  Led by Leonard Riskin, Chesterfield Smith Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law and Visiting Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, and Daniel Shapiro, Harvard Law School & Harvard Medical School; and Director, Harvard International Negotiation Program. This course, offered for the seventh time, integrates instruction and practice in mindfulness with the teachings of Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro’s award-winning Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate (Viking 2005).  For more information, see http://www.scs.northwestern.edu/summernu/programs/negotiation.cfm
 
July 29-August 3, 2012. Annual Summer Session on Contemplative Pedagogy. Northampton, MA, Smith College.    Sponsored by the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education. http://www.acmhe.org/
 
NEW: Spring 2013.  Second Annual Mindful Lawyer Conference, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, California.  Sponsored by the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law,  http://www.law.berkeley.edu/mindfulness.htm
 
 
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
Richard J. Davidson with Sharon Begley, The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (Penguin Group, 2012).
(Congressman) Tim Ryan, A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit (Hay House 2012).
Leo F. Smyth, Escalation and Mindfulness, _28 Negotiation Journal 45 (Jan. 2012)
Symposium, The Mindful Lawyer, Journal of Legal Education, May2012)
Articles by Charles Halpern, Angela Harris, Katherine Larkin-Wong, Leonard Riskin,, & David Zlotnick
 
Once published, these articles will be publically available at (http://www.swlaw.edu/jle)
 
 
Other News:
The University of California at Berkeley School of Law has announced the formation of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law. Charles Halpern is the Director.  http://www.law.berkeley.edu/mindfulness.htm.
 
Other Resources

Interview of authors of new book EMOTIONAL LIFE OF YOUR BRAIN

Click to watch Charlie Rose conduct a short interview of Richie Davidson and Sharon Begley about their book Emotional Life of Your Brain. In reading the book, I particularly appreciated that it reminds the reader of two things:

• We each are unique and thus one size does not fit all
• We can change our brains (and thus behavior) if we want to.

Note (added March 15, 2012): Click for an interview  of the authors by Diane Rehm of NPR.

Book on brain featured in current Understanding in Conflict newsletter

Now online: the August edition of the newsletter published by the organization offering the mediation training I most highly recommend. This month the newsletter of the Center for Understanding in Conflict includes these articles:

• The Differences Between Mediation and Collaborative Practice
• How to Loop When Someone is Aggressive or Domineering
• Notes from Norman [Fischer]

And the recommended book for the month is Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. [Click for a post about the book.] The review:

This book examines the intersection of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice to help us understand how our brains affect our mental states of happiness, love and wisdom.  Our ability to be aware of our inner state impacts our effectiveness as professionals working with people in conflict.  This book educates us about the science underlying our inner functioning and the practices that will help us to work with our inner world for the benefit of ourselves and others.

I would add that the book helps us to work with the inner world of our clients, too.

Click to sign up for the newsletter.

Excerpt from ARE WE BORN RACIST? leaves out one key to lessening in-group/out-group response

It is not news that our reactive brains respond in predictable ways to those we see as different from us. Those ways are not the same as how we respond to members of our in-groups. You can read about some of that research in this excerpt (AlterNet) from Are We Born Racist?: New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology.

Unfortunately the role that self-awareness, attention, mindfulness, can play in facilitating a person's being more reflective, less reactive, when interacting with those different from him or her is not mentioned. With training in self-awareness, attention, mindfulness, we do not need to be slaves to our brains.

As we have often pointed out here, there are those in the science community who do think we are clueless, helpless, hapless slaves. From "Missing Persons" (The Catholic Thing):

Many scientists have for some time denied the old view of what really distinguishes human beings: that we have the ability to know the truth and the freedom to choose right and wrong. It’s odd that modern science – which has given us so much knowledge about the world and useful technologies in medicine and other fields – should deny our ability to know and will. But no small segment of modern scientists regard the human capacity for knowing not, as in the past, as a kind of miracle, something of a different order than everything else we observe in the universe. For them, human knowledge is merely a kind of higher evolutionary reaction to stimuli. Indeed, if you look at the statements of some neuroscientists, they have started to call it a “folk view” that we know things and can act freely. For them, it’s determinism all the way down. We dummies – the non-neuroscientists – just don’t know it yet.

What we each think about determinism and reductionism, whether or not we think we can override our brain to be in alignment with our values, is important. It affects how we see the rights and responsibilties of our clients, and more important, what, in our own behavior, we believe we can and cannot change. Even if we are born racist, I believe we have the power to overcome reactive responses. Do you?

Sure, our brains may react and act up in ways that our reflective mind may find upsetting, even horrifying. Through self-awarensss and attention training, by increasing mindfulness skills, our reflective minds can steer. Remember: "The brain puts out the call, the mind decides whether to listen."

"Move From Being a Mindless Lawyer To a Mindful Lawyer"

This article was originally published in The Complete Lawyer which is no longer in existence. I am therefore posting it here, exactly as it appeared in The Complete Lawyer last year.

"Move From Being a Mindless Lawyer To a Mindful Lawyer"

Lawyers who meditate sharpen their practices

By Stephanie West Allen, JD

This is the first of a three-part series on mindful lawyers.

Suppose you could increase your ability to prioritize and manage tasks and goals, focus on specific information and stay alert to the environment.

Would you be a better lawyer? If you said yes, you’re in luck. There’s a certain practice, written about in the mainstream media and law reviews, that can allow you to do so and is easy to master.

One Supreme Court Justice employs this practice twice a day. In classrooms of law schools, and conference rooms and offices of law firms large and small, both budding and senior lawyers are engaging in this practice in growing numbers. What is this practice that seems to be reaching the tipping point among legal practitioners of all stripes?

Meditation.

Change Your Brain Chemistry Through Meditation

Meditation not only increases attention, enabling you to prioritize,

Attention choreography: Revisiting the key role of attention in conflict resolution (and just about everything else you do)

I sometimes say the role of the mediator is attention choreographer or attention conductor. Where people are putting their attention is going to powerfully influence the conflict, and any resolution. Attention is key.

To help with attending to attention, I point out to you excerpts from two different books. The first is from the book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. From the excerpt:

If you could look backward at your years thus far, you’d see that your life—what you’ve confidently called “reality”—has been fashioned from what you’ve paid attention to. You’d also be struck by the fact that if you had paid attention to other things, your reality and your life would be very different.

Attention has created the experience and the self stored in your memory; looking ahead, what you focus on will create the life and person yet to be. Psychology has mostly examined our pasts to explain and improve our lives. If you think in terms of the present and future instead, you might encounter an intuition lurking in your mind, as it was in mine: If you could just stay focused on the right things, your life would stop feeling like a reaction to stuff that happens to you and become something that you create—not a series of accidents, but a work of art.

Click to read the rest of the excerpt (Utne Reader).

The second excerpt is from the book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. From the excerpt:

Can attention be trained? To [Alan] Wallace, who has

Talk by Richard Davidson: Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain

Click to watch this talk given by Richard Davidson at Google. From YouTube:

In this talk, Richard J. Davidson will explore recent scientific research on the neuroscience of positive human qualities and how they can be cultivated through contemplative practice. Distinctions among different forms of contemplative practices will be introduced and they will be shown to have different neural and behavioral consequences, as well as important consequences for physical health in both long-term and novice practitioners. New research also shows that meditation-based interventions delivered online can produce behavioral and neural changes. Collectively, this body of research indicates that we can cultivate adaptive neural changes and strengthen positive human qualities through systematic mental practice.

Retreat: "Zen Brain: The Self and Selflessness in Neuroscience, Buddhism, and Philosophy" (plus some neuroscience articles)

From the Upaya Web page for the retreat:

Buddhist practice involves the cultivation of the realization of selflessness and interdependence and, as well, powerful insights into how we create the illusion of a separate and unchanging self. In recent years, philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience have contributed new and important perspectives on these core teachings of Buddhism.  In this retreat, prominent scientists and scholars will explore Buddhist, philosophic, and neuroscientific perspectives on the self and selfless, and the implications of these areas for Zen practice. We as well will look at how we apply the research in neuroscience in the areas of identity, causality, and mental function.  Talks, discussions, and explorations with participants are embedded within Zazen practice throughout each day.

Some of the links found at the Web page (all pdf):

• Suggested reading list
• "Metamemory Experiments in Neurological Populations: A Review" (Neuropsychology Review)
• "Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation" (Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
• "Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation" (Psychosomatic Medicine)
• "Attending to the present: mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference" (SCAN)

Details about the instructors are found at the Web page. Their names and topics:

Upcoming conference has several workshops that will likely be of interest to mediators

Looks like an excellent conference next July in Vancouver. Some of the presentations being given at Brain Development & Learning: Making Sense of the Science:

• “The Human Mind and the Social World: Implicit Biases are Learned and can be Unlearned” - Mahzarin Banaji, PhD
• “Thinking Across Cultures: What’s Variable, What’s Universal, and Implications for a Culturally Diverse World” - Ara Norenzayan, PhD
• “Optimizing instruction: How we learn versus how we think we learn” - Robert Bjork, PhD
• “Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Love: Implications for Mental Health and Mental Illness” - Sue Carter, PhD
• “Creativity and Flow: Making Life and Learning more Enjoyable” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD
• “The Challenges of Intergroup Interaction: Enhancing Trust for Better Intergroup Relations” - John (Jack) Dovidio, PhD
• “Mindfulness-based Stress and Pain Reduction (MBSR)” - Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD