Dr. Dan Siegel Defines the Mind

0:08 you can basically talk about the 100 billion cells in this system that's connected to the body and this system can be studied a neuroscientist study all time and a lot of neuroscientist in the group would say well the mind is just the activity of the brain let's move on but if the mind were just the activity of the brain you know what the result of that would be you'd be a slave to your brain and if

0:34 your therapist all you would do would be pushing the pill on somebody so the issue that the mind is not the same as the brain or not just the activity the brain is hugely controversial for a neuroscience scientist but for a therapist it makes all the difference so here is the definition I hope I suggested to this group and a hundred percent agreement came out if you remember that and it goes like this that the mind is an embodied and relational

1:00 process it's in the body and it's in our relationships with one another and it's an embodied relationship process that regulates the flow of energy and information that's it everybody agreed upon it you know the anthropologists sociologists the linguistics person everyone was agreement so it was a strange moment the group lasted for four and a half years because we could share a common vocabulary and since that time this is the mid nineties now I began working on well what does that mean

1:29 for mental health what's a healthy mind and in the book mind cite what I provide present really for the public for the first time is what I've been doing in the privacy of my psychotherapy practice right it's all stories based on actual people and the way that if you look at a process that regulates the flow of energy information you actually come up with things and this is where this would get to be a long talk but the bottom

1:55 line is you can actually define what a healthy mind is I don't mean describe it I mean define it you