I began this exploration of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and Indian psychology by exploring the connection between the functions of the mid prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and what in Indian psychology is known as the “buddhi” or, as Sri Aurobindo translates it, the “intelligent will.” I chose this because Dan Siegel, the originator of IPNB, puts so much focus on the MPFC as the means of integrating the various aspects of the mind, emotions and body.
However, I think this was a mistake. The best place to start, I think, is with a metaphor that Siegel developed, called the “Wheel of awareness.”
IPNB and “The wheel of awareness”
Siegel speaks of awareness as being like a wheel. On the rim of the wheel are all the things we are aware of – including external events, people, places, etc., and internal phenomena such as thoughts, feelings, memories, hopes, desires, etc. By contrast, in the hub, the center of the wheel, there is simply awareness. As Siegel puts it, as our consciousness becomes progressively more integrated (in large part due to the development o the mid prefrontal cortex and its naturally integrative capacity), we learn more and more to “distinguish the experience of knowing – the wheel’s hub – from that which is known – the wheel’s rim.”
For those familiar with Indian psychology, this is the distinction between the witness and the objects of awareness. Of course, I think the Indian psychology version is far more profound. But having said that, I think that IPNB is the richest analogue to Indian psychology I’ve ever found in contemporary neuroscience or psychology.
The Surface and the Depths of the Ocean
Actually, Siegel uses an ancient Indian metaphor to describe the hub. He compares our mind to an ocean, with the rim representing the surface, and the hub representing the deep tranquility, calm, and peace at the depths of the ocean. As we develop our capacity for “coming back to the hub,” we find there is always a “sanctuary” of safety, contentment, caring and compassion within.
Bonnie Badenoch is a clinician who teaches IPNB at Portland State University. In her book, “Being a Brain Wise Therapist,” she describes what it is like to develop this ability to “come back to the hub” in the midst of one’s daily life. “Life at the hub of the mind is filled with a sense of freshness, compassion, tranquility, gentle humor and in some sense mastery… it comes as a result of cultivating the ability to not seek control, but instead to pay kind attention, on purpose, without grasping onto judgments, to whatever arises in the mind from moment ot moment.. an acceptance of whatever is arising as it arises.”
Remembering to Breathe
On our website, www.remember-to-breathe.org, we use the phrase “remember to breathe” both literally and figuratively. Literally, it means to pause in the midst of activity and take a long, slow breath. Figuratively, it means to use your breath – or whatever other means you choose – to “come back to the hub”.
Dan Siegel, in his textbook of IPNB, “The Developing Mind”, has a beautiful passage in which he describes the effects of “remembering to breathe” or “coming back to hub”. He states that as we more and more remember to come back to the “hub”, we feel more connected to others, and connected to a greater “interconnected whole.”
Siegel continues: “We may come to sense the infinite possibility of awareness contained within the differentiated inner hub. This awareness often gives rise to a sense of knowing that the body, a point on the rim, is only one of many ways to define what “the self” actually is… A broader view is that a self is a part of a much larger interconnected whole:
“[Scientific] studies of happiness, health and wisdom each reveal that positive attributes are associated with helping others and giving back to the world… We achieve a deep sense of meaning and accomplishment when we are devoted to something beyond our personal individual concerns. Integration creates health and expands our sense of who we are in life, connecting us to others and a wider sense of ourselves. Being compassionate to others, and to ourselves, is a natural outcome of the healthy development of the mind. Kindness and compassion are integration made visible. If we take on the challenge of integration across its many domains, we may just be able to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people here now, and for future generations to come.”
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In future posts, I’ll add some more about the “hub” (or as we refer to it on our website, the “core”) from the perspective of IPNB. Then I’ll explore parallels in Indian psychology – more specifically, what Sri Aurobindo refers to as “the psychic being” – the Purusha “no bigger than a thumb” that (metaphorically) resides in our heart, at the “core” of our being (and I’ll try to explain why I find the Indian psychological understanding of this “core” is far, far more complex, richer and more profound than what can be found in the best of our current neuroscience or psychology, even in IPMB).
I welcome your feedback, either here in the comments section, or sent to donsalmon7@gmail.com. Thanks!
hi, i have been reading Dr seigal from last one year.I am aspiring to go into research in IPNB.I am still hung on the research proposal.I have a 5 year old son and IPNB has really helped me out to look at him from brain wise manner.Which has really impacted my relationship with him positively.
Hi Manju:
Thanks for stopping by. Yes, Dan Siegel’s work is quite interesting. Over about 5 years, I regularly gave my patients copies of Dan’s book, ‘The Whole Brain Child,” to look at. I think it’s the easiest and most accessible of all of his books. Most of them found it very useful.
As far as a research topic, there’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done exploring the effects of Siegel’s “Wheel of Awareness.”. His book “Awareness,” which came out – I think – in 2018 – gives much more detail about the ideas and research associated with the wheel metaphor.
You might look at existing research on mindfulness. Siegels’ wheel metaphor points to what some are callign “effortless mindfulness.” – the fact that the awareness at the center of the wheel is not something you have to make an effort to create or sustain – it’s simply always present, though we often do not attend to it.
If you look at Loch Kelly’s book, ‘Shift Into Freedom,” you’ll see that he mentions an informal experiment he did with a group of 80 people with the Zen meditation technique of breathe counting.
One group tried to count their breath while engaged in effortful attention, the other using effortless attention. The effortful attention couldn’t keep track fo their breath, while all 40 people in the effortless group had no difficulty keeping track.
If you want to explore some more possibilities for research, feel free to contact me at http://www.remember-to-breathe.org.
I am enjoying Dan Siegel’s book but as I read, more and more questions pop up, as he relates everything through the physical synapses of the brain, which I can see as an outer mechanism or instrument to facilitate information transfer and function of an individuated being in a physical environment, but that environement contains more the just the physical dimension of consciousness, ie. vital (life energy) , mind (beyond or prior to brain). He really gets to me when he relates emotion just to that one physical system. I have to remember that this is his narrow neuro focus even if goes beyond the norm.
However, even in Tibetan Buddhism mindfulness practice would clearly, from the early stages, guide one to come out of the neurosis and organizing capacity mind generates and dominates with, and reside in the “spaciousness” of the heart. But Siegel, keeps refer to the spaciousness of the mind as a function or neural integration? So what do you think would be the qualities of the heart/vital in human consciousness, function , sustaining, creating and relating to self and others, aside from or beyond or other than by resonance, coherence, mirroring etc. of the neural cortexes?
These are wonderful questions, and they really illuminate the challenges of keeping one’s language within a very limited, materialistically acceptable domain.
While it’s true there are quite a few people open to any New Age assertion, the kinds of well educated readers that make up Dan Siegel’s intended audience would have a great deal of difficulty with the claims of non-physical energies (vital, or Life energy” for example).
But since you and I share an intuition of much that is non-physical, it is challenging for us to read Siegel’s writing and keep in mind the limitations within which he writes. I only recently found out he’s involved in research on the Enneagram, and in other respects is quite open to the possibility the the brain and the physical body does not limit consciousness. But he is quiet about this, for the most part, in his popular – and even more so – academic writings.
To get to your point about the heart (and this ties in well with the first point about Siegel) – the thing I find most appealing about his writings is his distinction between awareness and the objects of awareness. He uses the metaphor of a “wheel of awareness” to describe awareness (the hub of the wheel) and the contents of the wheel (arrayed around the rim of the wheel).
In his description of the hub (or what we call “the core”) his words come quite close (and some cases, are identical) to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s description of the psychic being.
For example, yesterday I gave a talk to the police in which I repeatedly spoke of the “core” – and at least some of them had no difficulty relating it to the inner Christ (which if I understand Mother correctly, is essentially similar if not the same as the psychic being; or at least, the psychic entity – the Divine spark within all). It truly amazes me that a very well respected, mainstream scientist is even indirectly referring to such an essential spiritual reality.
So I think it’s ok at least for now for Siegel to be so circumspect. if it allows him to point to deeper spiritual realities without being lumped together with Chopra and Zukav and Tolle, I think that’s great (not that those 3 are so terrible, but their writing is often so sloppy and claims all over the place, it makes the kind of work I’m interested in SO much harder to do – whereas Siegels’ VERY cautious approach is much much more helpful for otherwise skeptical scientists).
Final note – I don’t have it in front of me – but in Robert Thurman’s commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he has a passage describing the “soul” which incarnates from life to life which is written in terms almost identical to the psychic being. Thurman – a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and in fact, the chair of Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia and a great admirer of Sri Aurobindo, asserts that there is no essential difference in regard to this soul between Buddhism and Hinduism. Quite remarkable, I think.
Someone asked me how it could be that a neuroscientist – who studies primarily brain activity – would have anything significant to say about the witness, or the psychic being. So I thought it might be helpful to add a bit more about Siegel.
Dan Siegel was trained as a pediatric psychiatrist. His interest in issues related to IPNB started in medical school. He was confused as to how a profession dedicated to dealing with mental health could have so little information about the mind. In fact, he loves to tell a story about how he has gone around the world, talking to leading specialists in psychiatry, neuroscience, cognitive science and even philosophy of mind, and nobody has a definition of “mind” that they can agree on.
One day, he got together a large group of leading professionals in these various specialties, and they came up with mind as that which regulates the flow of information and energy in the brain, body and between people – hence, “interpersonal neurobiology.” It may not be very poetic (and may leave a lot to be desired from the viewpoint of indian psychology) but within these professions, he has now asked, I think, over 2000 experts and to date, everyone has accepted that definition.
Well, in developing IPNB, he didn’t just rely on brain studies. IPNB is based on over 12 disciplines, including physics (chaos and complexity theory), evolutionary biology, attachment theory, developmental and personality psychology, and at least half dozen others. The research methods are not just studies of the brain, but include qualitative (otherwise known as phenomenological) methods, field studies, observational studies, psychological tests and questionnaires, and a host of others, allowing for a very rich foundation from which to develop the theories and practices of IPNB.
On our site, we include the research of heartmath (regarding the “heart brain”) because we think that’s an element that has a strong potential to link to the psychic being and represents something that we feel is somewhat missing in the IPNB literature. We also include a number of others, of course, including Iain McGilchrist’s studies of left right brain differences (left mode and right mode, to be precise) and Les Fehmi’s remarkable studies of different attention styles, which provides a very practical, useful application of the various functions of the MPFC.
I hope that background helps make it a bit clearer.
oh, and I forgot to mention – Siegel quite strongly refuses to reduce mind to brain. He allows for the possibility that mind is primary and brain is a reflection of mind. This is, to my knowledge, almost unique in modern neuroscience or psychiatry (a few exceptions are Jeffrey Schwartz, Stanislov Grof and Dean Radin, but I think there may be only a few dozen or so more; otherwise the hundreds of thousands of cognitive scientists around the world generally see “mind” simply as an activity of the physical brain).
This also, i think – particularly when combined with parapsychological and lucid dream research – provides a number of avenues for connecting with Indian psychology. Some of the most promising connections within these areas are the global consciousness studies of Dean Radin (of the Noetic Sciences Institute) and Roland McCraty (of Heartmath).
If you put together the psychic being connection to the heartmath research, the relationship of the “quiet mind” (Sri Aurobindo’s phrase) and the MPFC, as well as the buddhi and MPFC, and the global consciousness studies, psi and lucid dream research, you have almost all the elements that the Mother describes in her writings on education, with the exception of the last section on spiritual and supramental education. And actually, there is now a research center based at New York University which is quite explicitly exploring non-duality – with an explicit connection to Advaita Vedanta and Dzogchen, among other Indo-Tibetan spiritualities, so there is a connection at least to “Spiritual” education as well.
Now, is there anybody who sees a connection between the supramental consciousness Mother and Sri Aurobindo wrote about and what is going on in science nowadays? I’m not going to touch that one for now!:>)))
D: Now, is there anybody who sees a connection between the supramental consciousness Mother and Sri Aurobindo wrote about and what is going on in science nowadays?<
R: Don very happy to see you are doing such an excellent job in following up with these lines of psychological research mentioned in your posts. I agree with most of what you say above however, since blog comment sections are more about quibbles than agreements I would seek the following clarification if you ever get the time:
In response to your hypothetical question I actually am not sure why one would need to adopt an explanation for current scientific practices that involve Supermind or any other metaphysical vehicle. Since science evolves by its own methodologies, successive epistemologies and cultural imperatives, any new insights it garners is done through the course of research whose discoveries lead to ruptures with past practices. (at least ideally because the cultural imperatives are often understated in science)
That some eastern elements of psychology are being integrated to western psychological methods does not necessarily lead to the need to invoke a metaphysical (logocentric) explanation. (aka supermind)
If these therapies work they work and can be correlated with statistical analysis that determines their effectiveness. However, while such psychological practices may lead to individual wellness , I would raise another equally important question aka: whether the effectiveness of Indian or other related Western therapies will necessarily lead to either a better self or society?
Hope I am not too off topic here but to make that leap between individual and societal wellbeing is deeply problematic, as is the view that a person practicing these advance psychological disciplines will necessarily make them into better people. (How many of those who tried to throw the author of the Lives of Sri Aurobindo in jail or depot him for a nonexistent blasphemy were in fact regular practitioners of witness and other types of meditation? Of course the PH incident leads one to suspect the entire Molhotra supported project of an Indian psychology renaissance itself )
In fact, to cite the example of the large scale adaptation of mindfulness meditation, mindfulness training in contemporary Western society is in all too many instance just a way to facilitate -through individual stress reduction- the creation of more efficient/productive subjects visa vie the system of global capitalism whose intent is in creating so many billions of consumers (aka whose intent is the creation of false consciousness).
Many of the mindfulness practices today -as are the enlightenment industries- are just different forms of corporatist strategies. The last time I was in Pondi I encountered several sadhus whose main achievement was boasting of the meditations they lead at Indian IT companies in Bangalore. (who like other IT corporations measure success by the value they can provide to shareholder irregardless of the social benefits) If you have time please see the excellent article by Purser on mcMindfulness:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-purser/beyond-mcmindfulness_b_3519289.html
So based on the above -although they may make some people feel better- I am not sure the simple undertaking of any of the psychological practices you mention in your excellent articles will necessarily lead to any enlightened revelations of self or ethical approaches to the world, let alone to the world transforming event that the supramental manifestation implies.
In fact, I would ask the question that without integrating some type of critical social dimension to this work on individual psychological functioning how is it that this type of psychological research will have much of any impact on the world at all? And here is the assertion I would make to support this claim:
The "I" is always part of the "We" whom without, the “I” would never come to be. The indivdual inherits language, customs, a disposition towards others and an environment that tacitly grounds one in a lifeworld. Identity derives largely from membership within an ethno-cultural “We”. In assuming this interpellation as a subject one subordinates oneself to a process of subjectivication concurrent with a multitude of other subjects who mutually recognize one another’s inclusion within the “We” . The past or culture, the already there of history, that we are born into is a result of the "I's" embeddeness is a "We", therefore to split off the "I" from the "We" and make it into a distinct ontological unit as it seems to be treated in Indian psychology would be deeply problematic.
It seems to me the psychological approaches in your well done illustrations still exclusively relate to the ontology of an essentialist self, whose incarnation can be teased apart from its social-cultural milieu, even though the identity the subject assumes is in large part a representation of the socio-culture circumstances it is born into.
Wouldn't an integral psychology really be about not only self but also societal transformation? In this respect the self congratulatory thinking implicit in the phrase "change yourself and change the world" would be a bit naive.
best
Rich
Hi Rich – I’m actually in agreement with all your “quibbles.” :>)))
My IPI posts have focused so far on individual change, but if it appears that I’m favoring this over societal change, then it’s because I haven’t yet conveyed the whole picture.
We focus on this on our website, on a page we call, “The Most Important Page” http://www.remember-to-breathe.org/The-Most-Important-Page.html (We also allude to it on the “The Amazing Brain” page with the story about the cellist of Sarajevo – http://www.remember-to-breathe.org/Your-Amazing-Brain.html
As for the potential misuse of mindfulness, Alan Wallace has written beautifully about the problem of extracting mindfulness from the Buddhist tradition, and leaving behind the ethical and spiritual context. He has a particularly good critique in his book, “Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic.” I addressed the same topic point in “What If We Took Indian Psychology Seriously?” (inspired by a 2001 conversation with Peter Heehs, at his home in Pondy, by the way:>)
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_es/i_es_salmo_psych_frameset.htm
And finally, I agree that if one’s primary interest in scientific research is on therapeutic change, there’s no need to consider philosophic issues. I talk more about this in “Shaving Science With Ockham’s Razor.” http://www.integralworld.net/salmon3.html
Best,
Don
Yes Don, A little clearer, and I did notice that he uses mind as prior to brain. Surprised to hear of his integration of Physics, as he confuses me greatly at times…until I caught on to his style and meaning of the usage of the word dimension, as he keeps using it to actually only describe different components of the physical brain and their specific functions and relations all within the same physical “dimension” of the neural system.
You have noted including Heartmath research on your site in relation to the psychic being. So, not being as academically well read or trained as you, could you summarize a bit some specifics of this research. particularly, in regards to my question above about the qualitative and functional differences of the vital/emotional vs mind vs physical brain in meditation practices , as different “dimensions” of consciousness, which so far am not gaining clarity of here or with Siegel. Maybe I should go to your site which is ? Remember to Breathe?
Hi Rick: Just saw your comment. Probably the best thing I can say is go to our site! (“shameless self-promotion division” speaking here:>)
http://www.remember-to-breathe.org/Meditation.html
at the bottom of this page there’s a little bit on “heartfulness”. You might enjoy browsing around the heartmath site (www.heartmath.com or http://www.heartmath.org – the “.org” site is more research oriented, the .com is commercial.)
We are just finishing up a video for practicing “heart-centering” and hope to have it up before not too long. We’re also going to add some pages on heart centering in the next few months. Hope you take a look and let us know how to improve them!