Author / Psychologist
Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 33 languages, and include Making Great Relationships, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha’s Brain, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well Podcast – which has been downloaded over 25 million times. His free newsletters have over 260,000 subscribers and his online programs have scholarships available for those in need. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in Northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.
One could rightly ask: How can intangible thoughts affect tangible matter (i.e., the brain)? This question is at the heart of the longstanding “mind-body problem,” and related questions include: How can mind arise from matter? Is mind reducible to matter? Does matter determine mind?
Right Mindfulness is one of the three elements of the Path that focus particularly on your internal states of being (the others are Right Effort and Right Concentration).
With Insight, you understand the factors that shape your reactions. Your reactions are not fixed and inevitable. They are constructed within your mind – which is very hopeful, since it means you can send them in a better direction.
Many of the practices that support our well-being and happiness as adults are wonderful for children as well, but the way that they are taught must be developmentally appropriate and meet their sometimes very different needs.
In this San Rafael Audio, Rick discuss the benefits of impermanence.
How do we change? In this pioneering talk, Dr. Shauna Shapiro draws on modern neuroscience and ancient wisdom to demonstrate how mindfulness can help us make positive changes in our brains and our lives.
Introduction The Eightfold Path is the fourth of the Buddha’s Noble Truths, and it is the way leading to the uprooting of the causes of suffering, and thus to increasingly stable and profound peacefulness, wisdom, virtue, and happiness.
Why is skillful interaction with our angry emotions so necessary? It’s because anger is both one of the most effective social tools for achieving short range results, and one of the most toxic emotions to ourselves and our family/social networks.
Although your brain isn’t heavy – about three pounds of soft, gooshy tissue-like tapioca pudding – it has about 1.1 trillion cells altogether. It literally is the most complex object known in the universe.
As you probably know, compassion and loving kindness are central elements of Buddhism. They arise naturally in response to one of those three fundamental characteristics of existence: interdependence/not-self/emptiness.
Some exercises that will help show you where in your own brain the emotions of anxiety and security live.
Rick talks about taking others into account and relating to them.