Theodore Usatynski 'Instinctual Intelligence Part 2' Iain & Renata McNay

Summary

Highlights

• Theodore Usatynski discusses how unrefined instincts lock us in trauma and addiction cycles. 🔄
• Traditional psychotherapy often falls short in effecting deep change, unlike trauma-focused body work. 🛋️
• Somatic therapy shows we're all somewhat traumatized and can benefit from body awareness. 🚶‍♂️
• Breath awareness can shift nervous system responses from stress to calm. 😌
• Using animal behavior as a model, we learn to release built-up trauma. 🐻
• A mother's instincts can overcome physical limits during emergencies like a child trapped under a car. 🚗
• Modern technology fuels addiction by capturing our focus and separating us from bodily awareness. 📶
• Meditation connects us with our authentic selves, fostering better personal and community health. 💪
• Dalai Lama exemplifies harmony of instincts and advanced meditation practices. 🕉️

Key Takeaways

• Understand your body's signals to unlock its healing power! 🌟
• Addiction isn't just about substances; it's how we occupy our attention. 📱
• Traditional therapy helps, but body awareness often holds the key to lasting change. 🔑
• Breathing deeply can revolutionize your mental and physical health. Just try it! 🌬️
• Feel the feels! Emotional acknowledgment is crucial for true healing. ❤️
• Instincts can open doors to self-discovery and personal growth when balanced. 🔍
• Meditation can rewire your brain to enhance emotional regulation and executive function. 🧠
• Let's bring mindfulness into everyday life for healthier communities! 🌍
• Instinctual intelligence can help us harmonize technology use in our lives. 🤖

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter introduces a TV interview segment on Conscious TV, hosted by Iain McNay and Renata McNay. They interview Theodore Udinski, affectionately referred to as Ted. The hosts express their enjoyment of Ted's book, highlighting its significance which sets the stage for the conversation.
• 00:30 - 05:30: The Limitations of Traditional Psychotherapy In the chapter titled 'The Limitations of Traditional Psychotherapy', the discussion revolves around the concept of instinctual intelligence—referred to as the primal wisdom of the nervous system—and its role in the evolution of human nature. The talk highlights the constraints of traditional psychotherapy methods when dealing with trauma and addiction. It is emphasized that an unbalanced instinctual nature can trap individuals in cycles of trauma and addiction, thus keeping the personality constricted. This chapter serves as a continuation of a previous interview with Ted, where further exploration into how unbalanced instincts affect personal development and psychological well-being is undertaken.
• 05:30 - 12:00: Somatic Experiencing and Trauma The chapter discusses the role of somatic experiencing in dealing with trauma, highlighting its importance in expanding human potential and understanding one's true self. Traditional psychotherapy is mentioned as not always providing lasting effects, suggesting somatic methods could offer more enduring solutions.
• 12:00 - 16:00: The Polar Bear Theory and Discharge of Trauma This chapter discusses the 'Polar Bear Theory' related to the discharge of trauma and its implications for psychotherapy. The focus is on how individuals often revert to old patterns despite extensive therapeutic work. It highlights the historical evolution of psychotherapy, starting from Freud, emphasizing a century-long journey of therapeutic practices centered around verbal expression and storytelling.
• 16:00 - 20:00: Addiction and Modern Society The chapter discusses the role of analysis and discussion in tackling psychological issues originating from childhood difficulties. Despite the effectiveness of such methods in addressing neurotic symptoms for many individuals, the text highlights a category of people with more intense or traumatic experiences for whom talking about these experiences does not seem to alleviate their psychological distress. The limitations of traditional therapeutic approaches in addressing deep-seated trauma are implied.
• 20:00 - 31:00: The Importance of Bodily Awareness and Breathing This chapter discusses the challenges that individuals face in their day-to-day behavior, particularly those suffering from inhibitions, anxiety, and stress. It highlights the issues veterans encountered after returning from World Wars I and II, including the lack of effective therapeutic interventions during those times. The chapter emphasizes the importance of bodily awareness and breathing as potentially effective solutions, a realization that has only come to prominence in recent decades.
• 31:00 - 40:00: The Intersection of Spiritual Practices and Neuroscience The chapter discusses the development of trauma as a specialized field within psychotherapy over the last 10 to 15 years. It highlights the role of scientific research in improving the understanding of the nervous system, identifying dysfunctions within it, and restoring its healthy functionalities. The chapter also references collaborations or influences related to notable figures in the field, specifically Peter LaVine and Pat (likely referencing Pat Ogden or Pat a similar name prominent in the field).
• 40:00 - 47:00: Advanced Meditation Practices The chapter discusses advancements in meditation practices with a focus on somatic experiencing work. It highlights that while some people have evident traumatic experiences, trauma in its various forms influences almost everyone to some degree. This unresolved trauma impacts personal development and restricts growth by influencing the nervous system.
• 47:00 - 59:00: The Application and Future of Spiritual Practices in Modern Society This chapter explores how spiritual practices can adapt within modern society to address the consequences of living non-optimally or experiencing trauma. It highlights the contrast between natural healthy instincts and the often unrealistic cognitive responses that individuals develop when facing current environmental challenges. The discussion considers how spiritual practices could potentially offer pathways to recalibrate emotions and cognitive patterns to enhance well-being in a rapidly changing world.
• 59:00 - 80:00: Meditation Practice Introduction The chapter titled 'Meditation Practice Introduction' begins with a discussion on the natural vibrancy and health that is considered the birthright of human beings. It delves into the speaker's personal experience with recognizing and addressing trauma. A few months ago, the speaker realized a deep-seated intention to identify and understand whether there was an unrecognized trauma being held within their body. This chapter explores the awareness and identification of such trauma and the subsequent insights gained from this self-exploration.
• 80:00 - 96:00: Dalai Lama and the Potential of Meditation The chapter explores the potential of meditation in addressing trauma and how the body can reveal underlying issues when guided by a therapist.
• 96:00 - 124:00: The Brain's Structure and Its Role in Emotional Regulation This chapter delves into the intricacies of the brain's structure and its influence on emotional regulation. It highlights a personal experience where an individual, guided by a therapist, learns to understand and identify emotional and physiological responses through specific exercises. The narrative suggests a profound connection between physical sensations and emotional processing, illustrating the journey of recognizing and 'discharging' or releasing these feelings. The chapter underscores the therapeutic process involved in comprehending how emotions manifest in the body, and the subsequent relief or breakthrough one might achieve through such understanding.
• 124:00 - 144:00: Practices of Tibetan Buddhism In this chapter on "Practices of Tibetan Buddhism," the focus is on the body's intelligence, emphasizing the importance of bringing awareness to bodily sensations. The dialogue shifts towards acknowledging how traditional psychotherapy often prioritizes thoughts and emotions, but may overlook the body's messages. The conversation touches on how tuning into the body can lead to transformative insights, highlighting a contrast between conventional psychotherapy and what can be learned from Tibetan Buddhist practices.
• 144:00 - 148:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts The chapter discusses a growing movement in therapy over the past 10 to 15 years that emphasizes understanding and interpreting the nonverbal wisdom of the body. Therapists are being trained to recognize and understand the physical expressions and conditions of their clients. This approach also involves learning to ask the right questions that guide clients towards a deeper connection with their embodied experiences. The focus is on helping clients articulate and land in their natural, physical experiences as a crucial aspect of healing and understanding.

Theodore Usatynski 'Instinctual Intelligence Part 2' Iain & Renata McNay Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello welcome to conscious TV I'm I McNay and I have with me Renata MCN hello on my left and we're both going to interview Theodore udinski um who we're going to call Ted because the was a bit of a mouthful and uh Ted has written um a book which we both really enjoyed called
• 00:30 - 01:00 give you the full title instinctual intelligence the Primal wisdom of the nervous system and the evolution of human nature and this is kind of a part two we've just done one interview with Ted and this time we're going to go more into how the instincts if they're not evolved if they're not balanced can hold us in trauma and addiction which keeps the personality really tight and in
• 01:00 - 01:30 contracted and that in itself doesn't give us the potential to live our human life as we could and also limits Us in how we see the bigger picture of who we really are so um Ted one thing that interested me from the notes that you gave me um and we've covered some of this in the first interview but you were saying that standard forms of psychotherapy did not always you found did not always last
• 01:30 - 02:00 have lasting change that people would have Psychotherapy do lots of work and yet they'd revert back to their old patterns and their old use of the instincts just explain what you meant by that well if we look at the history of uh Psychotherapy over the course of say beginning with Freud and over the uh last 100 years or so even more now that uh many of the forms of therapy about talking you know the person telling the
• 02:00 - 02:30 the the the analyst about their problems or difficulties in childhood and so on was very helpful in alleviating many of the neurotic symptoms that they were suffering from but there was a whole class of people who had different types of what we'll say more intense or more now we use the word traumatic experiences that didn't seem to be helpful to really uh talk about it or understand um people could consciously acknowledge it but it didn't seem to make a difference
• 02:30 - 03:00 in their day-to-day Behavior they had the same kind of uh either uh inhibitions or anxiety stress and so on they really have a hard time functioning um even at the most basic levels in their life and especially as we discuss people coming back from War World War I World War II uh they really did not know how to help those people with any uh significant forms of therapy and it's only in the last say
• 03:00 - 03:30 10 15 years that uh this uh scientific research on trauma and the development of it as a field a specialty within Psychotherapy that has really begun to help people understand what's going on in their nervous system how it became uh dysfunctional and how it can be uh restored to its normal healthy functioning I I know that you did um some work with both Peter LaVine and Pat
• 03:30 - 04:00 hogden which is the somatic experiencing work which is very much for working with trauma but the interesting thing that I find more and more is that we're all traumatized and it's okay certain people have the extremes that are obvious but in our own way we've all had some trauma that is unresolved somehow which is restrictive in our development yeah you could say that any anything that uh impacted and influenced the nervous
• 04:00 - 04:30 system to function in a less than optimal way we could we could say is a traumatic experience it's a nonoptimal experience for the human being that forces the Natural Healthy vibrancy of our instincts our emotions and our cognitive patterns to go to function in ways that are not um realistic or adaptive to the the current environment so that's a good way of of characterizing it almost that we've all been had experiences that have somehow
• 04:30 - 05:00 uh limited the natural vibrancy and health that uh that is the kind of the birthright of a of a human being uh what was so interesting for me in my own experience um which I had a few months ago I had this feeling I want to know if there is a trauma in my body I'm holding some kind of trauma I wasn't aware of a trauma and uh I called this trauma
• 05:00 - 05:30 therapist and I said you know I don't know if I have a trauma I just feel interested in finding out and she said if there is a trauma in your body the body will show us and it was so fascinating because she just said just stay with your body what do you feel and then you know I started feeling certain things and then I would talk about it
• 05:30 - 06:00 and um and with certain things then I had a few session with certain things I got a picture of what it was related to but certain things I didn't get a picture and then I actually experienced with her guidance how my body started to discharge was it's just wonderful how to experience how it is in the body and the
• 06:00 - 06:30 intelligence of the body once you bring your awareness and you allow it it will tell you or it will tell us what's going on that sounds really beautiful actually you can see it had a change for you yeah and I think that was missing in the in the old type of psychotherapy right it was more about what you're um thinking or even about what you're feeling but not so much the
• 06:30 - 07:00 uh kind of nonverbal wisdom of the body that might not be articulated in words and that's been the movement in the in the past uh 15 to 10 years really training uh therapists about how to look at the body uh understand what's going on in the other person and also ask learn to write the ask qu the right questions to really help them uh land in their embodied experience so that as you said that beautifully the natural
• 07:00 - 07:30 healing process of the body can start to um come to uh it's it's Express itself naturally without the inhibition of our minds and the doubts and fears that we might have about it yeah you talk about in the book about how emotionally intense experiences can send the nervous system into a shock so what's basically happening as I understand it is every time something happens that is outside our comfort zone somewhere that's Reg registering in the body it's kind of
• 07:30 - 08:00 somewhere the body's Contracting and and that and that shock is somewhere in US it might be a fairly major thing it might be quite a minor thing and and and and a little bit I know about the uh the sematic work the trauma work is that actually there's there's a there's a a process that animals go through like a release process that we as human beings are not used to doing can you just talk us through how that works you call it the polar bear experience in your
• 08:00 - 08:30 that was uh one of Peter lavine's great insights one of the an American researcher and therapist who uh was really quite brilliant and I think in many ways is kind of responsible for the whole shift in our understanding of um treatment of trauma he was watching a film one day about a polar bear that was uh captured in the Arctic for a um scientific study and they kind of shot it with some kind of um tranquilizing uh substance and it kind of fell over a sleep and then they manipulated and they
• 08:30 - 09:00 were testing inside its mouth and doing all these things and then finally it started to the tranquilizer wore off and it started to wake up and they all ran away CU this is a large dangerous animal and the polar bear promptly kind of stood up sat there for me you could see it was like disoriented and then just started shaking and shaking and shaking for 2 three minutes just vigorously and now it stopped and it just started walking as if nothing had happened
• 09:00 - 09:30 so he saw that as a a natural uh capacity of that many animals have to uh kind of shake off or uh just immediately discharge this energy and the memory of it from their nervous system in a way that wouldn't uh affect them anymore and I think over the course of evolution animals uh particular individuals of any species that had that capacity really survived thrived and reproduced and the ones who couldn't discharge that trauma
• 09:30 - 10:00 um tended to hang on to it didn't very very well couldn't survive and eventually died off so in a way that that's why that we see the extraordinary resiliency of the animal kingdom in that way so how does it actually feel in a body who is traumatized well that's a a great question and all one of the way it it doesn't feel that's part of the problem is that a lot of uh what happens is the fundamental mechanism of
• 10:00 - 10:30 dissociation takes people who have experienced uh traumatic uh events in their life or it can be loss also anything that was painful or harmful to the nervous system and it in one way of protecting the people uh the human Mech the human nervous system from being overwhelmed by this trauma is to not sense one's body anymore not be aware of that pain of the tension that can come from it or the complete uh inhibition
• 10:30 - 11:00 kind of frozenness that can also arise from it and the emotional pain associated with it to just largely uh be much more aware of one's thoughts and not so aware of the feelings or the sensations of the body so for a lot of people um they don't uh experience their body as having this trauma they just experience a lot of Rapid thoughts um a lot of concern with maybe safety
• 11:00 - 11:30 or for people who have uh suffered some sexual trauma or abuse they're preoccupied with sexual thoughts um some of the behaviors that they go through have a feeling but it's largely unconscious it's really not something uh that they're aware of it's much more the compulsive mental activity that dominates uh many people uh or a feeling of uh depression or a lack of uh emotional Vitality the word you use is dis Association in the book and and that
• 11:30 - 12:00 that seems to me to Encompass what you're talking about in so far as that we don't really feel we don't somehow embody the feeling in a healthy way so there's a disassociation there's a removal from the event that has been a shock or a trauma whatever and because of that somehow it doesn't complete itself and that's where the example of the polar bear is really good and I'm going to tell a story now which we because because it because um we've got
• 12:00 - 12:30 snow in England today and when the snow happens everything seems to break down even though it's not very uh very much snow and so we had two guests that were coming up there aren't able to come because the Train the Train's not running but he was telling me a story when I talked to him last night about what happened to him he works as a trauma therapist and he gave an example of his situation which was incredibly traumatizing but he he wasn't traumatized because of because of how he was and he was caught in the 2004
• 12:30 - 13:00 tsunami with his family in a beach hut and um they were inside the hut and and and it started to slowly fill out with water and there was less and less air they had to get he and his two sons he was holding on to had to um get higher and higher up the Hut to get the air that was left and in the end he made the and he was it was like he was fighting and he was moving so in the end his decision was to he would sacrifice
• 13:00 - 13:30 himself for his two sons because he didn't want his sons not to die and he to live so he put his sons up they were quite young and his head came down in the water at that point miraculously the the Hut kind of collapsed and they were then thrown out onto the beach and of course they survived he survived to tell the story and I said well that must have been very traumatic he said it was but the trauma didn't stay with me because of the movement I had I was I was fighting there was a there was a natural flow and
• 13:30 - 14:00 he didn't need to clear anything afterwards CU his body had cleared it I thought that was that was very interesting how if we follow through and we don't freeze in Fright or helplessness then the body can Act Naturally I think that's a great way a great example of of the basic Theory underlying um uh the treatment of trauma is that uh when we're in a dangerous situation in cases of abuse violence uh there are many uh cases
• 14:00 - 14:30 where this is true it's not always the case but the body uh wants to uh engage in defensive actions to protect ourselves and if we're not able to do that especially children that experience uh violence or abuse of some kind they're not able to either run away the the flight mechanism or fight back the fight Instinct um usually the only response they have is either a kind of protective freezing response or they
• 14:30 - 15:00 actually have to work with the person who's tormenting them it's called an attachment response in that situation so they develop a way to keep safe by befriending their Tormentor and those are a brilliant human mechanisms of surviving incredibly dangerous situations the only problem is uh it's uh there's a need to suppress these more active fight or flight responses the body wants to complete some action so that in the and the and the way of
• 15:00 - 15:30 speaking about in trauma therapy is to help guide our clients back to these uh scenarios where the original action was suppressed and allow the body to complete whatever it wanted to do in that particular situation you never know what form it's going to take so your example of this man uh struggling to keep uh above the water protecting his sons that's exactly what the instinct action that he needed to do so in the
• 15:30 - 16:00 sense that he was complete and the the intense experience wasn't traumatic for him wasn't inhibiting on his nervous system but it could have been different you know given any variety of circumstances and yet there are probably other people in a similar situation who freeze absolutely yeah and I mean what decides in US M to to move and what
• 16:00 - 16:30 decides to be Frozen I mean I I can imagine uh his desire his love for his children absolutely yeah was the very Force which kept kept him moving yeah sometimes for our own protection we might be more inhibited but we find sources of courage to protect loved ones that are uh you know kind of there a lot of stories of uh humans doing extraordinary things for the sake of others that they probably wouldn't have found the energy uh for them so it's really quite uh uh touching that
• 16:30 - 17:00 instinctual capacity to protect and defense one children can kind of uh supersede everything else yeah I was I was reading several years ago this story which happened in America um a small child got run over by a by a car and one of the wheel actually was standing on the child and there was the mother who in this situation was able to
• 17:00 - 17:30 lift the car mhm to get her child out yeah it's incredible the force and the power isn't it extraordinary and it turns out the the mechanism for that is really what prevents a lot of humans from lifting a heavy object is not a lack of strength it's the incredible pain that one experiences in one's joints and muscles actually ripping or being damaged so women's capacity have an instinctual Capac it because of child birth and so
• 17:30 - 18:00 on sometimes to override pain um in ways that some men can't tolerate uh women have an instinctual mechanism especially when their kids are at stake uh to kind of override that pain and actually do these almost superhuman Feats it's all about surviving isn't it not only our own Survival but our children's survival test to go on it does yes yeah so if if we were just to to move on slightly to addiction which is slightly different in
• 18:00 - 18:30 form to trauma but it also it's quite traumatic what it does to nervous system just talk us through not just the the obvious addictions we think of as as drugs and alcohol but how we're all addicted in some way to our lifestyle and to to our programs that's a a good way to put it I think if you look at our uh modern culture and our modern society certainly just right here in London it's really no different from my life in San
• 18:30 - 19:00 Francisco people walk around quite busy with their digital mobile devices and so on uh you could say that addiction is anything that kind of captures our attention focuses our awareness in a pattern that really excludes uh other things kind of to the detriment of our own life it's one thing to be focus on a task that you need to support yourself and so on but there's a choice when you're done with that task as to Let It Go but with with the addictive mind for
• 19:00 - 19:30 whatever we're addicted to God know there are so many things substances pornography that we spoke of um some people are addicted to being on Facebook their computers um relationships it can be a drama we we've talked about also but it's the repetitive pattern that focuses our awareness in a way to the unhealthy exclusion of everything else and for um all our modern
• 19:30 - 20:00 sophistication our world is quite good at making products that capture attention whether it's the News That's presenting all the latest terrorist attacks new in America yeah it's very overblown and always designed to Galvanize your awareness to pay attention to something that you just can't everything else kind of drops off and our human again it takes advantage of kind of the evolved predisposition of the human mind to focus on uh elements
• 20:00 - 20:30 of danger in our lives briefly to the exclusion of everything else to help us survive but if we're always doing that that's one way of classifying an addictive uh Behavior to really that the rest of your life isn't getting the attention that it really needs so are we actually addicted to something outside or are we do we get addicted to this chemical Rush inside that's a good question question yeah from from that point of view you
• 20:30 - 21:00 could say it's more of an internal uh process and the in our modern world advertisers people who make all these products are quite skilled at uh knowing exactly how the brain works and delivering that in a way that uh has the potential to be uh addictive it's also extremely helpful uh it's a balance each person has to find with what's truly uh help helpful and productive and
• 21:00 - 21:30 but again balance I think is the word we keep coming back to maybe it keeps also the economy in balance for the moment yeah just about you see I I just get the feeling the more we talk about this the more I look at this that what's actually happening is we're losing more and more our ability to tune in and feel the intelligent that's in the body yes so both with the addiction we're talking about the chemical Rush here with the trauma we're talking about the
• 21:30 - 22:00 disassociation from the feeling of the trauma and when we were talking ear in our first interview about this balance between meditation and understanding how we work in terms of our mind it it it the key seems to be coming back to how we feel in our bodies and that and that doesn't mean oh I feel energized because I'm racing to do something it's going beyond that it's coming back to what is a more of a depth of a feeling
• 22:00 - 22:30 in in the body M I think that's really uh that we talked about that in the other program but just uh the mechanism of paying attention to one's physical Sensations especially the breath sets up uh uh like kind of triggers uh neurological programs inside the brain that tell the the areas that are uh secreting stress hormones or telling us to be on alert it tells them to calm
• 22:30 - 23:00 down it's a very effective mechanism used by uh you know traditional cultures in the past and now as a as a core part of uh treatment of trauma and addiction is to actually begin to sense your body as a as a starting point but it's hard almost to break that uh addiction to the to the outside world we think we're going to miss something or it's like a desperation almost no I know I have that I I kind of you think well you got you've got this one life I know some
• 23:00 - 23:30 people think there's lots of past lives and future lives I don't know about that I know I've got this one life and I want to live that life I want to experience I want to learn all those things and and and and the lure the kind of the attraction of all the things you can do on the outside gets more and more and more and so there's always these there's always this seduction from the outside whereas of course as you've hinted the balance the balance involved of the enjoying the outside but not at the
• 23:30 - 24:00 expense of the balance of the inside and even more so when people have a trauma in their system can really predispose them to be monitoring the external environment for some signs of danger or the re you know possibility of being harmed again in such an intense way that really is hard to begin to bring them in to their own body and that's usually why we start with the interpersonal connection the uh helping them uh feel attached Ed and secure in the presence
• 24:00 - 24:30 of another human being has a lot of innate mechanisms that calm the nervous system down and is often a starting point and that building that relationship with them takes time you know when um when you talked about you know feeling the body and how important it is knowing what's going we going on we never really learn as children children to feel what's in our body you
• 24:30 - 25:00 know and I became aware recently when I was visiting my grandchildren and my little granddaughter was really sad over something and my son took her and said it is okay to be sad I remember when I was sad my mother tried to make me happy in this moment or I was angry then my my parents did something to stop me from being angry
• 25:00 - 25:30 yeah so we learn it's not okay what we feel in our body that's what we learned you know and then of course our senses go outside I guess and we look for all this pleasure outside and disconnect M as you say that I think to myself my God what are we always teaching our children in school it's always about the alphabet or about science all great things to learn I don't ever remember a classroom ever that actually stopped the child and
• 25:30 - 26:00 say okay you know uh what does your heart feel like what what are you where do your where are your feelings in your any even the most B to be that way because so we what we what what the problem with that is we learn we we forget who we are you know we forget because that's that is who we are you know as a human being sometimes we get angry sometimes we have Bliss sometimes we are happy sometimes we are
• 26:00 - 26:30 sad and so uh we lose all that and now we try so hard to relearn it again as adults yeah what do I feel now what do I feel now but it makes me think like even two kids are running around um just have them stop for 30 seconds and just feel their bodies yeah what a um uh what what kind of children would that produce it' be interesting to see how that probably with the Cala nervous system maybe yeah
• 26:30 - 27:00 more self-aware in some way yeah yeah you also talk in the book about the adaptability and the evolution of the nervous system and so there in a way in a way we are adapting to the challenges of modern society but of course that adaption to some extent has to be integrated in terms of of how we're able to move and not move too fast that for our body to be able to catch up and to evolve so how do you see the nervous
• 27:00 - 27:30 system it's obviously changed a lot from the human being since we were we were living very simplistic lives how how do you see the potential for our nervous system to develop over the next few years you mean like future generations of human beings yes because because life is not fundamentally going to change and we've seen so many cases where um let's let's take somebody 200 years ago there
• 27:30 - 28:00 no way they could drive a car MH and and be on their mobile phone at the same time people I'm not sure that's true actually uh the human nervous system uh basically is at least the same as it was about 10,000 years ago if not more okay genetic change it is thought uh generally takes about 10,000 years for some kind of environmental pressure to really act on the process of natural selection to actually result in enough
• 28:00 - 28:30 uh genetic uh mutation and selection over time to produce a new trait that's more adaptive just a few Generations won't do it so in some sense we're dealing we we human beings in the modern age are stuck with a nervous system that's much more suited to living uh 10 20 30,000 years ago than it is now and especially in the last century with all the enormous change we've had kind of
• 28:30 - 29:00 our nervous system hasn't really had any kind of chance to um adopt to that one of the ways we see it and uh we talked about it was in uh diet human beings aren't designed to eat lots of sugar we never had access to grains like wheat and everything before 10,000 years ago so we're flooding ourselves with all this kind of um um so-called nutrition substances anyway that uh the human body really isn't designed to digest and make
• 29:00 - 29:30 a proper use of so that's one example of how we're um uh in some sense our our our basic body structures aren't that adaptable um without a lot of deliberate practice and uh training it won't happen genetically very quickly so you know what what is what is surprising to me was that I I had meditated f many many years I've done a
• 29:30 - 30:00 lot of work on myself and had many many realizations and then about 18 months ago I had some sematic experience sessions and and someone just that the guy I had them with just showed me the basic breathing which is being aware of your breath breathing from here slowing the breath actually I realized I was breathing over breathing I was breathing in too much oxygen there wasn't the
• 30:00 - 30:30 right combination of oxygen and carbon dioxide so the oxygen wasn't actually getting effectively into my CS as much as it could do because I was over breathing and what was very interesting was that being someone that is a type six in the anagram and can be sometimes quite a nervous person a fearful person I found that doing the breathing regularly it improved my sleep at night it improved how I felt in the morning and it certainly improved my ability to
• 30:30 - 31:00 respond to situations which were could have been challenging beforehand let's say wasn't always challenging but could be and it's just that simple process of changing your breathing you do that I found you do that you just as much as you can you're aware of your breathing when you can when you're sitting at home or you're meditating or even you're driving your car you can be aware of how you're breathing and you if appropriate you slow your breathing down everything
• 31:00 - 31:30 slows down and of course through that I found you got more and more in touch with your body in touch with the feelings in the body and that I found and still find overrides a lot of the chemical activity here because it's bringing me to something more of a a grounded base MH and through ironic ly through that grounded base I start to
• 31:30 - 32:00 feel more of who I really am which is the human being and also the expanded awareness and so the more attention on the breathing the more ability to fill the body brings about an opening it brings about it took me it takes me away more from the dramas here to reality
• 32:00 - 32:30 and makes me feel more balanced yeah and that's I was just surprised it had so much effect after I don't know 35 years of meditation which I do most days and a lot of investigative work it's like the understanding is very important from the mind's point of view but it has to be for me anyway and I think many people combined with the abil ability to really
• 32:30 - 33:00 feel what's happening in the body yeah it's like a doorway to like like all the unused rooms in the Mansion of our Consciousness almost to really yes find out that there's so much more there and it's we think it's outside of us but really by grounding our awareness in that way it's uh and it's not just about paying attention to the breath it doesn't end there but that's where really where it begins in many ways what it's where life begins in a way well do
• 33:00 - 33:30 not true life actually begins there but it's the first thing we do when we're born we breathe and without the breathing we're not going to survive so it is such a fundamental thing and you were saying earlier about teaching in school well I wish they taught me how to breathe in school I know it sounds really silly to say but it's so fundamental if you breathe properly yeah then your body functions a lot better absolutely do you do you think you were telling in the first interview this story when you were in a Buddhist
• 33:30 - 34:00 Monastery meditating and how you had experience of bliss and and expansion and um and so forth and then you were queuing up for in the footline and you know all your H greed and food and instincts came back to be satisfied yeah so um do you think if if you would have been in the same
• 34:00 - 34:30 situation connected to your breath embodied MH what you just experienced what would have happened to your instinct H that's a really interesting question you know I wonder in part if um uh it a lot of it has to do I think you know when we say meditation or Buddhist medit ation and things like that um As
• 34:30 - 35:00 Americans or as westerners in general we're div divorced from the cultural context of those practices where um I've learned um in hearing Dan Brown talk and different there's much more emphasis on actually the emotions the feelings in some ways they weren't body psychotherapists but that was more included overall in their practices and so on so I think in some way when we learn about meditation we're
• 35:00 - 35:30 learning only bits and pieces of the tradition divorced from some of its broader context so for me I think that's what uh turned my attention is feeling like something is missing the meditations I were doing uh involved a lot of you know evoking compassion and things like that or um uh really you know calming and disciplining focusing the mind the concentration meditations and I found them wonderful and effective but divorced from my body in some way
• 35:30 - 36:00 that um might not take place in ordinary Tibetan culture but at least in my culture I was largely dissociated from my body so learning to pay attention and to be uh open to the sensations of my body to all the flood of emotions to things I didn't understand why it was happening as you said in the trauma work sometimes movements feelings will come that you have no conscious explanation
• 36:00 - 36:30 for but that's nonetheless the wisdom of the body expressing itself yeah so I wonder if I had known about that uh I I do feel very different in lunch cues now not depends how hungry you are yeah it depends how hungry I am of course yeah you also talk in the book about the Dal Lama yeah I know you had some contact with him many years ago and you did some some some classes with him and you feel he's somebody that has
• 36:30 - 37:00 overcome the the drama if you like of the instincts and he you feel that he's pretty balanced just talk us through how you feel with him and some of the practices that you know he's done yeah I mean it's one of the most uh striking things I noticed the very first time I saw him I it must have been 30 years ago I think it was he was giving a speech somewhere and I was fairly close to him and I just remember he was laughing and um on his way out even
• 37:00 - 37:30 before he started speaking um there were all these kids who went up to see him and you know he started talking and playing with them and at some point they had an announcement please what his Holiness uh please come to the front of the room and make the speech and you know you got to stop playing with the children basically you know and there was something he was just so I thought he's different than I am at some fundamental level even just his body body alone just seems to be different there's a real discrepancy between
• 37:30 - 38:00 apparently the way I feel most of the time and the way he feels and so just being around someone who's had that level of realization that's not unique to Tibetan Buddhists or anything like that that many people um you can viscerally feel in their nervous system that something is different feel a sense of calm or peace or happiness or Clarity with these great teachers and um uh one of the things that he uh
• 38:00 - 38:30 spoke of uh that it was how easy it is to change kind of your ideas about things but to really change the way you feel that took more practice but to really change the way um I don't know if that he used the the word instinctual because some of this was through his interpreter but that's kind of what I heard but change your behavior your body your Basic Instincts that took the most uh uh uh Advanced practices that Tibetan
• 38:30 - 39:00 Buddhism had and he was making a case in these uh many of the initiations I went to him on these tantric practices saying this is um really the like a powerful means of transforming your entire body your entire being all the way down to the deepest cellular attachments um uh and predispositions to the uh uh instinctual mechanisms of the human body so that really impressed me
• 39:00 - 39:30 of how uh serious he took it and and how dedicated to the practices uh one has to be and as I began to investigate them more I saw so many things that they did for example uh some of our viewers might be familiar with the practice of Tumo meditation the inner heat meditation where one generates a great deal of uh uh by through meditation practices these Tibetan Monks and pract tantric practitioners can generate
• 39:30 - 40:00 tremendous levels of uh heat within their body and first it was kind of dismissed as oh it's really cold and to bed up in the mountains they need to keep themselves warm it there's far more to it than that there's an extraordinary instinctual intelligence at work they're they've learned to harness certain um aspects of the uh instinctual uh structure of the human body and and using them as a way to transform their Consciousness and it's
• 40:00 - 40:30 really extraordinary the technology we've uh they've developed and we've developed I don't think it's anything close to what they've learned on the inner inner scale and I think over the next 10 to 20 years it's going to be fascinating for our culture to actually learn and start to take apart we've begun to study the brain um at a basic level somewhat the effects of meditation but to delve down deep and see how they're really reprogrammed pramming the deepest levels of the brain stem and the
• 40:30 - 41:00 midbrain um I think is really uh going to be a frontier and be fascinating uh for us as explorers of Consciousness to learn these Universal mechanisms that'll really allow us to apply it to uh um every culture not just the exclusive uh domain of traditional spiritual practice including the education of children I know I was I was fascinated uh reading your book How The D Lama you start out
• 41:00 - 41:30 saying that D Lama practices every day dying and working on the dissolution of his body and only if he manages that he can reach Buddha hood yeah and I thought that's fascinating that was one of the most uh I saw a beautiful picture of the Dal llama meditating once without his glasses and everything when I was younger and I thought what is
• 41:30 - 42:00 he actually doing yeah like what is what is his experience you surely it's different from mine and it piqu my curiosity to learn about the practices that someone uh at his state of evolution of Consciousness still does I mean every morning from what I understand he's up at 4: some if he has the time will meditate to 8 or even longer um he I think he'd like to meditate more and do less work but yeah being the bodh SATA that he is he uh has to help us also um to delve into the uh
• 42:00 - 42:30 sophistication the complexity of uh of these practices was quite uh in times incredibly discouraging for me because every time I uh went to initiation and and learned about like a new practice even at the most introductory level i' just be like oh my God this is so complicated like it's going to take years to um learn I remember one of my first teachers I went in there and um uh kind
• 42:30 - 43:00 of uh after a couple weeks of meditation you get an interview with one of the senior teachers the Llama there and I kind of complained of like well this you know seems really uh pretty basic you know I I was just starting out thinking I'm quite a great meditator and you know all I'm really doing is visualizing these letters and these blocks and you know some all these pictures of the past teachers and everything I I'm ready for a much more uh sophisticated practice now this is
• 43:00 - 43:30 pretty easy and he uh he would talk with a translator and they'd Converse back and forth and he said well we don't have anything easier for you CU I was feeling like I was in kindergarten and I was explaining the child school and so on and he's like yeah yeah that's about right and they were just you know it wasn't mean or anything they just um I didn't realize what was involved in the and the
• 43:30 - 44:00 extraordinary uh um Dedication that it would take and ongoing practice just to learn about much less practice much less develop any proficiency whatsoever in these meditations you sorry what does this mean practically for us I'm just looking we've got about 10 minutes left on this program what does this mean practically for us in the west so we have our busy lives we have to ear live everything else people have families to look after
• 44:00 - 44:30 lots of detail lots of distractions I know one thing you also talk about in the book is how there's a real art that's possibly to come of distilling down you you've spent you have your work in the ridan school and you were doing a lot of Tibetan Buddhism many other things you've explored the trauma work etc shanic work at one point and and yet it's taken you so many years to do all this work and now somebody and we have all this knowledge East and from the West we have the knowledge and it's bringing together and certainly with the
• 44:30 - 45:00 ridan school ahr Mass he does a wonderful job of bringing the East and West together but where is it going do you think in terms of taking this knowledge distilling it down so it's something practical and realistic that somebody in the West can do in their lifestyle still living a life and earning some money not going living in a cave or whatever and and also balancing and transforming their instincts so they have intelligent instincts yeah this would be multiple full-time jobs yeah I
• 45:00 - 45:30 mean think about everything we've talked about already the vast diversity of fields from Psychotherapy the treatment of trauma meditation more advanced Buddhist type uh more complex meditations um the psychological aspects learning about the neurobiology um it it takes uh I felt it's it's taken me years and years to develop some level of expertise in each of these and now beginning to synthesize
• 45:30 - 46:00 it and put it into a more integrated fashion that's more appropriate how do we take all this knowledge and put it in a way that people can understand it and implement it in their lives one of the things that it's it's forced me to do in terms of being an educator is to find ways to convey all this information in a more integrated compact way and that's why I've developed Lots uh with my help of for my uh uh digital friends in the Bay Area in San Francisco kind of Apple
• 46:00 - 46:30 headquarters and uh this type of media environment is to produce animation 3D animation that explains what's happening in the brain how these meditation practices are done because people need a way uh to learn about it they're not going to become experts in all these different fields but they do need to have a picture of how this information Works in their own bodies and I found that uh making instead of just writing books about it which is important for Specialists but to uh for
• 46:30 - 47:00 the average person to see visual depictions of all this in a integrated kind of condensed way really accelerates their own um willingness to try these practices and their own understanding it's almost like an accelerated form of learning that's needed in today's uh kind of modern Digital World especially for the younger generation there are just too many books in too many Specialties they need a more integrated
• 47:00 - 47:30 education system so that's step number one is just learning about it and and as the tiens would say moistening the mindstream to be open to it and finding um what are the key uh Universal human principles about how the nervous system works and designing uh meditation and different practices for people that are very attuned to their own cultural environment if you take a lot of people and show them some kind of Tibetan
• 47:30 - 48:00 system or Dost tradition or all the different ways we have uh the the great ethnic cultural diversity um it's simply going to be too alien to a lot of people but to get them to start with their breathing and just paying attention to the breathing is a start and I'm hopeful that our all this vast studying that we're doing about uh both in Psychotherapy trauma treatment meditation will lead to more and more um Universal principles of how the human
• 48:00 - 48:30 mind exactly functions and how we can make that accessible to more and more people kind of translating it into the universal language of uh the human body I think is going to be um a great starting place I'm very hopeful that that that can actually happen you know um one thing um our teacher said I mean we have the same teacher in the rank School Hamid mhm uh I actually was reading that in
• 48:30 - 49:00 one of his latest book and he says that after writing 15 books has probably one of the biggest spiritual school on the planet he says I'm writing all these books and I'm teaching you all these things only for your mind to relax because that's the only thing M which needs to happen mhm yeah I guess
• 49:00 - 49:30 breathing is the start it is well it is and this is you know what I what I I discover more and more for myself it's the it's the Simplicity that is really the Breakthrough and it's um understanding is great and understanding has a lot of value especially for me someone with a relatively strong mind it's very important understanding but the real real Quantum shifts are to do with Simplicity and just just the
• 49:30 - 50:00 breathing and the mindfulness of being aware of what the body's feeling MH and what that the impact that has on me that that that provides a lot and I I think I would go along with rata somehow that maybe the maybe the Simplicity and the synthesis that we're talking about of all the different Traditions maybe they meet somewhere and and I think for anybody that's watching this program well I should ask you the the same question in a minute but I think my
• 50:00 - 50:30 answer for people that AR are watching this program who want to know how to start is just start with something very simple but make that a kind of a commitment AB kind of discipline is not a great word I know it's not a pleasant word but commitment that that they honor they say well I'm going to start it's only 5 minutes a day it's 10 minutes a day whatever and then it and if then it starts to be a journey it starts to be an adventure it start to be something that actually can be very exciting at times can very stimulating but not over
• 50:30 - 51:00 stimulating something and then and then the world starts to open and and and and we get which um you have whole chapters we haven't touched in your book on this where the how how the Instinct instincts can be tuned to really bring out our potential and a certain area of life and you have just just very quickly run through the the main chapters you have on different people you have one on abrah Lincoln one on Madonna uh Oprah
• 51:00 - 51:30 Winfrey Oprah Winfrey yeah yeah Tiger Tiger Wood yeah uh even Abraham Lincoln yes who's a subject of a new movie now I quite enjoyed that Stephen Spielberg's understanding of his uh this capacity for persistence in the face of adversity that's really quite extraordinary and not just his own um perseverance but the uh fact that he was trying to free slaves uh you know an abominable American tradition but that was so engra
• 51:30 - 52:00 engraved into our society that he had to carry out this fight and hold that kind of Will and persistence in the face of opposition Bloodshed probably the worst point in our history and um to bear that burden and to represent something even more than yourself um as a form of uh one of the highest forms of instinctual intelligence I can imagine so I I I just have a question you know
• 52:00 - 52:30 sometimes in the most relaxed situation I'm sitting there feel completely chilled out of the meditation this grabbing feeling like a in probably a grabbing instinct is coming up and it feels like for action for life is this something think healthy or
• 52:30 - 53:00 unhealthy it's like something in me this Instinct wants to leave this place of rest yeah and just wants to go out there and experience well Jing by the way you're laughing and smiling it seems pretty healthy to me I don't know you know is that is that just an addiction to something some kind of chemically which tries to I think the only way to find
• 53:00 - 53:30 out is to really uh get inside of it and you know what is this you know your hand is going like this and start to feel the sensations of the grabbing itself and and that beautiful smile on your face and what does that feel like and yeah to fully inhabit it yeah to to explore it but really Ted just listening to you and and this book helped me so much to understand a completely different level in myself and hopefully more accepting to those uh yeah of course the question
• 53:30 - 54:00 isn't so much is it bad or is it good it's what is it like it just wants to be there as well and recognized and be in the light exactly and seen yeah that makes me very happy you say yeah me too so we need to draw to a close Okay and uh there's so much more we could talk about because the uh as you WR is saying the introduction to the book The the word the world of the instincts has
• 54:00 - 54:30 not really been explored in a contemporary way very much and uh certainly Ted's book instinctive intelligence is a great start and uh some of some of it can be a little bit dense but other parts of it where especially the chapters built around various personalities people famous people that you would know give it much more a kind of accessible feel and and there's I think there's something for everybody in this book whatever stage they are at their their Journey as such so Ted you flown over especially from Norway for the interview really
• 54:30 - 55:00 appreciate that you're welcome thank you rata for joining me here this was a impromptu one because uh two other guests who were going to join Ted on the panel got stuck in the snow so uh hopefully we've uh filled the void so to speak and uh I think it's I've certainly enjoyed it anyway is there not also something else to come it kind of well on the internet certainly what we what we're going to do is put um after this program both a meditation and also um a
• 55:00 - 55:30 presentation that Ted's put together he's given us the uh covering the animation yes the animation so but anyway thank you very much for watching conscious TV and uh hope we see you again soon goodbye goodbye
• 55:30 - 56:00 hi I'm Ted tinsky as a followup to the interviews we've done with conscious TV I'm going to be introducing you to a brief uh meditation practice involving paying attention to your breath it's quite simple and also can be used as a means of reducing stress and day-to-day living then also as an introduction to uh more
• 56:00 - 56:30 extended meditation practices but just begin simply uh by sitting down and finding a posture that's comfortable for you ideally we'd like the spine to be as straight as possible so um for some of you that will involve uh moving up in your chair a bit perhaps sitting on your sits bones and uh also finding some kind of uh support in your back or even taking your back off the back of the chair in
• 56:30 - 57:00 order to have your spine a little uh straighter not sitting too far back or too uh slumped over in some way but one that just feels natural without too much effort to keep your spine aligned as if there were a string running through your spine coming out the top of your head and just pulling your head up also so your head isn't heavy and kind of sitting on top of your shoulders too much the important thing thing is to be comfortable and this posture may change over time
• 57:00 - 57:30 also the basic uh technique is to uh on the in breath breathe in through your nose into your lower belly and the idea to breathe in uh more air into your um lower lungs especially that area that kind of pushes out your belly is to invite uh the activation of what are called parasympathetic fibers that are more predominant in the lower L loes of
• 57:30 - 58:00 the lung this will help induce a relaxing calming response and also uh help you take away from kind of the habitual uh familiarity many of us have of breathing too much into the upper part of our lungs kind of gasping for air um in a way that activates our sympathetic nervous system and can produce uh more stress in our system so it's simply taking uh a fairly big
• 58:00 - 58:30 full breath through your nose down through your nose and into your lower lungs in a way that pushes out uh your lower belly some people like to breathe uh they exhale through their mouth um in many ways it's better to do it through your nose it helps better with a carbon dioxide regulation in the body and that in turn will produce more balanced
• 58:30 - 59:00 oxygen levels so again the basic meditation is simply to begin by breathing through your nose notice the sensations of the air going through your nostrils through your windpipe and it's effect of pushing out uh your lower belly in fact it might be helpful to exaggerate that at first uh helping your belly just push
• 59:00 - 59:30 out a bit letting it extend an inch or two and just either breathing out through your mouth or through your nose now what in order to sustain your awareness of the breath and especially on the physical sensations of
• 59:30 - 60:00 breathing what I do and encourage uh my clients and students to do is to notice the sensations that are actually occurring in your belly and lower chest while you're breathing so for example on that breath right there I feel one of the things I feel first is like a stretching of my skin on uh my stomach
• 60:00 - 60:30 it's important not to breathe too quickly just at a pace that's natural and this breath I felt uh could feel the air more intensely coming through my nose hitting my nostrils so in a way you're just noticing the sensations of the breath whether they're occurring in your
• 60:30 - 61:00 nostrils maybe in your windpipe but especially in your belly so now as I'm sensing I'm noticing uh I feel a little bit constrained I have my pants on and my belt puts a little pressure against the front of my belly again there's no right or wrong way to do this or uh that your clothes
• 61:00 - 61:30 should be looser or more tight it's simply a matter of noticing the sensations because if you're doing this out in the real world at work or with your children uh you might not have time to uh set up the ideal conditions the whole object of it is just to pay attention to the sensations so on that breath breath I could feel uh like kind of a sense of
• 61:30 - 62:00 expansion in my stomach as if I'm pushing out an internal pressure also noticing a bit of a downward uh pressure as I really let more air come in into my lower
• 62:00 - 62:30 lungs I'm also hearing the sound of my own breathing noticing the this light kind of high pitched uh tone the almost a whisper of a tone as the air passes through my
• 62:30 - 63:00 nostrils I'm also noticing I'm a bit hungry my stomach feels a bit empty so again these are just Sensations just to pay attention to there are no good Sensations bad Sensations right Sensations or wrong ones none of them are more enlightened than the other they're simply Sensations and the Very Act of paying attention to
• 63:00 - 63:30 them begins to exert a effect on the nervous system of calming relaxing awareness settling the mind
• 63:30 - 64:00 so as I took a few more breaths I noticed there was a little bit of tension in my legs that I was using to kind of hold myself up a bit able to relax that relax into the weight so that's all there really is to it it's
• 64:00 - 64:30 just keep watching your breath noticing the sensations in your belly and in your body slowing down if your mind has thoughts distractions you find yourself thinking about what you're going to do later emails you need to answer and what you're going to eat later and so on that they're okay just to notice them
• 64:30 - 65:00 too come back to the breath and the truth is if you're pinch for time and you can only get a few breaths in that too is can be very helpful and just lowering the feverish pitch of our nervous system and stressful situations and if you have more time uh to continue the exploration continue watching the
• 65:00 - 65:30 breath and watching the sensations paying attention to how much how uh the volume of air is coming into your belly how big it feels or how small it feels the size the pressure sometimes you feel the temperature of the air coming in if it's cool or warm
• 65:30 - 66:00 just start to notice more and more the sensations and the perceptions that are arising directly in your body continue with this as long as you like or feels comfortable and see how it goes and see where that leads you thank you very much and I wish you
• 66:00 - 66:30 luck with this meditation we are at a threshold of human evolution a unique time in human history where we now have access to the vast teachings of
• 66:30 - 67:00 the world's spiritual traditions and the scientific means to understand how these practices work at the deepest neurobiological [Music] levels people across the globe are hungry for this information they are discovering that meditation prayer ritual and energetic yogas can reduce stress improve
• 67:00 - 67:30 intelligence help us connect with others and guide us deeper into greater self- knowledge and ultimately help us explore the nature of Life [Music] Death and reality itself for thousands of years Buddhist meditators have been exploring the
• 67:30 - 68:00 secrets of human consciousness now the Dal Lama is working directly with scientists and University Laboratories all over the world creating new maps of the nervous [Music] system revealing how this ancient wisdom can actually rewire the brain reshape our view of
• 68:00 - 68:30 reality and help us Envision new educational paradigms for future [Music] Generations welcome to the groundbreaking work of instinctual intelligence our mission is to provide you with cutting Edge multimedia educational materials for advanced
• 68:30 - 69:00 learning and personal [Music] transformation in these videos lectures and workshops you will learn to unlock the extraordinary neurobiological wisdom encoded Within These esoteric [Music] practices you'll be inspired to deepen your practices as you see exactly how they restructure the human nervous system it's now possible for the first time in human history to bring this knowledge
• 69:00 - 69:30 alive in a way that is fresh and relevant to the modern world drawing on the practices of Tibetan Buddhism and other spiritual Traditions we'll learn how Leading Edge science is revealing the underlying Universal principles for systematically developing the fullest potentials of human consciousness
• 69:30 - 70:00 join us for a guided investigation of these five essential paradigms of meditation learn how the basic meditation practices of the world's wisdom Traditions bring us into a greater awareness of our embodied [Music] Sensations we'll see how these foundational practices are scientifically proven to reduce stress and bring us more in touch with the present
• 70:00 - 70:30 moment opening the door to a deeper exploration of Consciousness itself the ability to focus attention improve memory and develop higher levels of executive functioning are all essential for success in today's world we are discovering the specific form of meditation that develop the neural systems underlying these cognitive
• 70:30 - 71:00 capacities and why they are essential for deepening one's practice Opening Our Hearts to loving relationships is an important goal of every spiritual path modern science is now demonstrating how specific forms of meditation activate mirror neuron Networks allowing us to empathetically connect with each other and cultivate a deeper
• 71:00 - 71:30 compassion for all [Music] beings we now know that long-term practice of meditation increases [Music] neuroplasticity the ability of the brain to rewire itself learn how the cumulative effects of systematic practice enhances our capacity to regulate our emotions and even more powerfully to harness our instinctual energies and align them with our noblest
• 71:30 - 72:00 aspirations here we enter into the deepest mysteries of human [Music] consciousness discover how the the most advanced tantric practices are designed to bring awareness into the mysterious Realms at the edge of life and
• 72:00 - 72:30 [Music] death new research is emerging that points to the potential for these practices to activate stem cells dramatically accelerate neuroplasticity and even begin to alter the expression of DNA
• 72:30 - 73:00 [Music] itself the emerging scientific study of these tantric practices also reveals the capacity for Consciousness to evolve Beyond familiar physical
• 73:00 - 73:30 [Music] forms and enter into a greater community of being that we are only beginning to imagine imagine [Music] imagine it's a great time to be alive never before have we been able to explore systematically the infinite potentials of humanity and the boundless
• 73:30 - 74:00 nature of Consciousness with the accumulated wisdom and Elegant Beauty of spiritual [Music] knowledge and the objective Insight of science [Music] through this integration of our hearts
• 74:00 - 74:30 our minds our bodies and Spirits we will forever change how we relate to each [Music] other how we know ourselves and how we educate our [Music] children join us in this adventure preparing for a future that is beyond our
• 74:30 - 75:00 imaginations where we are all going together one step at a [Music] time and it's been exciting I think you know the Daly Lama exemplifies the uh curiosity of um both cultures to learn about this and to uh go further into um what we
• 75:00 - 75:30 know about the brain and spiritual practice so we're going to start with a basic uh picture of the brain here for those of you who are uh not familiar with it uh we're going to go into some detail but if remember just a few basic things that'll help you grasp what we're talking about tonight this blue area here the large area on top is called the cortex and that's where most of our uh thinking takes place we our senses are
• 75:30 - 76:00 processed there our memories are stored there and our capacity to think and integrate what we're experiencing in our perceptions with memories help us navigate the world all kind of takes place in the cortex it does many other things but that's just a basic way to think about it the area in purple this kind of horn shape area that has two sides is a simplified representation of What's called the lyic system and that's where our feelings and emotions are processed and this area down below the
• 76:00 - 76:30 red stem is uh what you could call The Reptilian Brain the brain stem where most of our instinctual uh impulses and basic body uh regulation functions like our breathing and our heartbeat are regulated in that area so there are many parts to the brain obviously and and that is just a basic uh a thing to keep in mind a basic scheme to help you remember that just the top the cortex the middle part is
• 76:30 - 77:00 the emotions and the red part the bottom part of the instincts this area in the back this gold area is What's called the cerebellum it kind of acts as an auxiliary processor for the brain that helps coordinate movement in many of the complex calculations and functions that the brain does so tonight we're going to look specifically at this front area called The frontal loobe and how it interacts with the lower portions so if the brain science gets a bit much for
• 77:00 - 77:30 you and the details get too much I want you to just think of uh two basic concepts that we're going to kind of refer to over and over one is um what's called emotional regulation and that is the capacity of these frontal loes to Signal areas in the emotional area that kind of calm some of our fearful angry anxious responses and also the capacity of these same frontal lobes that we're talking about to reach deeper into the brain
• 77:30 - 78:00 stem and begin to uh alter even our instinctual functions the things that are primarily unconscious so of all the things we're going to talk about tonight it's going to get a little more complex than this but if you remember those two basic concepts or basically one is that the capacity of this front part of the brain to reach into lower areas that are primarily unconscious that'll be the main takeaway from uh all the brain science that we're going to present the main uh thing we're going to talk about
• 78:00 - 78:30 tonight is De yoga this is the core of uh Tibetan tantric practices and especially uh and primarily in what are called the um uh generation stage uh level of a tantric practice of a sodna of a a meditation program now this is um The Glorious uh vad yogini as it practiced within the dun kagu tradition and other Traditions um with a full um
• 78:30 - 79:00 uh uh Decor that she wears the necklace of uh skulls the uh blade Chopper the scoop of brains and her left hand the staff and that crown and so on and many people have seen this uh beautiful depictions of various deities they all throughout this room um what many people don't know who aren't familiar with Tibetan Buddhist practice practices that one actually visualizes oneself as this
• 79:00 - 79:30 deity and you enter in subjectively into their experience as if that were your body here you're looking at the right hand the chopper blade that she holds there her earrings the Sever's head the necklace now you're seeing her left hand a scoop of brains so when you do these practices you're actually entering in to these deities and all all the detail all the form the necklaces the staff every aspect the red skin you're completely
• 79:30 - 80:00 subjectively embedding yourself into this uh body of a deity and that to me is a uh a fascinating um and has extraordinary neurobiological implications and really uh you could say begins to turn up the heat on the transformational practice also for those of you familiar going a bit deeper when you do the deity practice most of them involve what are called body mandelas where you're
• 80:00 - 80:30 actually visualizing different deities and different locations in your body this again is from the vadra yogini practice um showing the 64 petal root chakra uh chakra at the navl um with a Tibetan symbol upon some sun and moon discs and these uh specifically these deities are lined up along the central channel the center of the body now there's a great deal of variation in
• 80:30 - 81:00 these practices different deities have different configurations of deities throughout the body this is just one example the um other practice we're going to talk about tonight and the other phase of the tantric practice is called the completion stage and this uh primarily in every uh lineage that I know of maybe there are ones that don't do it this way but the the Hallmark of the beginning of the completion stage yogas are what is called the inner heat yoga or the Tumo
• 81:00 - 81:30 yoga and this is from the uh six yogas of neuropa um the depiction of the uh an alignment of the of the chakras at the head Center the 32 pedal uh Lotus there the 16 pedal Lotus at the throat the eight at the heart and the 64 at the uh Naval with the uh the center Channel and the uh um right and left uh side channels
• 81:30 - 82:00 also this is the way the visualization is done there's also some um symbols that are there some seed syllables um that aren't depicted but that this is just gives you a basic outline of part of the visualization of how this is done and it's really considered uh uh this practice of Tumo is considered as mil the great milerapa once it's like the um the the powerful Elixir that really transforms meditation and gives the
• 82:00 - 82:30 potential potential to bring about Buddha hood In This Very life to really change one at an instinctual embod level and also create profound con changes in Consciousness the basic practice of Tumo yoga uh I'm simplifying here a bit is to visualize a very strong source of heat uh in a in a small triangle small thin triangle uh right directly in the center channel sitting on top of the uh Naval
• 82:30 - 83:00 chakra there's much more to it than that but that just gives you a basic um idea many of uh these practices uh perhaps you've heard about the research that was done early on in the cold Himalayan Winters uh the monks would have contests um when they were practicing Tumo yoga they would uh sit outside and they would two or three of them would line up and they would put dip uh some uh sheets in um ice water and throw them on their
• 83:00 - 83:30 back and they would have a contest over the course of the night who could dry the most of these ice cold sheets on their backs by generating this inner heat so it's a very real phenomena I mean it's been medically tested and um some of the changes in temperature um have been quite uh basically inexplicable by modern science until we've done some uh Recent research on it so that's kind of an overview of some of the areas of meditation that we're going to look at tonight the next uh type of thing that's deeply built into
• 83:30 - 84:00 the nervous system and it's best you could often have to almost get off the surface of the Earth to really appreciate it is that we are embedded in a field of gravity and The Sensation of gravity and the function of gravity is deeply a part of being a human being and it's so um so consistent so syonic with our experience that we wouldn't even question it of course when I drop my pointer Things fall down I have to
• 84:00 - 84:30 balance myself to stand up um we we take it uh and we live in a very actually narrowly constrained field of gravity because when there's a rapid change in gravity we don't uh we don't say I'm experiencing a change in gravity we falling down was a rapid change in gravity we've evolved from a long line of human beings who were very concerned about gravity CU our early an ancestors who were up climbing trees and didn't pay attention to gravity fell they died they didn't reproduce they weren't your
• 84:30 - 85:00 ancestors so we're all very attuned to gravity in a way that's so deeply embedded that you know it's even odd to talk about it or to challenge it and I think uh when I see these pictures of a baby in a womb and I think we all kind of long for that sensation to be free of gravity especially those of us who are getting older and start to feel a little more acutely sometimes that we want to the sensations of gravity so uh and this is part of the
• 85:00 - 85:30 genius of uh the Buddha and the Buddhist teachings are to identify things that we just take so ordinarily for granted yet would still constrict our Consciousness and still uh limit our um understanding and experiential awareness of Buddha of the true Buddha nature that's possible so we're going to take a look at the way that they um began to disrupt the sense of gravity gravity is primarily uh we
• 85:30 - 86:00 experience it primarily is mediated along our spinal cord keeping upright is one of the central ways that we uh experience gravity there's a whole uh neurobiology to it and we're just going to take a brief look at at where in the spinal cord we're going to enter right into the spinal cord and see how the sense of gravity is constructed it really appreciate one of the extraordinary turning points of Buddha Consciousness that takes us out of just
• 86:00 - 86:30 the purely physical and into Realms of Consciousness that are freed from the physical doesn't reject the physical but add something to our experience it allows us to go beyond our instinctual identification we can now enter into and see uh these uh body Mandela practices now in a different light especially the ones in particular we're going to look at are the ones that are uh aligned along the spine where these uh uh
• 86:30 - 87:00 reticular uh uh gravitational muscles are so again now we're going to uh not only look at it from the outside but this is how it would be subjectively for someone doing this vadra y vadra yogini meditation we're going to enter in through this Naval chakra going to be looking down through it there's the seed syllable in the middle and here are the various deities lined up in a stack and you're looking down as if you were doing
• 87:00 - 87:30 this meditation and what uh how do they practice uh kind of systematically shutting off our gravitational or habitual gravitational responses is throw a slow and systematic dissolution of each one of these deities you're actually withdrawing Consciousness from its habitual pattern and a gravitational field and the extraordinary wisdom I mean this stuff is just like so Cutting Edge in neuroscience and to think that
• 87:30 - 88:00 they developed these practice hundreds and thousands of years ago it just blows me away for