So I'd like to invite you into a meditation that will last around 40 minutes.
You can lie down or sit comfortably.
You can get some pillows on the floor,
Whatever would be most comfortable for you.
So once you've found a relaxed and easy position,
Bring your awareness up to the eyes.
And allow them to softly close.
As you close your eyes to the outer world.
Just greet the inner landscape to you and notice your closed eyelids.
We're going to be going on a journey.
In this inner world.
So noticing your closed eyelids,
Go ahead and become aware of your breath.
Feel it going in and out of your nostrils.
You might notice your chest rising and falling.
Or you might feel it in your stomach.
Just become aware of your breathing and I invite you to take.
Some fuller breaths in a relaxed way.
We are going on a journey through the nine domains.
As you hear my words,
Allow whatever arises for you,
Whether it's pictures or colors or words or sensations.
All are welcome.
And we will begin in an ideal childhood.
See yourself.
As an infant.
Being loved and cherished.
Imagine someone who embodies a loving mother energy.
And just see yourself being held lovingly.
You can even put your arms in a cradle position.
And raw.
And we're going to try humming.
So go ahead and make a humming noise.
You can hum whatever you like or you can hum along with me.
You're just gonna.
.
.
Imagine that that loving mother energy is humming.
And soothing and loving you as an innocent infant.
This is the end.
Hello.
You.
Feel how loved you are.
By Ideal Mom.
Feel her love.
Because you're so loved.
You feel love inside you and all around you.
Now,
Imagine ideal dad.
Standing next to Ideal Mom.
He is gentle and kind.
And compared to you,
A small baby,
He has big hands.
Just imagine him caressing your face.
You can even put your hands on your face.
Maybe he might be silly and be playing peekaboo with you.
You're just going to imagine,
Again,
What we're going to do is you're going to hum.
You're going to imagine your ideal dad singing to you through humming.
So go ahead and hum with me.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
I hope you enjoyed this video,
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Imagine being a baby.
The way that people smile at babies,
The way you smile at a baby.
Imagine yourself being the baby receiving all those smiles.
Like sunlight,
Like a flower receiving sunlight.
See yourself all bundled up in blankets,
Really warm and cradled by ideal mom and dad.
And when you get upset,
See,
I do mom soothing you.
Same with Ideal Dad.
See him attuning to you.
And holding you.
And rocking you.
You are being co-regulated.
This is a process where you're mutually influencing each other's states across time.
When you cry loud.
Grown-ups let you know that you're going to be okay.
Not only are your signals perceived and made sense of by your caregivers,
But you're responded to in a timely and effective manner.
This creates a secure base within you and between you and them.
See yourself suddenly becoming very angry the way your fists tighten up in a ball and you get red in the face.
See your ideal mom soothing you and rocking you to sleep?
And wrapping you in a blanket.
And then everyone is around the dinner table laughing and having fun.
So the feeling came and it passed.
And then after dinner,
Everyone is playing games.
You learn in this family that feelings,
Whether big or small,
They come and go.
And everyone experiences them.
And no matter how you feel.
Your ideal mom and ideal dad,
They love and cherish you.
Imagine yourself growing from being a baby to being a toddler to a four-year-old.
See yourself with a friend.
Spinning circles outside.
Playing follow the leader.
Using your imagination.
Be a bear.
Or a tiger getting ready to pounce.
You love animals.
Your friend Zach,
He wants the blue block.
You're going to play blocks together now.
And you feel angry because you want the green block and the blue block together.
But you grab another toy that's sitting there.
And you put it against your chest.
And you grab the yellow block.
And you continue to make the tower bigger and bigger.
And then suddenly when it's really big,
You just kick it over and you don't know why.
Zach bursts out crying and you feel bad but something inside you feels good.
Feelings are confusing.
So feelings and the friends,
They come and go like the days.
But interpersonally,
You learn how to play together.
You honor differences and you caringly connect even sometimes when there's relationship rupture like what happened with the tower and Zach that day.
That's how we differentiate and link in relationships.
We honor differences and we caringly connect,
Just the way we do in the family and with friends.
You're not always getting it.
It's not always working out.
But more or less,
Relationship ruptures are repaired and you feel safe and secure.
You learn when you make mistakes or when other people have strong emotions that things can get worked out.
And this is your life and your ideal family.
This differentiating and linking.
This honoring differences and caringly connecting.
It's mirrored in your school systems and in wider community systems.
It's such an incredible feeling of belonging and connectedness,
Of autonomy and vulnerability.
Just hold the space.
For this ideal childhood.
This ideal family.
In this ideal world.
That you can hold in your mind's eye using your imagination.
See yourself growing bigger.
Four,
Five,
Six,
Seven.
You have choice in your life,
And you have connection.
And these two words are really important to return to.
Calm,
Any stress you have in your life.
You are safe,
Seen,
Soothed,
And secure.
The four S's of attachment.
This brings you back to your calmer,
Happier self.
In your family when someone withdraws.
When someone is too pushy or intrudes.
Or when someone dismisses too much,
Someone says something.
Because this is called relationship rupture,
And it hurts.
And when connection is disrupted,
It doesn't feel good.
When we have Rejection,
It registers in the same part as our brain as the physical pain of,
Say,
Being stabbed by a knife.
So it hurts when there's disruption in a relationship.
And while it's not perfect,
Our family works hard to make things better when there is disconnection.
One time mommy and daddy went away for a week and you were so mad.
But they took you to your favorite playground right when they got back.
They acknowledged your feelings and attuned to you.
You remember this relationship rupture and you remember the repair because you felt so much better after they did the repair and after they were back.
Growing up.
You learned how important people are,
Including how they think and feel and how you think and feel.
You learned that's called insight and empathy.
Those are like maps of minds.
I can have a map of my mind or of your mind.
And this skill of mind mapping is called mindsight or mentalization.
You learned that having this skill makes you more socially and emotionally intelligent.
And now you're growing up.
You're age 8 and 9 and 10 and 11 and 12.
Honoring differences and caringly connecting,
It sure seemed easier when you were younger.
Since then,
You've learned bigger subjects,
Like when Granddad passed away or Billy the dog died.
You had to navigate uncertainty.
You sort of knew people and pets died,
But.
.
.
It doesn't feel good to think about it.
And so usually you don't.
But when I receive love from mom or dad,
Like at grandpa's funeral,
That made you feel like you had a secure base.
And it made the bad feelings less intense.
As you're thinking about this right now,
Your thoughts drift to your favorite toys and books.
And how much you like to play hide-and-go-seek with the neighborhood friends.
And you have a pet turtle.
With that special name you gave it.
See yourself age 13 and 14 and 15 and 16.
Now you're in high school.
Life is full of new learning and friendships and responsibilities and choice.
Your family is good at connecting,
But sometimes they don't understand you.
When you want to do your hair differently or talk a new way.
Ideal mom and ideal dad,
They don't seem so ideal anymore.
And you don't always want to embrace and honor differences.
Sometimes you get so mad.
And you don't like to think about their mind map.
You don't want to have empathy.
You just want to be what you are right now.
You're navigating having crushes and new feelings of romantic love.
At school,
You're really connected to your best friend,
And that helps you get through the BS of all the focus on the future.
See yourself growing to 20.
17,
18,
19,
20.
A healthy 20-year-old in an ideal world.
You're going to merge that 20-year-old with your 20-year-old.
Present current day self right now.
The two of you together are going to magically appear in a sacred space.
So it can be a place in nature.
You're sitting next to an ocean.
Or a lake.
A place that's special and safe.
As you look out on the water.
Imagine that it represents your mind.
On the surface can be choppy waves,
A windy feeling,
Or different states.
But deep,
Deep,
Deep beneath the surface,
It is calm and clear.
Connect to that 20-year-old.
And to yourself.
Have both of them merged together.
Sitting next to the ocean or the lake.
And at the same time going deep to the bottom of the ocean where it's very peaceful.
Imagine you're at the bottom of the ocean and you're looking up.
And you can see the choppy waves at the top,
But it's so calm and peaceful at the bottom.
Focusing like this brings you to a place of openness and tranquility to whatever arises on the surface.
Where you are right now is the heart of response flexibility.
You have space to pause between impulse and action.
Right now,
It is if your whole imagined life up until this moment brought you to this tranquility and peace.
So what is it that's on your mind today?
What's rippling on the surface?
Go ahead and feel into it right now.
Whatever is on your mind,
Know that at the same time that that is on the surface.
And there coexists deep,
Deep below a stillness and peace and a feeling of connectedness with all of life.
In neurobiology,
We call this place the open plane of possibility or the hub of the wheel.
But the experience of the feeling of safety and connectedness sometimes called love or God or clarity or empty yet full,
Whatever you call it right now as you dwell in it.
That's what matters.
That stillness and peace at the bottom of the ocean,
It can protect you.
So if there's any kind of stickiness or heaviness on the surface,
Imagine that you have a special eraser.
That allows you to smooth out that stickiness or heaviness,
And it lightens you a little bit.
And you're able to sink more deeply into your body,
Into a deeper state of relaxation.
The bottom of the ocean is called knowing.
And the surface is called the known.
Our awareness or our consciousness.
It's always integrating,
This knowing and this known.
It's the skill of the first domain.
Of consciousness to integrate the knowing and the known.
Take a moment more and feel this calm,
Centered place.
And pick whatever word or words or no words.
Resonate for you.
Let this all-pervasive feeling of love and peace and over,
Over,
Over,
Over expansive energy fill you up.
You're safe and seen and soothed and secure.
You're feeling tranquility,
Kindness.
How you connect to other people is intimately connected to how you connect inside.
Your mind is an unfolding process.
It's embodied and relational.
It regulates energy flow all the time.
It's been doing this during the meditation and when imagining this ideal childhood.
Embodied and relational.
When you're successfully co-regulated.
This develops your capacity to self-regulate.
And it's the reason why you can calm yourself down now.
Because you merged with that 20-year-old who had an ideal childhood.
In your imagination,
You are able to access evolutionarily a calm nervous system that lives inside you.
When there's a loud noise around you.
Or a loud noise inside you,
Like an inner critical voice,
That's part of the knowns.
That choppy wave on the surface.
And when you have some stillness inside you,
It strengthens your capacity to differentiate from that loud noise and link to the calm inside you.
By being able to differentiate from the noise and link to a feeling of calm inside you.
And also feeling the calm in the nature around you.
This allows all eight domains of relating to align.
As you achieve these eight domains and you enter the ninth,
Your experience of being a solo self.
Shifts.
And you're less an I.
And more interconnected with life around you.
And you realize how much your breath.
And the breath of people around you is shared.
This is identity integration,
The ninth domain.
Right now,
You feel balanced.
You can experience the knowns,
The up and down in life,
And you can dwell in the knowing.
You feel like you have the resources inside you and around you to manage the winds of adversity and change.
Taking a relaxing breath,
We're going to move from the first domain to the second domain and integrate your two hemispheres,
Thinking about something you're passionate about.
Coming into adulthood,
A 20-year-old often asks why.
A question that comes from the left hemisphere mode of processing.
Your current self merged with this imagined ideal 20-year-old.
Having asked why many times in your life,
You have become passionate about.
It can be a project or a cause.
Think about that passion right now.
You're going to use your left hemisphere to logically and linearly act on your passion.
How do you calculate the best use of your time and energy and resources knowing that they're limited?
How do you use language to optimally make a contribution in this passion of yours?
All those thoughts are coming from your lex hemisphere way of being.
You have this passion inside you.
You experience it in your body,
We're gonna come back to that,
The experiencer,
The right hemisphere.
Right now.
The narrator,
The left hemisphere,
Is at the forefront,
Where there's a little bit of separation from that passion,
A little bit of detached observing.
Of that passion so that you can calculate the best use of your time and resources.
Both hemispheres are so important.
How are you going to make best use of your resources?
Because this passion is really important to you.
So take a deep breath.
It's a question you can revisit later.
We're going to go over to the right hemisphere.
Feel this passion again.
This thing that gives you meaning and purpose.
Switch from the left hemisphere's list.
And transition to the right hemisphere's way of being.
It's not like a line that has a beginning and a middle and an end.
It's more like a circle or a sphere whose center is everywhere,
Like this deep,
Deep ocean.
It's like art or beauty or aesthetics.
You feel this thing and it's part of you.
It's nonverbal.
It's an experience of your whole body.
Feel the specific sensations and feelings in your body as you think about this thing that you're passionate about.
It can be a pleasant pulsating,
A live buzzing.
It can be in your face or in your smile or in your fingers.
It has a timelessness to it.
You're attached to it and it's attached to you and you're so interrelated.
This is what it's like to dwell in your right hemisphere.
It's a different way of being in the world.
It's like the left leg and the right leg when you dance.
You need both modes of processing to really make the most of that passion.
And the corpus callosum that links the two,
Which is about 2% of your total neurons.
Is such an important 2%.
You can take a deep breath in and just imagine it going into the center of your head.
Just glowing some loving-kindness.
Right into your corpus callosum.
You want that region to be robust with lots of integrative fibers.
And you do meditations like this one right now because you know that it's growing those integrative fibers.
It also grows the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex,
Three extremely important integrative structures in the brain,
This engaging in meditation,
This focusing your attention in a specific reason,
In a specific way,
On purpose,
But also with calm.
See yourself meditating regularly right now in your mind's eye.
See yourself loving your brain and integrating it and connecting better with yourself and with others.
Taking a deep breath right now,
We're going to enter into the third domain.
Which is about integrating your nervous system,
Becoming more calm,
And accessing the prefrontal cortex.
So when you stand up and move,
It activates some aspect of your sympathetic nervous system.
So move your arms a little bit right now.
You can wiggle your fingers if you're feeling really relaxed,
Or you can do more aggressive arm movements.
Whatever you feel like doing,
Just move a little bit.
And then relax the movement.
And notice if there's like a mild tingling.
What's there after the movement,
Like a shadow that brushes across?
That's the sympathetic nervous system.
And right now,
After you stop doing the movement and you slow down and you relax your whole body a little deeper.
You can go back to that rest and digest,
That parasympathetic nervous system.
Calm.
And you have choice.
You have choice with your breath when you breathe in and out.
It can be automatic or can be something that you focus your attention on and change your state with.
So you could take some deeper breaths right now,
Just breathing in.
During a long exhale.
And if you're comfortable,
Just keep doing that,
Taking in a deep breath.
Really making that exhale as long as you can.
Just imagine that as you blow out that you're just blowing love onto your brain and all those structures you want to integrate.
So breathing in.
Doing a long exhale.
Breathing love like a fan.
All over your brain.
When you breathe out a long exhale,
That puts you more in the parasympathetic state.
So you have choice to be aware of the sympathetic,
The first tiny start of that fight flight,
And to be aware of the very start of the parasympathetic rest and digest.
We call those cues of danger.
And cues of safety.
The more we become conscious of both those,
The more that we feel like we have choice.
In this third domain.
So just like you meditate to grow the integrated fibers of your corpus callosum for the second domain,
You also do that to grow the integrated fibers of your prefrontal cortex,
Which is this place,
Just imagine behind your eyes.
You can breathe in behind your eyes,
About two inches,
Just breathing in.
Glowing kindness there,
Focusing your attention there.
You have more integrative,
You have more neurons here.
You have cortical columns that stack six high.
You have higher reasoning here.
Response,
Flexibility,
Empathy,
Insight.
You can regulate your nervous system.
You can regulate your emotions.
You can engage in what's called attunement.
You can unlearn a fear.
That's called fear modulation.
And morality and intuition.
Those are all higher functions,
Functions of the prefrontal cortex.
Together,
These are generally referred to as executive function.
The more you're able to calm your nervous system,
The more you take blood flow away from the amygdala and the limbic regions into the prefrontal cortex region,
And you're able to be curious with what's called a COLE mindset.
COLE stands for curious,
Open,
Accepting,
And loving.
It is the bedrock for presence.
When we've achieved this third domain,
We have more presence.
And the more awareness and presence you have,
Including awareness of your body sensations,
Which is technically called interoception.
The more you possess what's called a wide window of tolerance.
It's like a wide and deep swimming pool where all your feelings are.
This window represents your river of neural integration that we've been traveling on.
All these many months.
And the more access you have to these nine functions,
Like responding flexibly.
Attuning to people and yourself.
Unlearning fears.
The more you experience a harmonious faces flow down your river of integration.
Which is flexibility and adaptability and coherence and you're energized and you're stable and it's just a harmonious flow as you're integrated and flowing down your river.
Take a relaxing breath.
We're about to enter the fourth domain.
This domain is where you're able to heel-stuck memories.
And we need the fifth domain too,
Which is the story of your life.
By changing your story,
You can go back to memories and change them.
So we need the fourth and the fifth domain.
Right now,
Just scan your memories.
And pick one.
A difficult circumstance.
Something happened in your past.
Once you've picked a difficult memory,
It could be something that happened yesterday or last week or a year ago,
20 years ago,
Whatever memory you chose.
Hold it in your hand right now and look at it with eyes of compassion.
As you recall the memory,
Cradle it preciously like a young child.
Hold it in a blanket and soothe it and blow kindness on it.
Here is this very difficult memory.
As we begin to access it,
It's so important,
The remembering self,
How you're feeling right now as you access the memory.
Is so important.
It affects how you recall the memory and.
How you're able to change the memory,
And knowing this,
From here on out in the future.
You are a little more wise about when you choose to access memories,
Especially difficult ones.
You give yourself the time and the space and choose to talk about and access difficult memories when you're in good circumstances,
When you're in a supportive environment,
And when you have the time and the space to allow the process of unfolding that that memory needs.
And when you're feeling really under-resourced and tired,
You can make that choice to close it in a special little golden box and put it in a corner and to revisit it when you're in a more resourced place.
This is the power of choice when we think about our power to come into memory and have the remembering self and then the memory itself,
Which is called the remembered self.
So when we access memory,
There are two parts to us that coexist.
And by differentiating and linking.
We're able to have a new relationship,
Not only with the past memory,
But with our present recall.
So with that bad memory that you thought of,
Hold it in the palm of your hand and ask yourself,
What was missing?
What back then needed extra attention and care?
Once you've figured out what it is that was missing,
Whether it was a hug or someone supportive,
Maybe you needed someone with really big,
Strong arms to come in and help you solve the problem.
Maybe you needed someone with magic powers to stop time?
You could go and spend some time by your ocean or river and just come back to it when you're in a better place.
The advantage of going back to memory now is that you can slow things way down and you can give yourself what you didn't have back then.
So just give yourself what you didn't have in some small way.
You could put your hand in a supportive way on your chest or on your thigh.
And imagine it's the hand of a supportive friend saying,
You did the best you could back then.
The known of the bad memory,
It flexibly opens to the knowing of consciousness at the bottom of the wide ocean.
In the peace of your ocean,
You pause and find response flexibility.
In the bottom of the ocean,
You're able to hold your memory.
The remembering self right now is the knowing.
That which can contain the remembered self,
The memory itself,
Held in a memory capsule that you're making contact with.
You can slow down time.
You can notice all your feelings and sensations.
Then you can insert new supportive moments as you recall the old memory.
And this is how you integrate memory.
All memory is is one moment in time affecting another moment in time.
Understanding that memory is an unfolding process,
You learn to release charge.
By the abiding knowing of your remembering self now,
Being able to imagine what was missing and giving yourself that.
This is the process where you help heal the knowns of your remembered self.
You can divide into two.
By differentiating these two selves and linking them,
You heal your memory and become a more whole story,
Creating a coherent narrative.
This is the goal of Pitt's domain,
Narrative integration.
The more you heal your memories,
The more you integrate your story.
Differentiating and linking from many to one.
You are about to hear about the sixth domain,
State integration.
But you've been already traveling within and between many states during this meditation.
A state is a temporary condition that's happening now.
An integrated brain makes a coherent narrative and weaves in and out of so many states.
Examples are a social butterfly state.
A problem solver.
You can be a listener.
You can be a volunteer or an avid reader.
You can be happy-go-lucky states.
You can be worried about global warming.
There are lots and lots of states.
And what we want is a coherent narrative underneath or above all these states and all these stories and all these memories and all these nervous system states.
Underneath is that deep,
Deep center of your being where you land upon a coherent narrative.
Recall now how you achieved the seventh domain.
Interpersonal integration all about attachment in your ideal childhood.
You received a secure base from Idle Mom and Ideal Dad.
And you realize as an adult how attachment is a process.
You learned how to attach safely and you're attaching to people now.
It involves mentalization.
And reflective function.
Where you understand,
Perceive,
And reflect on your mind and other people's minds.
Attachment requires contingent communication,
Meaning that you don't only perceive the signals and make sense of them,
But you respond in an effective and timely fashion to them.
So you're not just perceiving the signals in the minds of others,
But you're responding.
And finally,
In order to keep replicating the secure attachment process,
What you do is you repair relationships after the pain of a relationship rupture.
And you have the skills to do this.
Using contingent communication,
And when two of you have the skills of contingent communication,
It becomes integrative communication,
Where you honor differences and you caringly connect with words.
Taking a deep breath.
You move into the 8th domain.
Where you are successfully managing uncertainty and certainty as time unfolds.
You make life predictable in some ways,
And yet you transition regularly to new things.
You let some projects and people fade like those waves on the surface of the ocean,
The ebb and the flow.
You're far from perfect,
But your life feels contained.
You have vision and meaning.
You wake up refreshed.
There's something hopeful.
You also acknowledge the pain of life,
How separations have sometimes come unwanted.
And all the while you can sit by the ocean like now and feel really,
Really grateful for what you do have and for where you've been and for what you know.
As this meditation is coming to a close,
We enter the ninth domain.
Which feels like an expansive state.
You've achieved and are achieving all of the eight domains.
You're in an ongoing process of differentiating and linking the knowings and the knowns.
The left and the right hemispheres.
Different nervous system states.
Explicit and implicit memory.
The story of your life,
Including all the possible states and relationships and time.
What happens in this ninth domain.
Is your identity becomes unhinged.
To narrative about a solo self focused on survival.
You experience yourself less and less as the noun version of I.
And more as an expanded sense of self,
As a plural verb.
A me plus we equaling a muy.
The plateau of the solo self fades to that open plane of possibility that we all share in common.
With greater love and concern for the problems of the planet and the entire world population.
The more you encompass the ninth domain,
The more aware you are of the inherent interconnectedness of all of life.
And this impacts your choices.
Really appreciate.
Your ability to focus your attention right now.
As you allow yourself to come back into the room.
Fill your body.
Notice your closed eyelids.
In this inner journey that you went on that took you many,
Many places.
Whether we experience it in the external world or whether we imagine it.
Both.
Of these.
Affect our states.
We can calm ourselves down just by imagining more peaceful things.
We can change our memories through the power of imagination.
So this is the gift.
And the possible double-edged sword of imagination.
But it can lead us to absolute freedom.
Or can take us to a place of denial and fantasy.
So the key is you come back in your body.
As you integrate everything we've done today.
You can do this as the class ends.
You can journal.
What is it that really matters to me?
What's important to me.
In neurobiology,
The definition of spirituality is a life of meaning.
And connection.
Connection means going beyond the solo self.
Meaning means going beyond survival.
So this is really at the heart of all the domains.
When you think about.
Why differentiate and why link?
Why have a coherent mind and an integrated brain and empathic relationships?
Which is the steering wheel of the boat.
That we just rode on to get us down a river of neural integration.
Just ask yourself.
Where is the meaning and the connection for you?
And think about what you might want to do about it.
But spend a good bit of time in your right hemisphere feeling and journaling about it before you go over to the left hemisphere and make a plan and take action,
Because both are important.
