Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom

Featuring Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

Neuropsychologist & author of the best-selling book Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom

• 4 steps to internalize positive experiences and heal pain and dysfunction
• Learn from the “Olympic athletes” of brain training (lessons from 2,500 years of contemplative practice)
• Understand the brain’s negativity bias, the greatest challenge in psychotherapy
• Work with the brain’s 3 motivational systems (Approach, Attach, Avoid)
• Strengthen the neural circuits of contentment, belonging and peace
• Teach clients self-directed neuroplasticity

Today’s unprecedented meeting of modern brain science and ancient contemplative wisdom offers you powerful new tools for changing the neural wiring and neurochemistry of the brain.

In this seminar, learn how to use contemplative neuroscience in down-to-earth ways to...

• Weave positive experiences into the fabric of the brain and self
• Stimulate and strengthen the neural circuits of empathy
• Help clients become more mindful

OUTLINE

The Promise of Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

• How the mind changes the brain
• Lessons from 2,500 years of meditative practice
• Neural circuits of self-compassion
• Getting on your own side
• Virtue, mindfulness and wisdom—resting on the neural functions of regulating, learning and selecting

The Challenge of Evolution

• Chasing carrots and dodging sticks
• The negativity bias of the brain
• How that bias undermines psychotherapy

The Power of Implicit Memory

• Memory systems, explicit and implicit
• The importance of inner resources
• Factors of neuroplasticity

Taking in the Good

• Turning good facts into good experiences
• Savoring positive emotions and perspectives
• Priming implicit memory systems
• Working with children
• Why it’s good to feel good
• Living gratefully

Clearing Old Pain

• Exploiting the “weak link” in memory consolidation
• Pairing positive experiences with old pain
• Special considerations for trauma

Natural Happiness

• The resting state of the brain: Calm, contented, caring
• The brain’s three motivational systems: Approach, Attach, Avoid
• The reactive mode of greed, heartache and hatred (broadly defined)
• How to build up the neural circuits of the responsive mode of gladness, love and peace

OBJECTIVES

• Describe major mechanisms of neuroplasticity.
• Explain how to build self-compassion into the brain.
• Describe the evolutionary basis of the brain’s negativity bias.
• Summarize the three basic steps of “taking in the good” (TIG).
• Integrate the fourth step of TIG to heal painful experiences.
• Explain how to activate contentment, belonging and peace.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a neuropsychologist and author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom (in 20 languages) and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time (in 8 languages). Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he’s been an invited speaker at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and taught in meditation centers worldwide.

An authority on self-directed neuroplasticity, Dr. Hanson’s work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, FoxBusiness, Consumer Reports Health, U.S News and World Report, and O Magazine, and he has several audio programs with Sounds True. He edits the Wise Brain Bulletin, and his weekly e-newsletter - Just One Thing - has over 35,000 subscribers, and also appears on Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and other major websites. Dr. Hanson is a trustee of Saybrook University and served on the board of Spirit Rock Meditation Center for nine years.

For more information, please see his full profile at www.RickHanson.net.

To order the book, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom, please visit our product store.

To order the book, Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time, please visit our product store.

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