Tang and his group recruited 80 undergraduates from the university and gave half of them relaxation training only. He gave the other half the full integrated body-mind training (IBMT) recorded along with selected music. Both groups met with a trained coach whose job was “to create a harmonious and relaxed atmosphere for effective practice.” Both groups, relaxation and IBMT, practiced for 20 minutes a day for 5 days.

Long-term meditators tend to be able to notice and calm themselves when they are about to fly off the handle. This is called self-regulation.

After the training was a different matter. On average, you and your 40 IBMT colleagues would show better self-regulation, attention, and ability to be present in the moment as compared to the group that only got relaxation training. Even your baseline cortisol levels, a measure of stress levels when at rest, would be reduced significantly for you who had done IBMT training. And remember that this was after only 5 days of training. As the authors wrote, “Our study is consistent with the idea that attention, affective processes, and the quality of moment-to-moment awareness are flexible skills that can be trained” (Tang et al., 2007, p. 17155).

We have pursued the question of who we are as human beings partly by looking at Western philosophical traditions. Over the past four centuries, these have been steeped in Newtonian assumptions, particularly those that reduce individuals to objects trapped in a clockwork universe, suffering from an illusion of choice but determined by past events. Increasing global interconnections and scientific discoveries have accelerated a shift in that perspective toward a more contextual, community-oriented worldview. Interest in New Age philosophy during the last half century has combined with social science traditions that focus on holism and social systems to strengthen a shift to a systemic paradigm.

Systems and quantum theory bridge the two paradigms and bring us to an understanding of dynamic stability as a measure of a well-functioning nonlinear dynamic self-organizing complex system. Neuroscience tells us that the brain is such a system.

For centuries, philosophers and scientists have questioned how the mind and the brain relate to one another. Western culture tells us that we think with our brains and feel with our hearts. In other societies, other organs may be presumed to be the emotional or thinking center. The radical materialist aspect of the mechanistic worldview reduces mind to brain activity.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many educated people believed in phrenology, the practice of determining personal character and ability from the shapes and bumps on people’s heads. This practice has been thoroughly discredited. Today, some critics of modern neuroscience dismiss efforts to correlate brain measurements with ability as “modern phrenology” (Begley, 2007). Such skepticism is understandable considering that past experience teaches us to treat the discoveries of any science as preliminary until thoroughly tested.

Enormous debate continues to surround the study of consciousness. What is consciousness? Where is it located? From the mechanistic perspective, only the material world is real, and mental activity is reduced to brain activity. Causality moves in only one direction; therefore, the brain gives rise to the mind, not vice versa. Mental phenomena, including consciousness, are considered to be products, or epiphenomena, of brain activity.

Until recently, it was impossible to view a live brain in action in order to gather information that might bring into question the mechanistic paradigm. Technological advances have now made it possible for scientists to study consciousness more directly, with shocking results.

Quantum mechanics tells us that the nonmaterial attention of an observer can shift how subatomic particles decay (Stapp, 2007). Since our brains are made up of atoms, which are vulnerable to influence from mental events, it can no longer be claimed that the brain creates the mind in a linear causal fashion. Daniel Siegel’s claim that our “mind is using the brain to create itself” (2007a, p. 32) indicates the extent to which our ideas about what it means to be human are changing as an aspect of the systemic paradigm shift.

Even the debate between free will and determinism has been affected. According to mechanistic determinism, free will is an illusion. The brain does its thing and the mind rationalizes along. However, people subjectively experience making choices. How do we reconcile “objective” reality with “subjective” experience? Quantum mechanics has rescued free will from its deterministic graveyard by uncovering the dynamic relationship between brain and mind. If we are to answer the question “Who are we?” we must understand the system of which the brain is a part. We must know ourselves.

We discuss these topics under these headings:

Our death represents one clear limit, and there are degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and injuries from accidents or strokes that limit our brain’s abilities. Neuroscientist James Zull (2006) also recognizes that, compared to children, there are some changes that are more difficult, or impossible, for adults to make, such as learning to speak a new language like a native. “However,” says Zull, “the neurological nature of learning strongly suggests that there is no age of finality for any learning” (p. 7). That is, even though some types of changes cannot be counted as part of our potential, as long as our brain is functioning at all, we can still learn.

As an open system, the brain responds to input from its environment (stimulation from the body or elsewhere) and outputs signals to the body as a response.

Psychologists agree that personality, for example,

Building on this idea, Siegel (1999) describes how the brain’s activity results in self-organization that creates certain common states of mind within an individual, in a self-referencing manner. These states can be seen as attractors. “The probability of activation of a state is determined by both the history and present context or environmental conditions. . . .With repeated activation, the state of mind becomes more deeply engrained, and the state is remembered” (pp. 218-219). The remembered state then serves as a reference point for further organization.

Robert Post and Susan Weiss captured this phenomenon by slightly modifying Hebb’s axiom: “Neurons which fire together, survive together, and wire together” (Siegel, 1999, p. 219). This is the basis for neuroplasticity, or the capacity of the brain to change.

For each of us, and for clients, the movement from simplicity toward complexity is another way of saying “development.” Children develop increasingly complex interactions with their social and physical environments. As they mature, they not only run and jump, they dance and make subtle gestures and change their stance depending on a myriad of contexts. They vary old patterns in new situations and create new patterns in old situations.

The brain’s movement toward complexity is somewhat counterintuitive, since we know that some neurons will not be used and will atrophy. For instance, children at birth can differentiate all possible meaningful sounds in human languages, whereas by two years of age, they have already “specialized” in the sounds of the language(s) spoken at home. Those neurons that have not been stimulated have atrophied, or been “pruned.” Is this really a move toward complexity?

Siegel (1999) says yes, explaining that changes such as this are part of creating a more integrated system:

This system integration idea can be taken even further, beyond a single brain to integrating the activities of multiple individuals. “Maximal complexity is achieved by the combination of individual differentiation and interpersonal integration” (Siegel, 1999, p. 225). Being either totally independent from or overly dependent on others decreases complexity. “As a dynamical system, the mind may be restricted in its balanced movement toward complexity either by excessive responsiveness to others or by an intense autonomy and resistance to joining with others’ states” (Siegel, 1999, p. 226).

With this description of the brain’s movement toward increased integration and complexity, we arrive at a definition of “dynamic stability” for the complex system that includes the human brain.

We could say that we help clients develop “fuller” or “greater” potential, but those are still nouns and adjectives that treat potential as a thing rather than as a process. In seeking the right term, we hope to avoid the tendency in Western languages to name ongoing, changing processes as if they are static, immutable (noun like) objects (Nisbett, 2003). This is the problem with “potential.” The term “potentiate,” however, is a verb that is used generally for a process of increasing power and effect. It is applied specifically to the effects of transmitters on the likelihood of a neuron firing. This is good company for a word to be in. We have chosen to borrow it to describe the ever-developing capacity of the human mind. We dare to introduce such a term because current language simply does not convey what we mean to get across. We suggest it as a possible contribution to finding “ways to think coherently in multiple levels and dimensions, to incorporate the time line and dynamics of living processes into our understanding of molecules and cells and systems” (Rose, 2005, p. 215).

Coaches help clients potentiate, or engage in an ongoing process of developing their potential. It is the potentiating process in the context of our thoroughly embodied brains and social minds that makes something new possible. In the chapters to follow, we examine neuroscience research for clues as to how potentiating, as we use it here, happens and can happen more reliably. Thus we will be prepared to examine a brain-based definition of human health and wellness and a formula for arriving at that state.

Common mechanistic assumptions informed past studies of our senses. That is, sensory systems were seen to convey information in much the same way as a radio picks up signals and conveys them to the processor that converts them to sound. Input from our senses informs our brain about changes “out there.” From this linear perspective, the process of hearing begins with an input of air waves that is transformed by our inner ear and auditory nerves into electrochemical impulses that are transmitted to the part of the brain that interprets the signal as sound. This is called “bottom-up,” or sensory, processing. The bottom part is the brain/body; only after it does its processing does the “top” processor, the mind, come into play.

In this linear model, the mental activity of perception, or our interpretation of sensation, does not begin until the auditory signal reaches the brain area specialized for sound. It is at this point, according to this model, that the minding process kicks in to create “top-down” meaning or perception. The mind draws on past experience (memory) to interpret the changes in auditory input and therefore (and only then) to “recognize” what is being heard.

We now know that this linear view is vastly oversimplified and that top-down and bottom-up processing are always mixed. Our meaning-making minds are interacting constantly with our brain-body sensory systems. In short, we “mind” at the very same time that we “sense,” and in some cases before.

The scientists placed an electrode in a single neuron in the motor cortex, the part of the brain in primates (including humans—roughly the top of the fingers in our brain-in-the-hand model) that controls the movements of our limbs and bodies. They recorded what happened when the monkey reached for a piece of food. The monkey grasped the food and the neuron fired. But there was an additional discovery for some neurons: The neuron fired not only when the monkey picked up food but also when it saw one of the researchers pick up food. That is, the brain of the monkey reacted to the observation of a person’s action just as it would if it were itself performing that action. For obvious reasons, these specific cells were named “mirror neurons.” Further investigation showed that some 10% of neurons in the motor cortex of these monkeys’ brains are of the mirror type (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004).

Although research ethics do not allow implanting electrodes in individual neurons of human brains, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other neuroimaging evidence indicate that certain regions in our brains become active when we see other people experience an emotion or take an action of some sort (Rizzolatti, Sinigaglia, & Anderson, 2008). It is expected that individual mirror neurons will be identified in the motor cortex of the human brain.

Of even greater interest is the fact that this neuronal firing occurs only when the actions of the person being observed are intentional. In the old linear paradigm, the motor cortex was thought of as the region that receives orders to move only after sensations have been gathered, meaning added, perceptions drawn, and decisions made as to what to do about it. The amazing discovery is that only when Person A intends to reach for a coffee cup does Observer B’s mirror neurons fire. A chance gesture toward an object where there is no likely goal (say just lifting your arm), however similar it might seem to an intentional reach, does not cause the neuron to fire. Thus, at the level of a single neuron in the case of monkeys, and presumably also for human apes, some differentiation must be made right there in the motor cortex as to what Person A is intending to do. We make meaning at a level that was previously thought to be simply carrying out orders. This brings the formerly assumed sequence of sensation-then-perception into question.

Contrary to the model of brain processing that prevailed during much of the mechanistic era, our sensing and interpreting functions are intertwined. However, much of the interpreting that is connected to sensing is in the nature of the neurons and the brain itself, as with mirror neurons, and thus does not occur consciously. In chapter 6, we discuss how we can intervene somewhat in these processes by setting our intentions and exercising “veto power.”

Mirror neurons also bring into question the assumption that our brain and mind processes are limited to our own individual, skin-wrapped bodies. Just as brain processes such as hearing a sound cannot be separated from mental processes such as anticipating it, inputs from other people cannot be entirely separated from our outputs and inputs within ourselves or with them. We can also share information and energy with others, thus borrowing from their experiences and perspective. This process of sharing is not only gratifying but necessary for our development as human beings.

The mind is also “embodied.” Yes, it is centered in the brain, but as we have emphasized, the human brain is mutually dependent on and distributed throughout the whole body.

The human mind is also “relational.” The flow of energy and information occurs among people as well as within an individual. It is a repeated theme in this book that our thinking process incorporates the mental activity of other people. This is another dramatic break from the focus on the self-contained individual that has characterized Western philosophy and science.

But this is not a passive process. Steven Rose (2005) emphasizes the self-creating, or “autopoietic,” nature of the human embryo. “Autopoietic” is a term formed from the Greek words for “self” and “production” and is closely related to the “self-organizing” characteristic of complex systems. “Autopoiesis” refers to a system that produces and replaces its own elements. “It is through autopoiesis that the to-be-born human embryo constructs herself” (p. 63). After birth, the human being continues to be “an active player in its own destiny.”

Rose explains that while the brain is forming during gestation in the human womb, genes from the original combination of two cells convey some information about where neurons should be located in the brain, but the voyaging neurons also interact and help each other along the way. Around 200 billion neurons go to the right point, traveling some 200 miles across each person’s brain. Many die along the way, their destination and function to be taken over by others. Over the first few years of life, the brain reduces to about one 100 billion neurons; much of this loss is based on pruning those neurons that have not made connections.

From even before we are born, our brain interacts with the world to try to make sense of what might otherwise be senseless noise. We identify patterns in light and shade that become our parents, patterns in sound that become language from which we build conscious meaning. We find patterns in the way our muscles interact with the world, which builds our motor skills, getting us from crawling, to walking, to running and to finer skills like playing music or typing.

Some of this interaction comes “preprogrammed” by our genes. For example, a newborn immediately takes a breath when it encounters oxygen at birth. However, most of what we learn comes from experience, from interacting with the world, in particular the social world. Even “inborn” activities, such as eating, are shaped by how that activity happens in connection with others. The patterns that are formed in the brain as a result of repeated neural firing from our mind and relationship processes are called schemas or maps by cognitive researchers. Following neuroscientist Gerald Edelman, we will use the term “map” here.

Edelman’s theory was that every memory—every piece of data, idea, habit, thought—is made up of a set of connections among neurons, like a map of connecting highways in our brain. Each map or set of connections involves some 10,000 to 50,000 neurons. We create maps for every sight, sound, word, face, person, idea, and memory that we remember, whether consciously or not. Everything that stays with us forms a map that is part of our brain.

We sometimes form temporary maps. For example, we do not hold in mind the number of every automobile license plate that we pass on the way to work. But after taking that journey even once, we will have formed a rudimentary map of the route. After taking it many times, we will easily remember it; with enough repetitions, we will follow it even when we are not consciously attending to it. The map of the plate number is lost, while the map of the route becomes engrained, automatic, or what we often refer to as “hardwired.”

There are maps of maps and the map of maps, and so forth. For example, the word “car” energizes many maps connected to it: the sound of our car, the sound of other cars we know, the sound of the word “car” in other languages that we know, related words in English such as “automobile,” the memory of cars we have driven or owned or desired, different types of cars, all the designs and colors of cars we have seen, the smell of cars, how to drive a standard versus an automatic transmission . . . all these maps are connected to that higher-order map for “car.”

We build up these layers of maps for experiences throughout our lives. We have maps for the feel of blocks in our hand, if we played with them when young. Maps of when to use the word “they” versus “them” in a sentence. Maps for the difference between irony and sarcasm; for every song we know; for the faces of everyone we have paid attention to. The brain rapidly accesses and updates these each second as we interact with the world.

Even at birth, there is evidence that children have already begun to form these maps of the world—that is, cognitive (although not conscious) expectations of what is familiar and what is likely to come next. Research has shown that infants recognize the language their mother speaks, presumably through hearing sounds spoken during gestation. One-year-old babies also prefer music that was played while they were in the womb, even though they had not heard that music during their first year after birth (Levitin, 2006).

Each map is a set of connections among points in our brain, among our neurons, which are the primary cells in the brain. The neurons are connected by axons and dendrites, like the roots and branches of a tree, respectively. The dendrites, or branches, from one neuron accept neural signals from the axons, or roots, of many others, thus forming connections among thousands and hundreds of thousand of neurons. A map is a set of these connections that makes it possible to know what we know, think what we think, and do what we do.

According to Edelman, maps are internal representations of the way the external world works. These enable us to understand and interact with that world. The maps that are most utilized in this way get the most energy. Another way of saying this is that the maps that convey information that is most accessed get further hardwired into our brain and become more likely to be activated in the future.

These maps are constantly competing for resources, as there is not enough energy for every neuron to connect with every other possible one from moment to moment. So the brain also “prunes” neurons, thus erasing unused connections, as we go along. This is a fundamental principle of the way our thinking works at a physical level: Our models of the world are constantly changing and reconnecting. Our ideas, models, thoughts and interpretations are hypotheses about the world that are, to anthropomorphize the process, competing with each other for survival in the brain moment to moment.

However, early in life, neurons are not yet as well connected as they will be later. It is as if the houses in the subdivision are built but without extensive roads, power lines, or phone lines. These connections are created moment to moment by a dialectic relationship of experience, genes, and self-determined activity. Rose (2005) suggests that the volume of activity is such that some 30,000 new synapses per second are made over every square centimeter of a newborn’s cortical surface. This explains why identical twins in the same house, with the same parents, eating the same diet can end up with quite different personalities. As with any nonlinear dynamic system, imperceptible differences in experience, combined with individual choice, can result in surprisingly large differences as people grow up. Given such rapid development, this is true even when genomes are identical. Consider how much truer it is when genomes are different.

One of the implications of how different our brains and minds become has to do with differences in these maps. At a general level, it may seem easy to understand how someone else’s mind works. For example, different people use pretty much the same parts of their brain to walk. Telling someone the best way to get up out of a chair and walk out the door should be straightforward: “Use your motor cortex to activate muscles in the legs, and out you go.”

The similarity of how we operate at this gross level tempts us to tell others what to do. (Giving advice also has status implications, as we will see in chapter 15.) However, if you consider the question of what motivates someone to get up and walk in the context of that individual’s history of attempts in the past, the process becomes much more complex. It is unlikely that one person can guess exactly how others get themselves moving, given all the unique developmental histories. The neuronal patterns John Doe uses to regulate his flow of energy and information are just too different from those used by Jane Smith. Because of the limits of working memory that we discuss later, John’s working memory cannot possibly encompass all the aspects of Jane’s mental map or neuronal patterns in order to understand what she should do next. This is a neuroscientific explanation for why advice giving is not an effective way to coach others.

Mindfulness training has many advantages for us as coaches, in addition to helping us coach. Evidence is mounting that mindfulness practice contributes to health and well-being. And as Yi-Yuan Tang and his colleagues have shown (Tang et al., 2007), we do not have to spend 10 cloistered years at it for broad-spectrum meditation training to show measurable results.

For example, we are limited as to how much we can attend to. Thank goodness we can continue to operate on automatic mental maps that we are not presently attending to. We arrive at home unaware of driving there. We find the dishwasher empty having thought through tomorrow’s schedule while putting the dishes away without being aware of lifting the plates and cutlery.

But what if we want to change that automatic behavior? What if we find ourselves locked into inflexibility, the other side of chaos? What if acting on the same mental map is a threat to our well-being? Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is the name applied to people who have this experience. Treating OCD is not part of what coaches do, but successful treatment of the disorder helps us all understand more about how to manage dynamic stability in our lives and about the place of mindfulness in this process (Schwartz & Begley, 2002).

Daniel Siegel (2007a) documents his exploration of mindfulness practices following his 1999 book that showed the effects of attuned interactions on the brains and minds of both children and adults. Previously, Siegel had sought to expand the boundaries of physiologically oriented psychiatry but found it difficult to compare research from related fields, such as cognitive and developmental psychology, philosophy, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience, because of differences in history and terminology. He invited scholars, practitioners, and scientists from these and other fields to form an interdisciplinary inquiry they called interpersonal neurobiology.

With growing interest in neuroscience by figures such as the Dalai Lama (Begley, 2007) and the acceleration of scientific research into mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn, 2005), Siegel decided to experience mindfulness practices firsthand (2007a). He went on silent retreats, practiced yoga, and interviewed proponents of various approaches. As a result, he came to see mindfulness practices as ways to develop a better relationship with oneself. Attuned relationships with other people are characterized byaccepting that the other has thoughts and desires, just as we do, and by taking those unique qualities into account in our interactions. Similarly, developing a reflective mind means that part of us becomes an “other,” or what Schwartz and Begley (2002) call an “Impartial Spectator,” to ourselves.

Siegel (2007a) uses a metaphor to describe this relationship with ourselves. He suggests that we imagine a wheel with a rim, a hub, and spokes connecting the rim and hub. The rim consists of our senses, our conscious and unconscious memories, our physiological reactions—all the components of the moods and reactions we are subject to. The hub can be a passive victim of whatever thought or sensation happens to travel along one of the spokes to capture it momentarily. Or the hub can simply observe, or be a spectator to the many signals traveling from the rim down one or another spoke.

Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley (2002) credit Buddhist mindfulness practice with providing insights to help obsessive-compulsive patients. Buddhist teachings emphasize that human beings are capable of “inhabiting” any of 10 subjective states, or “worlds,” that range from intense suffering to anger to enlightenment. That is, when we are in a state yet unaware of that fact, it can seem that we are anger and that everything in our environment upholds that interpretation. Each of those 10 states can be viewed through the perspective of 10 aspects, such as its cause or consequence, and each of those 100 combinations has within it the potential to change into any other of the 10 states in an instant. These 1,000 state-aspect combinations exist in the three realms of living beings: their physical and mental components, and the environment in which they exist. All together, this yields 3,000 conditions in a single moment of time.

The point of all this is simple. The bad news is that if we are not aware of it, we are continually at the mercy of ever-changing conditions. We can be happily sitting down to work on our laptop in a comfortable seat at the corner coffee shop and bam! an angry coffee shop owner insists that we leave since we have not bought anything. Our insistence that we were intending to buy makes no difference to him, and we find ourselves in a state of vengefulness. “I’ll never come back here, and I’ll tell all my friends, too!”

The good news is that, to the extent that we are aware of the state, to the extent that we can be a spectator to what just happened, we have any of the other 2,999 conditions inherent in the present state as options for us to move into. Awareness of, or enlightenment to, this fact provides the freedom to veto the thoughts that lead down a path to an unhappy or unhealthy or unhelpful state and instead choose which state to occupy in this next moment.

Various mindfulness practices use different techniques, but in general, they all help us “practice” for those moments when we are catapulted into a state that is unpleasant or not in our interest. Or when we discover that we are meditating on worries, anger, resentment, or other unhelpful thoughts. Learning about enlightenment is very different from being able to put it into practice. We learn to consciously manage our internal states by recognizing that the noise being transmitted from the rim is not us. It is information about sensory and memory and external inputs or about the processes of our brains, but we ourselves are not those messages; we are the ones receiving them.

When we identify with the hub that is doing the receiving rather than to the messages being sent down the spokes, we strengthen our Impartial Spectator. The more we connect with our self as the hub, the stronger those connections become. At that point, we realize that we can choose what messages coming down the spokes to attend to. We can compare messages and see patterns. We have a metaperspective that enables us to use the full potential of our minds to create our brains and invite healthy responses from others that then reinforce our own more fulfilling states of mind.

Here we examine the question of why we are so attached to being able to choose. Why is choice so important in day-to-day life? One answer is that when people are allowed to make their own choices, they feel empowered and alive. When we have no choice, but must simply follow directions without any input, our energy ebbs. This claim is based on a good deal of evidence, some of which is listed next:

The applications to coaching are obvious. When clients are told what to do—by bosses, spouses, or coaches—not only are they likely to react to a status threat, as we discuss in chapter 15, they may actually suffer psychologically and physically. When any of us becomes more mindful of our own mental processes (thoughts, sensations, emotions), we increase the possibility of choosing something different. Our self-awareness, and that of our clients, is what enables us to recognize that we want to change. The potentiation of a new brain requires a self-reflective mind.

Would you be likely to hire such people or follow them if they were leaders or seek them out if they were coaches?

Siegel (2007a) surveyed research regarding the effects of mindfulness practice on mental functions, specifically focusing on those coordinated by the prefrontal cortex. He found that the listed functions were enhanced and, in several cases, the relevant brain structures actually were denser and more connected for meditators as compared to non-meditators:

You may note that these nine functions correlate with the nine characteristics of the group of people described in the previous list. It is no wonder that regular practice of a mindfulness technique can be seen as a foundation for all the brain-based coaching knowledge and skills we offer in this book.

Ontology is the branch of philosophy that considers this question. With the Enlightenment came an answer based on Newtonian physics—that people are cogs playing out their predetermined parts in a mechanistic universe. This answer did not match with the human experience of choice and agency. Quantum physics is in the process of expanding the explanation of the physical universe to include the participation of human activity. Both coaching and current neuroscience have taken a place on this expanded stage.

Western philosophy’s emphasis on the individual has been widened by globalization and systems theory to include the importance of community and context, or the systems in which the individual is embedded.

Mindfulness practices help us develop the capacity to be self-observers. Specifically, coaching that takes neuroscience into account requires coaches to be able to:

We now turn to a question that often follows “Who are we?” and often relates to coaching: “How can we be healthy?” In exploring answers to this question, we examine the history of medical and health practices that form a bedrock for coaching, the developments in wellness and change theories that form pillars to raise coaching above its bedrock, and current neuroscience findings regarding neuroplasticity that form a theoretical platform for coaching.