Eps 154: Dr. Dan Siegel Discussing the Science of Being Present

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, my friends, yes, a place to be inspired, informed and hopefully entertained on the parenting journey, I'm your host. Casey arordi, parent coach, positive discipline trainer, and even more importantly, mother to two children who teach me every single day about how to practice showing up in a way that is helpful, connected and humble, who also point out when I am not showing up that way, when we choose into joyful courage, we are choosing into rejoicing in the opportunities for self growth and discovery that exist on the parenting journey. Yes, I did say rejoicing in those opportunities, and it's work, but so worth it. The path we are searching for is in our practice. Super grateful you're here to practice with me. Thank you so much for being a part of the community. Enjoy the show. Welcome listeners. My guest today is Dr Dan Siegel. Dan is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co director of the mindful awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is also the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, which focuses on the development of Mindsight teaches insight, empathy and integration in individuals, families and communities. Dr Siegel has published extensively for both the professional and the lay audiences, we, by the way, are the lay audiences. His New York Times bestsellers are mind a journey to the heart of being human. Brainstorm the power and purpose of the teenage brain and three books with joyful courage. Podcast favorite, Tina Payne Bryson, the whole brain child, no drama, discipline and the yes brain. You all have heard me talk a lot about how Dr Siegel's work influences me and my work with parents, and he is on today to tell us about his new book, aware, the science and practice of presence. I am so excited to have him on the show. Welcome Dan. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Dan Siegel 2:21
Well, great to be here with you. Casey. It's an honor, yay. Well,

Casey O'Roarty 2:25
please share with the listeners a little bit about how you found yourself doing what you do.

Dr. Dan Siegel 2:29
Well, you know, I'm a person on the planet and a father of two kids. We're now in their 20s, and also, you know, I went through medical school, and initially pediatrics, and then psychiatry, and then I became a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and then an attachment researcher, and all that journey, I started both practicing being a parent as a dad, but also professionally, you know, being interested in How to help the parents I was working with bring optimal parenting to their own experiences with their kids. And then, as a scientist, I really wanted to know kind of, what's the grounding and research for what optimizes a child's development. So putting all that stuff together led to me combining all the fields of science into one framework. Has a fancy name, called interpersonal meaning, what happens between us, the inter and the personal, what happens within us. Neurobiology, so the sciences of all sorts of things, including what happens in the brain. And that field then allowed me to articulate for researchers, you know, way of thinking about what development is all about, and for my patients, how to help support them the best I could. And then, as a parent, for us in our parenting, to really think about what's the science behind what we know about effective parenting that helps children thrive, and that's kind of where the journey brought me, the idea of presence, and this last book, The Wheel of awareness, which helps you develop that presence. So for parents, it would be basically what the science says is the most important gift we can give to our kids is showing up with our mental presence, not just physically being present, but to have this state of awareness, of being receptive and open to who they actually are.

Casey O'Roarty 4:28
You know, I have to tell you that one of the first times that I saw you speak, you were talking about, you were here talking about brainstorm, I believe, and at the Q and A a woman got up to the mic and said, Okay, so, you know, what do you what do I do when I walk into the kitchen and my teenagers are being really short and disrespectful to me, you know, what are the practical things that I need to be doing with them? And this is when I decided, like, I love Dan Siegel. Is because you said. Well, you know, you're probably not going to like my answer, but really it's about, what are you going to do for yourself? So, you know, and I'm paraphrasing something like, so that you can be with their behavior in a way that's helpful for them. And that's and I was just, you're right. So excited by that response and and so grateful that while that what you found in your work, that you you connect so much to the mindfulness work that we as humans are, you know, are invited into practicing. And you really, you know, I'm really appreciative because your books, that the ones that you write for parents, the lay people take what we teach in positive discipline and really support it with science and the whole brain child comes up at nearly every training that I lead, that I lead with parents and and really that idea that it this is all This journey towards self regulation, both for our children, but also for us. And I say to my clients and my listeners, you know, our children are here to teach and grow us, and I think we don't even realize self right, what self regulation is until we step into the journey of parenting. And I'm wondering, was that what led you to writing a book about presence.

Dr. Dan Siegel 6:22
You know, it's exactly kind of how you're describing it is. I think the journey of being a parent myself really got me to really deeply experience how important it is for our kids that we do our own internal work. You know, I think when Mary Hartzell and I, my daughter's preschool director, wrote Parenting from the inside out based on the science of a textbook I wrote called The developing mind, it was to say, you know, how can you develop a coherent understanding of what happened to you when you were a kid? And that's called a coherent narrative, and that's what that book is all about. Aware. This book about presence, really would help a parent say, Okay, what do I do with my experience of just being aware, beyond even just making sense of my past? What do I do with my present? And so this book is A Practical Guide to saying, Well, what do we know about the science of that? And so what I do is I walk the reader step by step as if they knew absolutely nothing to start with about the science of the mind or, you know, the brain, or relationships, or anything like that. So it's definitely a book you can start with if you haven't read any of the other books, and then it takes you on a journey to practicing this reflective practice that I've been doing for decades now. You know that I did systematically with 10,000 people and recorded the results of those people who took a microphone and said, is what I experienced. So this practice is called the wheel of awareness, and it's really quite simple. It's a drawing. In fact, my daughter, who's now in her 20s, is a wonderful illustrator, and she did the drawings for the book she was able to really show in these beautiful drawings about how we all can visualize the mind as a wheel, where the center of the wheel, the hub, represents the knowing of being aware. So if I say to you, you know Casey, hello, did you know that I said Casey? Hello?

Casey O'Roarty 8:31
Yes, I heard you say it. Yes, yes.

Dr. Dan Siegel 8:34
But how do you know you've heard me?

Casey O'Roarty 8:38
Because I have a relationship with language. I don't know how I know that I heard you. I just know that I heard you

Dr. Dan Siegel 8:44
exactly. So that phrase I just know is what awareness is. You were aware that I said hello, that it's the it's what's called a prime you can't go any deeper than that. It's, it's a basic subjective experience of the mind to know I said hello, then you have not only the knowing, you have the known. Now, in this case, the known was Hello. I could say ocean, and now the known would be ocean, but the awareness would be the same. That is, you'd have the knowing experience of the known, whether it's ocean or Hello. So anyway, when you look at it that way, it's amazingly empowering and quite simple to say, let's integrate consciousness. And what that means is, integration is when you differentiate stuff, when you make them different or distinguished, and then you link them or connect them. So, you know, with the whole brain child, you know, the whole thing is about integration, or parenting from the inside out, it's all about integration. The idea here in awareness is we can differentiate the knowing, and let's put it in the hub of a wheel and the knowns and put them on the rim. And when you do that, then let's say you're interacting with your child and you're getting upset with what's going on, and you're filled with. Tension in your muscles, and your jaw is tight, and you're breathing fast, your heart is pounding, and all that stuff is going on, and, you know, it takes you over, and it's as if you had like, a small espresso cup size awareness in the hub and this tablespoon of salt of a challenge in life, your your your child won't go to school, or she's saying she doesn't like to do her homework, or whatever the issue is, your muscles get all tense. That's like this tablespoon of salt that life is giving out to you at that moment. If your awareness, your hub is small, like the size of an espresso cup. If we put a tablespoon of salt in that espresso cup of water Casey, what would it taste like? Salt. It would taste salty, salty to actually drink, yeah, and you'd be flooded with the saltiness of it all and overwhelmed. Yes. What if we could give you a way, and that's what the wheel of warnings practice is to expand the size of your awareness, the size of your hub to be 100 gallons. And now life dishes out with you, the same dish out to you the same, you know, tablespoon of salt and we throw it in now, 100 gallons of water of awareness. What would that taste like if we stirred it up and then you sipped it?

Casey O'Roarty 11:16
Yeah, we probably wouldn't even taste it. You wouldn't even taste it. It would be fresh

Dr. Dan Siegel 11:21
water and you could drink you would stay well hydrated as you were dealing with the challenges of life. If you've learned to expand awareness. That's what aware is all about. It's what the wheel of awareness practice that I teach in the book teaches parents or anyone how to do, to the point where it turns out that it builds on three pillars of strengthening your mind. And it turns out when you look at the research on those three pillars, usually they're done separately, but in the wheel, it turns out they're on one practice. When you look at those three pillars, they do all sorts of amazing things. And I'll say what the science shows. And if this wasn't published in the most rigorous peer reviewed scientific journals that we have, I would say, Oh, come on, this can't be true. But you know, the colleagues who've shown this that I know are rigorous researchers. These journals are incredibly hard to get past their review process. But here's what it shows when you develop the presence of that 100 gallon size awareness. When you develop this capacity to be receptively aware, which is what presence is, you improve the way your immune system functions. You reduce stress hormone levels. You optimize how your cardiovascular system is functioning, including lowering cholesterol. You actually reduce inflammation by altering these molecules that sit on top of the DNA of your genes called epigenetic regulators to reduce inflammation, and there's an enzyme called telomerase that repairs and maintains the caps on your chromosomes that protect the integrity of your DNA. And as we get older and as we get stressed, these caps get whittled down. And as they get whittled down, the cells get sick and die, and we get sick and die so presence, it turns out, optimizes the enzyme telomerase that repairs the ends of the chromosomes, so that, as Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize for this and her colleague Alyssa Epple, have written in their beautiful book The Telomere Effect, that when you develop this mental presence, you actually optimize telomerase levels. And when Alyssa was Alyssa Epple was reviewing my book to consider writing an endorsement. She wrote back to me after she finished the book and said, Dan, have you sent it to the printer yet? I said, Well, actually, no, it's not quite at the printer. Why? What's up? She goes, Well, I wanted to make a suggestion. I said, Oh, my God, some big change. I go. What's the suggestion? She goes, everything you say is accurate. I said, Oh, that's good. She says, but you've left one thing out. I said, What did I leave out? She goes, you should say that being present in your mind slows the aging process. Wow. And I said, you're kidding, and this is like the world's expert in the aging process. I said, Can I really say that? She said, not only can you say it, you should say it, you should let your reader know the truth. That's what we've shown. So it also slows aging. So but if you would have said this 20 years ago, I'd say, Oh, come on, Casey, this is ridiculous. That's just two way out there. This is what has been shown. So what's so exciting about the book, aware is I tried to make it really straightforward. Here's here are the findings. You have a choice. It doesn't cost anything. There's no money. You don't have to buy gadgets. You can learn to develop presence in your life. It'll create these positive physiological changes in you. Many research studies show that it. Will also grow fibers in your brain that are called integrated fibers that link the widely separated areas to each other. So you your brain becomes more resilient, basically more integrated. And the studies of well being show that an integrated brain, which this practice can create through these three pillar trainings, you

it will be, it is, in fact, the highest correlation in the brain with well being. So it will be a brain aspect of what this practice can do for you that creates more well being in your life. That's just for you. We talk about your relationship with your child, and what the studies show about that kind of presence, and what it does for attachment, it'll allow your child to have the four S's that we can talk about of attachment that are associated with your child, having the optimal kind of growth that you can provide in terms of attachment relationships.

Casey O'Roarty 16:00
So it's self care on fire, and I just, I love all of this because, you know, we call it parenting, but really it's humaning, right? It's human relationships and relationship with ourself and overall health and well being. I mean, yes, we have a choice, but how can, I mean, it's really not a choice people, right? I mean, if we're here to grow and develop as human beings and spiritual beings, you know the practice, practice that you're talking about is, why wouldn't everybody be a big old yes to it, right? So when you talk about presence, can you kind of tease that out and define what you mean by presence?

Dr. Dan Siegel 16:46
Yes. So presence would be a state of receptive awareness. So let's I'll give you an example. Let's say you're a parent. You know, when your child comes to you, you know, she's 11, and she really wants to go, you know, join the the soccer team, but you had these visions for her, you know, being a singer and a dancer and being in theater, because it's something you always wanted to do. And so you go, Well, you know, the soccer team, I don't know. You know, the practice times are not so good, you know, the rehearsal times for the dance team now those working with our schedule, and that's all fine. I mean that the dance team, the dance team, you know, then you could take singing lessons, and your child goes, well, I really want to play soccer. And you go, yeah, you know, but you love singing, you know? You just go on and on. So there's nothing wrong with having ideas for your child, but when it prevents you from being present, you've got this filter that's not allowing you to see your child's passion for soccer, for athletics. So that would be an example where your body is physically there. You could be at home all the time and physically available, but you're not mentally present. Because here's what research suggests is happening, and not just this, with this one interaction about requesting soccer versus, you know, theater, but in general, our children learn who they are through the authentic ways. We receive their signals, make sense of those signals and respond to them in a timely and effective way. And so when a child comes with us with a passion they have and we quickly try to reroute them to something else we're not reflecting to them in our response to them an authentic way that we've received who they are, and if this has been happening since the child was a baby, then you can only imagine the not clear sense of self that that child has when the parent has not been present. Because when you're present, you're seeing a child and other people clearly. When you're filled with these filters, you're distorting what's happening, or you're distracted, and in any of those ways, in very different kinds of ways, a child isn't seen authentically, and then they don't get to know themselves in an authentic way either.

Casey O'Roarty 19:15
I appreciate that, and I'm I have a 15 year old daughter who is really good at letting me know when I'm getting it wrong, as they do. And so I get to instead of beating myself up, because sometimes when she calls me out, it's really easy to be like, Oh, I'm doing everything wrong. But instead, I choose to think, Wow, I'm so grateful that we have an environment where she knows that she can point that kind of thing out to me. That's how I help myself get through it. But I love, you know, your example, you know, of the soccer and the dance, that's kind of an obvious, more obvious one. I think that there's a lot of times that we can miss those authentic research. Deceiving moments, especially when our kids, you know, when they're exploring or saying things that just in our adult mind would don't make sense to us. We've been having a lot of conversation at our house, just around kind of spiritual beliefs, and my daughter was real quick. You know, she right now, everything is not, you know, it's not us. It's the opposite of everything we think. And one of the things that she said to me yesterday was, well, I would tell you what I believe, but you're just going to tell me that I'm wrong. And so it was this great opportunity for me to recognize, wow, do I do that? And when do I do that? And how can I start doing something different? And I'm grateful that she's able to be so clear with me, while also like, Ah, wow. And so I'm coming back to that little cup right versus the 100 gallon container, and I'm wondering if, because we talk about in positive discipline, we talk a lot about, well, what's the belief behind the behavior? And in those hot moments with our kids, it's hard to remember not to focus on the tip of the iceberg, but to really pay attention to what's happening under the surface here, and how can I meet my child there, versus, you know, wanting to squash the annoying behavior. And so when I think about a larger container, a bigger wheel of awareness, a larger hub that also creates space for remembering that it's not necessarily about the behavior that's being presented, there's always something deeper going on. So is that kind of a part of this whole practice is increasing the hub so that we can, you know, see our kids for where they're at, and meet them there, and kind of do our own self regulation so that we're not flying off the handle because we've been triggered and our emotions are taking over. Is that kind of what the hub is about is that space Exactly.

Dr. Dan Siegel 22:02
That's exactly what the space is, okay? It gives you, you know, this state of receptivity, of openness that really allows you to have, with 100 gallon analogy in mind, you know, the ability to take in anything that comes in, right? Yeah, and you know, so if you think about the rim points as anything, you can be aware of, like me saying Casey or Hello, or, you know, in this case, the parent hearing the child wants to do soccer. You know, when you're lost on the rim, and you're aware of what's going on, but you're lost there. It's like you have that small espresso cup size, but when you have this expanded hub, it means you take in the wide expanse of the whole rim. So okay, so you say, I'm hearing my child be interested in soccer. I'm also aware in the rim there's my dream that I wanted to be a singer and I wanted to be in theater, and now there's a dream that I want my daughter to be in theater and be a singer. Oh, well, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? Yeah, she wants to do soccer. I would rather her do singing. I'm also aware of the memory that I wished I was a singer. Oh, I see I may be laying my stuff on her. Maybe that's not a good thing to do. Now, she may love theater, but she can't do it to make up for what I didn't do. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 23:22
yeah. So with my daughter, it would be okay. I'm hearing her giving me feedback around how I'm showing up for her, I know my own experiences of being criticized growing up, and I can and I also have tools for this, like I know how to respond differently for her. Those are all things on the rim, and because my hub is expanded, I can be with all of that instead of that's not, you know, instead of the other response, which is, that's not true, I don't criticize you. Am I onto something here? Okay, so that spaciousness

Dr. Dan Siegel 23:54
is really a way you strengthen your own mind, to strengthen the relationship you have with your child, really, because this is where presence is such an awesome thing to know about, number one, and then to see the steps to cultivate it. Number two, you know, as a scientist, I'm also interested in like, wow. Like, what's the science of all that? So in the AWARE book, you get the practice, and then you also get the backup of the science. If that's something that's interesting to you, you don't have to get into that at all, but if you want to, it's all there. And what's so fascinating about the science is, when you as a parent, cultivate presence, it's a win. Win. Win thing. One win is, as we've mentioned, it improves your physiology and your health has you age more slowly. That's amazing. Number two, from an attachment research point of view, it's the number one thing you can do to be present in these ways of being receptively aware, so you can take in your child's signals and then make sense of what's going on in their mind. Mind. I call that mind site, where you're seeing the mind beneath your child's behavior, and that's what research shows children really need from us. So that's the second win. And the third win is that as you actually offer this way of seeing your child, so clearly, you're being a role model for your child on how to really be resilient in life. And it's a way, it's not a fact they're learning. It's an experience of connection that they're immersed in with you. And that's the third win, as they go off, you know, and listen, the days can be long, but the years are really short. You are out in the world, and, you know, I remember the transition especially was so painful, because, you know, you love your kids, and you love having around as challenging as it is, and then they launch off into the world. And when you see that they've taken this immersion and presence that you've offered as you know, difficult and challenging as it can be, you know, to really be wide awake and to be receptive and to be open to what's going on is a lot, in many ways, more filled with just allowing connection to happen, rather than trying to control everything. Because parents who try to control everything, of course, have this, you know, it's called authoritarian stance, where they say, I'm going to determine everything that happens my child. And you can understand on one level, okay, well, this parent means well, and so they have a specific set of things in their mind for how to control all those things. And if a parent who's like that is listening, they're going to say, That's right, absolutely. But when you look at the research on what child development requires, it isn't authoritarian parenting, it's authoritative, and there's a big difference between those two. Authoritarian is, if you were my daughter, Casey, I'd say, here's the truth. I don't really care about your point of view or your feelings. This is the way it is. That's authoritarian. Authoritative would be saying, you know, something, communication is very important. So we're going to have dinners together. So we can have a meal together. Have time together, look at each other face to face, put our phones away, and we're going to connect with each other what's on your mind that's authoritative, right? Yeah, this family has structure. We have principles, and we're going to have relationships that are respectful, compassionate and curious about what's going on inside the other person's subjective experience. But at that table, I don't say to you, Casey, you know, I only want to hear you saying exactly what I have in mind for you to say, you know, I want to say what's on your mind. And then the station deepens and widens. But we have the conversation, you know, rather than the other extreme, of course, is laissez faire parenting, where you just say, hey, you know, I don't really believe any of this science, or I don't believe any of this anything. I'm just gonna not have any rules and not do anything. Some people call it permissive parenting and whatever. We don't have to have meals together. We don't have conversation together. You want to be on your phone, that's fine. You can be on your your video games, you know, 10 hours a day, that's fine. I'm sure it'll all work out. Actually. No, it doesn't work out, your children need structure. Yeah, they need structure. And so children who don't have structure, you know, have all sorts of other things during early the early years that take over that aren't so good. They have a hard time regulating themselves, for example. And then when they get older, in adolescence, they haven't been given the foundation of structure to know how to contain a lot of the big changes that happen in there as their brain is remodeling. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 28:47
you know, I had to open up. My husband just read brainstorm, yay. He really appreciated it. And I had to open up my positive discipline for teenagers. Book early. My daughter just finished her freshman year of high school, and I was really appreciating the pic. There was a paragraph, I think you'll like this too, that says, Do kids raised with positive discipline, which is authoritative, a model of authoritative parenting, as best as the user is, you know, practicing it. Do kids raise with positive discipline rebel as teenagers? And the very first sentence is, well, yes, you can't interrupt brain development. Like brain development still happens. Like adolescent brain development is still going to happen. And so, you know, there's a variety of different ways that kids choose into rebellion, but that was really comforting to remember that, okay, yeah, there's, there's brain development happening here. There's science here that I can lean on and actually made me feel freer as a parent, versus like, oh my gosh, what's happening, although I do have those moments

Dr. Dan Siegel 29:48
too. Yeah, exactly. And it can be, listen, parenting is probably the hardest job in the world. And I think the reason, you know, I take the time to think deeply about. These topics, and not only, you know, understand the science of them. And so I can do well and as a therapist, but the reason I write the books is that, you know, this information is transformational, you know. And so you really want to help we want to help each other. So if the science can be translated in a way that's really honest with the science, but really practical for the user, the reader, the parent, then that's a real joy to be a part of that conversation.

Casey O'Roarty 30:36
Hey, listeners popping in for just a minute to let you know that the joyful courage 10 is coming back around, just in time for the transition into fall. The JC 10 is a 10 day deep dive into growing our practice of being ever more intentional in our parenting. Each day, you will enjoy a Facebook Live with me, prompts to encourage your learning and an active community of parents walking the path with you. People love the joyful courage 10 and experience profound shifts in their experience of parenting and humaning through their participation. If you are interested in 10 days of intentional visioning, 10 days of mindful mindset shifting, 10 days of strategic tools for your parenting journey. Sign up today. Go to www, dot, joyful courage.com/jc, 10 that's www, dot, joyful courage.com/jc. 10. Now, back to the interview. Yeah, so when you work with people who show up and their practice is reactive versus receptively aware, what are some practices that you encourage your clients and your readers to engage in so as to grow that hub from the tiny espresso shot glass into something that's more spacious and open. Yeah,

Dr. Dan Siegel 32:14
exactly. Well, in a where, you know, I talk about an actual person, I've changed her name to Mona, you know, who has that exact challenge in front of her? You know, she's got three young kids, and she's really having a difficult time, you know, in part, just because she doesn't have much support from her partner or, you know, any neighbors or family members around and you know, we really were meant in terms of our evolution, to have this thing called Aloe parenting, where we share the caregiving of children. I mean, that's the village, the village and, you know, and there's only a select few other village members, but there's a village so modern times, you know, are really stressful for for contemporary parents, because we've lost that village. We've lost the family support. People are so mobile, and they're going here, going there, and anyway, so that, just by itself, is kind of living in a very stressful, unsupportive environment for young parents. So that's that's the first thing she and I talked about, Mona and I, but the next thing to say was, Okay, let's try to work on that the best we can. But how do you work, literally from the inside out, to understand what she would be, flipping her lid a lot and going into a rage? You know what that rage is all about, what the flipping your lid is all about? So we went over the hand while the brain, we started the wheel of awareness practice. Because what the practice does in a very straightforward way that's accessible, basically to anyone who tries it is it distinguishes the hub from the rim.

And as you do the simple practice of and I do the wheel awareness every day, you know you just resting in the hub and then sending this metaphoric spoke of attention out to the first segment of the rim, which is your first five senses, what you hear, see, smell, taste and touch. You. Then move the spoke over the second segment, and you explore the internal signals of the body, the sensations of muscles and bones and the organs like the intestines and heart, and then you move the spoke over. And it's all done slowly and systematically. You move the spoke over to the third segment of the rim, which represents knowns like emotions or memories or thoughts or ideas, hopes, dreams, longings, desires, all those we can just call mental activities. And then you move the spoke over to the fourth and final segment of the rim, which is your sense of connection to other people, to the larger planet, you know. And there's even a more advanced stage, where you bend the spoke around, or retract the spoke into the hub itself. And so. Explore awareness of awareness, and for Mona to get the visual image that the experience of being aware was distinct from that which she was aware of, even just the image. As we started to learn the idea of the wheel, and then she started to practice it, that idea started to change everything. Because what what people experience when they do the wheel as a practice is that there's a spaciousness of mind called the hub as a metaphor, that there's a whole science description in the book, but you don't need to get into it here. But there's a spaciousness of awareness that can be cultivated so that you go from an espresso cup size to 100 gallon size, and as you do that, there's a tranquility that's there. There's an openness, a receptivity, there's a feeling of joy even, and a feeling of connection that Mona could cultivate. And then even when she'd get lost on the rim and start flipping her lid, she knew there was another thing that she could access. And over time, it became more and more accessible for her to sense when something on the rim was turning into a flipping your lid moment, and she could back off from that. If she did flip her lid, it was easier for to get back into more, what we call an integrated state, where she could be able to connect productively with her kids. And over time, you know, these episodes got less and less, less frequent, less intense, she got back to baseline more readily. And then basically, they kind of stopped generally happening. And of course, any of us who can still happen, but this was her course, so I described her journey in a lot of detail. You get a bit of it in the beginning. You then do the practice yourself. Then you hear the science of it. Then you get deeply into how did this wheel of awareness practice really change? Mona and the others, the other four that I describe in detail? Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 37:00
I love that, and it reminds me of, I'm a trained coach, and the language that we learned in coach training was growing our observer, you know, being an observation of ourselves. And I feel like when I listen to you talk about Mona, you really helped her in developing and growing her observer and having that, you know, or will say, like, what does this look like? I'll say to clients, you know, how can you in the moments where, and I love your hand model. I talk about it all the time. My listeners are very familiar with your hand model of the brain, and really how you know, something that I think is so useful, both for us to be teaching our children, but for us to be learning about ourselves, is the physical experience of being flipped and how it doesn't just show up all of a sudden, that it really there's all sorts of messages and signals that we get from our body and to start to pay Attention. And I guess that's where presence comes in, right to know that you can pay attention to that, and as that experience happens, also being able, I'll say, to take a balcony seat so you see that your child is having a problem. You see that you are becoming triggered, and you see that there's lots of different ways to tweak and shake up what's happening so as to support your child in getting through their problem, but also support yourself and staying calm and available for them. And that is what is coming up for me as I listen to you talk about the hub and you also write about monitoring. I love these two words, monitoring and modifying in the context of developing a stronger mind. Will you talk a little bit about that, about those practices?

Dr. Dan Siegel 38:49
Sure. I mean, this is the fascinating comment to make as we get into monitoring and modifying. It's amazing that the word mind, M, I, N, D, actually doesn't have a definition in essentially any field that deals with the mind, whether it's psychology, which I'm trained in, or psychiatry, which I'm trained in, or the field of philosophy of mind, even says you shouldn't define what the mind is. And it's been said that in academic circles, and I'll say what they say, but I don't think this is the full story that the word mind really is a synonym for brain activity. Brain activity may be related to feelings, thoughts and behavior, is one way people describe it. And Hippocrates said that 2500 years ago, and William James repeated that it basically in 1890 with the Principles of Psychology, the father of modern psychology. And the issue here is, I think the mind can be defined beyond just saying it's brain activity, which, if it's just brain activity, let's drop the word mind and just have the word brain activity. So part of what I've been doing, you know, on the professional side of things, is saying. And, wow, this is fascinating. We have a field of education, of parenting, of psychology, of psychiatry, and all these fields of mental health. You know, philosophy mind. No one's saying what the mind is. Gosh, maybe we should say what the mind is. And so I say what the mind is. I mean, 25 years ago, I kind of offered a definition, and that definition, it's a long story, but the bottom line is, it talks about the mind as this self organizing, emergent process that's both within your whole body. So we say it's an embodied process, but it's also relational, like happening right now, between you and me, Casey, and also between us and anyone listening. The mind emerges relationally. It's in betweenness as well as a within this that happens in your whole body, not just your brain. Now the mind includes subjective experience, the feeling of what happens, your awareness of that. So there's the consciousness piece information processing, like using a computer or a book. You know, that's not necessarily inside your body even, but that's a part of our minds. It's called extended cognition, as well as embodied cognition, but it also includes this other aspect that gets in the monitoring and modifying part, which is when you see the mind as this emergent property of what's called a complex system. What that means by being a self organizing emergent property is that it's regulating something, and the particular thing it's regulating is energy and information flow, and that flow is happening both within your body, including your brain, but not limited by the skull. But it's not even limited by the skin. It's also happening in our relationality with each other. Now once you say something is regulatory, the natural thing to say is, you know, what is a regulatory process? And think about regulating a bicycle. You've got to watch where you're going, so that's the monitoring part. And then you have to modify, you know, you have to pedal, you have to steer, you have to break. So any process that's a regulatory process, like this proposal of a definition of the mind, means that you can tease it apart as having two aspects, monitoring and modifying. Then once you take the bold step and define something, you can then say, Okay, well, I've defined it. Then you can say, what's a healthy mind? And this is also something I've been writing about for about a quarter of a century that says that a healthy mind is a mind that emerges from optimal self organization, which actually comes from integration, the linking of differentiated parts. And when a system is integrated, it flows in harmony. It's flexible and adaptive. When it is not integrated. It's like a river of integration. It goes to one of two banks. It goes to either chaos on one bank, outside of the flow of harmony, or it goes the other bank, which is rigidity. And interestingly, that excludes a lot of parenting challenges. Oh yeah, mine works all these things anyway. That's the basic proposal. So you can strengthen your mind by taking these two components, monitoring, modifying and learning how to stabilize a tripod that holds up a kind of mind, site, lens, the lens to see energy and information flow, and as you stabilize that with openness, objectivity and observation, these three O's of the tripod, what you're doing is you're allowing yourself to see with more focus, depth, detail and clarity. And now it'd be like Casey if you and I were going to a park and we had a, you know, a camera and a phone with us, or whatever, and it was all bumpy, right? We weren't holding it still, and then we came back and uploaded the video, it would be just what it'd be, a blurry mess, right? That's how a lot of people see life. Just so the first thing you want to do is stabilize that camera, stabilize that lens. That's the monitoring part. And then the second part of a strong mind in addition to stabilizing the lens, which you learned how to do in the AWARE book, the second part is modify toward integration. And this is where you know going to the science have been so helpful, because once you say what the science is, then there are natural, practical applications, like, how do I stabilize monitoring? How do I learn to modify toward an integrated state? And that's what the whole aware book is about, and it's what you can learn how to do. And it really empowers you to bring well being, not only into your inner mental life, but your mental life is also in your relationship with your kids, with your partner, with your family, with your friends, with every you know, so you can bring integration into all those relational aspects of your mind.

Casey O'Roarty 44:46
I love that, and I I'm just going to like make I'm going to try to simplify it using one of my favorite tools of yours from another book that you wrote, whole brain child, which is, name it to tame it. So if we were going to use. Who's monitoring and modifying in the context of a child who's dysregulated, having an emotional, dysregulated experience the and just correct me if I'm wrong. So I see monitoring as the parent being in a state of mind to recognize my child is having emotional distress right now and then the modifying piece being okay. So I'm going to validate how they're feeling, put a name to it, and to help them get to a more integrated brain, exactly. So it's that aware, that paying attention, being present to the bigger, larger hub of things going on, versus just, oh my god, we're in the grocery store, and you're freaking out, and I'm freaking out to like, okay, my child is having a problem, and what are the tools that I can use to help myself and my child Exactly.

Dr. Dan Siegel 45:51
That's exactly right. And you know, you are then empowered by strengthening the way you your mind works, by stabilizing, monitoring and always realizing modifying toward integration brings you to health every time. It's quite amazing. Actually, that's what you can do, you know.

Casey O'Roarty 46:09
And tell me the three O's, openness, observation and what was the

Dr. Dan Siegel 46:14
activity like? A thought like, Oh, my daughter should rather be an art, you know, rather than soccer, that's an object of your attention. It's not an absolute aspect of reality, right?

Casey O'Roarty 46:25
Got it? Oh my gosh. I could talk to you all day, but I know that you're a busy guy, and there's so many other pieces to this book. Do you have any other words of wisdom that you would like to leave the listeners with?

Dr. Dan Siegel 46:38
Well, you know, I think the basic message that Casey and I are sharing with you is you have the ability to actually cultivate the presence of mind through these very simple and accessible practices that are going to bring health to your body, slow the aging process, reduce stress, all these positive things and the same exact process, developing the hub of your wheel of awareness presence can actually deeply enrich the way your child is soaking in his or her relationship with you and developing this experience of being seen, of being soothed, of being safe, of being secure, that research shows is exactly what your child needs to optimize how they go out into life, and that's something you're empowered to create. Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 47:36
and I love that you started with every single one of us, every single one of you that are listening to this conversation, there's no one that's left out of this. We all are invited in and are capable of growing in this way. And I really appreciate that message. So as you know, the name of my podcast is joyful courage, and I love to ask each of my guests in the context of what we've been talking about. And for you and I, it's this context of presence and growing our awareness. What does joyful courage mean to you? Dan,

Dr. Dan Siegel 48:09
well, joyful courage to me, means having the presence of mind to dive into this receptive state of awareness, this hub of the wheel to tap into the power of being connected with whatever arises inside of you, this kind of bring it on attitude that's the courage and the joy that arises as you liberate yourself from what a lot of us get imprisoned by, which is, I have to control everything instead with presence, you let things emerge within you, and then you let integration, connecting with your child, for example, in ways that are filled with love and connection that is honoring who your child is honoring yourself to, but then linking together with compassionate, close relationships. That's what I think, joyful courage and courageous joy is all about. Beautiful,

Casey O'Roarty 49:07
beautiful. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about where and when they can get their copy of aware and about the pre order and all that good stuff?

Dr. Dan Siegel 49:16
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you can, if you just go to any site and you can pre order aware, you know that's that's selling books, but you can also do that then come to our website, because we have a bunch of other things. If you pre order that are fun videos and PDFs and stuff that enhance your experience. As you're getting ready for the book to arrive, it gets you kind of primed to dive into the AWARE book. Awesome.

Casey O'Roarty 49:45
And listeners, I will be sure to have the link to Dan's website and that where you can pre order in the show notes. So check it out. Thank you so much for spending time with me. It's

Dr. Dan Siegel 49:57
been a pleasure. Casey, thanks for having me. You. Joy, joyful

Casey O'Roarty 50:03
courage community, you're amazing. Big. Thanks and love to my team, including my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper. Be sure to join in the discussion over at the live in love with joyful courage group page, as well as the joyful courage business page on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts or really, anywhere you find your favorite podcast, you can view the current joyful courage swag over at the web page, intention, cards, bracelets, e course offers the membership program, one on one, coaching. It's all waiting for you to take a look. Simply head to www dot joyful courage.com/yes. That's joyful courage.com/y. E, S, to find more support for your conscious parenting journey. Any comments or feedback about this show or any others can be sent to Casey at joyful courage.com. I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way. Reach out, take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everyone is going to be okay, you.

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