Description
Featuring Neuropsychologist, international speaker, and bestselling author of Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and newest book, Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Rick Hanson – Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence
Based on Dr. Rick Hanson’s latest book, Hardwiring Happiness, this workshop will present the four simple HEAL steps of taking in the good, which turn passing experiences into lasting neural resources. We’ll explore how to use these methods to lower anxiety and stress, lift mood, grow confidence, calm, and contentment, and fundamentally, hardwire happiness into the brain. The mind shapes the brain: neurons that fire together, wire together. Positive experiences are the main source of the neural structures underlying positive mood, resilience, feeling loved, the executive functions, and other inner strengths. Unfortunately, most positive experiences are wasted on the brain because it evolved a negativity bias to help our ancestors survive. It’s like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for good ones.
You will learn many practical ways to help your clients overcome this negative bias – which is disheartening, flattens learning curves, undermines compliance and progress in treatment, and fosters drop outs or relapsing – and instead draw upon the positive experiences available in both treatment and everyday life to weave strength and happiness into the fabric of their brain and their life.
In addition to teaching general-purpose methods for deliberately internalizing positive experiences – taking in the good – the workshop will explore how to identify and use key resource experiences to soothe and even heal clinical issues related to the three fundamental systems of the brain: Avoiding harms, Approaching Rewards, and Attaching to others. These methods include how to skillfully hold both positive and negative material in awareness so that – “as neurons fire together, they wire together†– the positive factors connect with, dampen, and gradually replace the negative ones.
The workshop will also cover applications to particular populations and needs, notably trauma, children, and addiction/recovery.
Handouts
Manual – Hardwiring Happiness (4 MB) 46 Pages Available after Purchase
Outline
The Brain, The Mind, & The Mind/Brain System
Perspectives
Self-Directed Neuroplasticity
Your brain: The technical specs
The mind/body brain system-a working model
3 facts about the brain and the mind
Experience: How mental states become neural traits
The power of mindful attention
Self-compassion
The Evolving Brain
3 fundamental motivational systems:
Avoiding
Approaching
Attaching
How the brain pursues in two basic ways:
Homeostatic, refuel-and-repair, sustainable Responsive mode and the Allostatic, fight-or-flight, unhealthy Reactive mode
The Negativity Bias
Why the brain is primed to go Reactive
We learn too much from negative experiences and too little from positive ones
Clinical consequences
Threat Reactivity
Implicit Memory and Inner Resources
Taking in the Good (TIG)
4 steps of taking in the good
Activate and install positive mental states
Help clients notice or create positive experiences
4 ways to use taking in the good with clients, both during and between sessions
How to build up key strengths for depression, addiction, anxiety, trauma, loss and feeling inadequate:
Avoiding systems
Approaching systems
Attaching systems
Applications for couples and children
Skillfully pairing positive and negative material in awareness
Special considerations for children, couples, trauma, and addictions
Use TIG to Heal Emotional Pain
Natural Happiness
