The brain’s evolution toward mindfulness

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Brian L Ackerman

Meditation and Mindfulness Training, USA

: J Spine Neurosurg

Abstract

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In his therapy and training work, brain model is being used to help us for better understand how to use the best part of the brains, our neo-cortex and pre-frontal cortex to restrain and understand better what emanates from another part of our brains, the amygdala and limbic system. All human beings have an amygdala and limbic system, all human beings suffer from limbic dysregulation and that our so-called normal brain is itself disordered. This new treatment modality that seeks to help patients and staff alike become more interested in themselves by learning, in greater detail, how their brain works and the resultant two levels of mind: upper and lower, which leave every human being divided. The evolution of the brain from mammalian to human changed in such a way as to allow humans to think abstractly. This capacity for abstraction, allows us to have ideas and then beyond this to ponder further which of these ideas are useful and constructive and which are not. Humans are the only species who can be aware of their own thoughts, that this particular facility, not our thinking, but our ability to meta-think, think about what we think, puts human beings in the driver’s seat of their own evolution. We have the ability to train ourselves to ‘naturally select’ our best thoughts, feelings, moods, impulses and behaviors while learning with mindfulness to develop our capacity to free themselves from all that is counter-productive.

Biography

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Brian L Ackerman is a Harvard Medical School Trained Psychiatrist and is also the Director of Meditation and Mindfulness Services at the Kent Center in Warwick Rhode Island. He is also Staff Psychiatrist at the Community Care Alliance, in Woonsocket, RI. He is the Staff Psychiatrist at AdCare in N Kingston RI. He is a Family Therapist and is the Founder Member of the American Family Therapy Association.

E-mail: AckermanPsychiatry@gmail.com