Mindset Neuroscience Podcast

“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.” ― Esther Perel   “And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person...

The post Season 2 Ep 6: Love, Purpose and Relational Realities appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” * ― Leo Tolstoy   Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts We are in the most interconnected period that humanity has ever experienced. The...

The post Season 3 Episode 5: Why social rejection is so scary – the science of communication, maturity and purpose appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

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...

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...

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 pattern recognition: how get the best possible solution and sustainable way of achieving a goal by expanding the space-time horizon and creating maps to see multiple systems working together across long periods of time

The post Season 3 Episode 2 – Interview with Jason Knight: Natural Intelligence and Embodied Mindsets appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

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.

What is moral injury, and how can we use it as a path to cognitive flexibility, sense of purpose and forgiveness?

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 mechanisms
- that brain activations that are different in trauma compared with moral injury
- how the human species is an interconnected network of nodes that requires social signaling for trust and cooperation

The post Season 2 Episode 12 – Moral Injury, Forgiveness and Cognitive Flexibility appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

Attachment theory is not a 'theory'.. it's a part of our neurophysiological operating system Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure.  It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in...

The post Season 2 Episode 11 – The Neuroscience of Attachment and Emotion Regulation appeared first on Stefanie Faye.

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 the other person holding space for us to explain. It...

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.

This episode covers the idea of hierarchies and signal flow - and what happens when hierarchies don’t serve the goals of the entire system.

In upcoming articles, I’ll be bringing this concept back down to more personal and interpersonal levels.

The post Season 2 Episode 9 – Hierarchies and Signal Flow appeared first on Stefanie Faye.