What is the Mind? Part 2.

The quote below may be tragicomic but it is how many people feel about their minds.

My mind is like a web browser. 19 tabs open, 3 are frozen and I have no idea where the music is coming from.

Dr. Dan Siegel, a Neuropsychiatrist, Neurobiologist and Mindfulness teacher, discovered that 95% of the 80 thousand therapists and mental health practitioners he interviewed across the world, including psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, and occupational therapists have never had a lecture about a definition of the mind!

In his program “Mindfulness and the Brain” published by SoundsTrue he shared this story:

“In 1992 I was asked to moderate an interdisciplinary science study group at UCLA looking at the connections between the brain and the mind. I recruited 40 scientists from a wide range of fields including neuroscience, sociology, computer science, linguistics, mathematics, and psychology. The group was not getting along very well. While everyone agreed on the definition of the brain they could not reach an agreement about a definition of the nature of the mind. The computer scientist referred to the mind as an operating system. A neurobiologist said the mind is just the activity of the brain. An anthropologist spoke of a shared social process across the generations. A psychologist said that the mind is our thoughts and feelings. After a lot of tension and discussion the 40 academics finally reached a consensus on the following definition I eventually offered to the group:”

The Human Mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.

Embodied because the mind happens in the body and it is distributed throughout the whole body via the nervous system. To learn more about Dan’s view check out his book Mindsight.

# Mindfulness #MindTraining #Awareness #UCLA #Neurobiology #Neuroscience #ZenHighAchiever