Mindset Neuroscience Podcast

Learning is a gateway to power and freedom Learning increases our degrees of freedom by giving us new ways to move, communicate and adapt to challenges and capitalize on opportunities.   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple... READ MORE The post Season 3 Episode 4: Embodied Cognition and Learning: My Interview with Sheila Macrine and Jennifer Fugate appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

“Once again, the world seems to be less about objects than about interactive relationships.” ― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics   Studying human brains while a person is immobile and alone in an mri machine can only get us so... READ MORE The post Season 3 Ep 3: The socio-biomechanics of resilience, trust and flow appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

To update our algorithms and enhance our brain functioning, there is one key thing we can do: Intentionally add experiences into our weekly routine that engage our sensory-motor systems in ways that are completely unfamiliar to us. That is the essence of my interview with Jason Knight, director of Alderleaf Wilderness College. In this interview, we discuss: -Jason’s journey to becoming a wilderness expert and his desire to connect people more deeply with nature and the types of thinking that come with those experiences; -How people’s mindsets get disrupted when they experience a learning environment that challenges what they are used to; -How our awareness expands as we spend time in nature: we begin to see allies, tools and individuated beings; -A truly embodied perspective of empathy: working with natural systems requires us to move out of our self-referential networks and expand into neural territories that recognize how another living organism can perceive the world differently than us; -High-level patter

In this episode, I explore: -the difference between our autonomic and somatic nervous systems and why knowing the difference gives us power to change -biomechanisms we use to protect or defend ourselves that are tied to our past and may not be helpful to us in our current situation (as I am learning, these can be hard habits to break) -how we can experiment with new patterns using skeletal muscles to control our breath, voice, eyes, hands and body within our social interactions -10 key mechanical adjustments we can make to move in this world in ways that optimize our functioning and sense of fulfillment -how our hyper-focus on words & devices makes us lose touch with our bodies, with our environment and with all the non-verbal aspects of life The post Season 3 Episode 1 – Biomechanics of Human Communication and Social Intelligence appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Is it possible to take a painful and negative event from our past, and 're-purpose' it to become an empowering feature of our story, of our identity? The process of re-organizing neural circuits to integrate a negative past event into a more complex and mature perspective is tied to cognitive flexibility.  This flexibility is a major aspect of the healing process for moral injury. What's beautiful about the exploration of moral injury is that it helps us find ways to bring negative events into a new light.  In doing so, it exposes resilient and powerful aspects of the human response to stress.  The processes used to navigate moral injury shed light on how to help help all of us be more empowered and find new ways to contribute to the greater whole. In this episode, we explore the following: - what is moral injury - what is morality and how it can be used to improve energy efficiency and resilience of the human species - how forgiveness and flexibility help us activate highly sophisticated and evolved neural m

Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure.  Attachment is part of our neurophysiological operating system It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in turn helps us achieve higher levels... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 11 – The Neuroscience of Attachment and Emotion Regulation appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes Listen on Blubrry   Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’?   This can take various forms - like being able to share what’s on our mind and... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 10 – The Science of Feeling Understood appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Why do systems fall apart or become dysfunctional? A system can be a family, relationship, community, business, organization, society. The human mind-brain-body is also a system. One reason dysfunction can happen is related to hierarchy and ‘signal flow’. Hierarchies exist throughout nature and throughout human society. Hierarchies are best able to serve the system when there is efficient signal flow from subsystems to the higher levels and vice versa. We can see dysfunction happen when the highest levels of a hierarchy are -not serving the goals of the entire system -have communication channels dominated by a specific subgroup/subsystem -are blocking or suppressing efficient communication and signal flow from the subsystems Optimal functioning of a system requires a state of signal flow where all members or nodes feel ‘understood’. This experience of being understood is at the core of optimal system functioning within human systems. When we don’t feel understood, it means there is a block of signal flow.

In this podcast episode, I talk about something called ‘shifting the burden’. It’s about the topic of what we depend on ourselves for, and what we look to others to help us with. The balance of our dependence on ourselves and others - whether in adaptive maladaptive ways - is based on our first experiences with depending on someone. Many of us simply don’t know how deeply emotional of a subject this is. It is one of our most primitive, primal CORE-to-the-CORE experiences of being human… a battle between wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, and yet also knowing that one of our deepest desires is to connect in authentic ways with others. My reflection questions at the end of the episode are about your doubts, desires and dependencies - how they interplay on each other and how they’ve been formed over time - through your experiences with others.. and what they’ve doubted, desired and depended on in their own lives. I hope you find something in this episode helpful. The post Season 2 Episode 8 – Sh

Normal is based on historical data. It’s based on what has happened the most often in the past. Our past ‘normal’ can make it easy to not question if there is more that’s possible in terms of wellbeing and a deeper sense of meaning for our life. But what we really, truly, deeply need to understand is that the ‘normal mode’ of consuming and doing the same combination of movements day after day without challenging our brain-body to higher and higher levels of creation and exploration is not NATURAL. We are: COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS. Our NATURE is to adapt to ever-changing, increasingly difficult and complex situations that involve other complex systems so that our adaptive problem-solving faculties become more honed and finely tuned.  Many of our behaviors and patterns are blocking us from tapping into our most natural abilities. The post Season 2 Episode 7 – Normal versus Natural appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes Listen on Blubrry   When we focus on trying to 'fix' dysregulation without acknowledging how it emerged, we are conveying a message that somehow the anxiety or overreaction just ‘appeared’ because of an imbalance... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 6: Why are humans so anxious? and the dark side of mindfulness appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

The formation of self-identity and group identity through the lens of hyper-coherent networks, key features of what makes a system resilient.    (remember - your brain, your relationships and human society are all systems).   To help systems become more flexible and innovative, we need to understand the mechanisms of change. A mindset or paradigm shift is one of those mechanisms.   A level higher than that: being able to rise above paradigms altogether*.   This is what can free our mind to experiment with perspectives that are guided by our values - rather than only confirming a narrow field of vision based on our past, which is largely driven by our tribal identity. The post Season 2 Ep 5 – Resilience, Stability and Hyper-Coherent Networks appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

The human species has some pretty spectacular systems built into us to achieve mental, emotional and physiological states that most of us are not even really aware of.  We also have systems and features within us that make us very vulnerable to being influenced and 'programmed' into behavior that is not reflective of our most evolved neural circuitry. Technology is interfering with and manipulating those systems.  And the more we get to know how technology is interfering with those systems, the more we can get control over our internal state rather than let the tech companies (who do not have the best interests of the human brain and nervous system in mind) hack into our vulnerabilities.   The post Season 2 Episode 4 – Tech Addiction and the Social Dilemna appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

  Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes Listen on Blubrry     What do a viral video and a stampede of animals have in common? It's a mechanism that is also related to 'self-fulfilling prophecies', self-beliefs, anxiety and negative thinking... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 3 Feedback Loops appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

  Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes Listen on Blubrry   One of the most complex adaptive systems we know of is the brain*.    When we are trying to understand a complex system, one of the most important things... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 2- Your Brain’s Predictions and Paradigms appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Listen on Spotify Listen on iTunes Listen on Blubrry This episode focuses on the idea of systems thinking, and how we can use this 'lens' or paradigm as a way of expanding our thinking so we can see new ideas... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 1 – Systems Thinking appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

No two people ever experience reality in the same way: our senses and neural architecture are built up by our own lifetime of unique experiences. Our brain and senses are constantly narrowing down our world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 11 – This is what happens to your brain when you add diversity to your life appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Most growth mindset interventions don’t work because they focus on: changing ‘other people’s’ attitudes rather than on the mindset of the person who is teaching or leading catchphrases & posters rather than relationship & trust specific results, like improving standardized test scores* *this is literally the... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 10 – Can you make people ‘willing’ to change their mindset? appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

What matters is not how things are, but how they interact. – Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist, in his book, Reality is Not What It Seems ​​​​​​​ Relationships are the key to building our most powerful mind. Our relationships with others... READ MORE The post “Relational Minds” appeared first on Mindset Neuroscience.

In order to teach growth mindset, we need to be sure it’s coming from an authentic place. It seems that much growth mindset teaching is focused on changing the attitudes of others’, rather than looking at how we internalize and... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 9 – How to be more authentic when you teach growth mindset appeared first on Stefanie Faye.