Customer Reviews

The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A favorite book of mine is Ellen Langer's "Mindfulness." Happily still in print though it is nearly twenty years old. With it, Ellen, an eminent academic at Harvard introduced the psychological community to something that lies at the core of many religious, spiritual and contemplative practices.

This marvelous book by the co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Center is a next step. To give you a flavor of the book, let me quote from the Preface,

"Welcome to a journey into the heart of our lives. Being mindfully aware, attending to the richness of our here-and-now experiences, creates scientifically recognized enhancements in out physiology, our mental functions, and our inter-personal relationships. Being fully present in out awareness opens our lives to new possibilities of well-being.

Almost all cultures have practices that help people develop awareness of the moment. Each of the major religions of the world utilizes some method to enable individuals to focus their attention, from meditation to prayer, yoga to t'ai chi."

For Daniel Siegel, being "mindful: means being aware, of being conscientious, with kindness and care." He uses a helpful acronym: COAL, for curiosity, openness, acceptance and love.

As Daniel points out, we are in desperate need of finding a new way of being, not just in ourselves, but in our relationships, schools and in society as a whole. Professionals constantly see the terrible consequences for people who feel social isolation, dislocation and alienation. Yet until the advent of the Positive Psychology movement, academic psychology, psychotherapy and psychiatry had all focused almost exclusively on the sick mind. To this day, most people working in these fields have been taught little if anything about mental health, ad even fewer are engaged in practices that can keep them healthy and resilient. It is no coincidence that people working in psychology and psychiatry have some of the highest burnout rates of any of the major professions.

The burgeoning evidence of the extraordinary plasticity of the human brain also has another side to it: if we are not mindful, if we are in unhealthy relationships, and if we are without any kind of inspiration or moral compass, our brains get wired in ways that they should not. And the earlier in life that it happens, the more difficult it is to unravel later. This is the reason why abuse in childhood can have effects that last decades.

This book is an attempt to redress the balance. The book is divided into four sections, fourteen chapters and three appendices:
PART I MIND, BRAIN, AND AWARENESS
1. A Mindful Awareness
2. Brain Basics
PART II IMMERSION IN DIRECT EXPERIENCE
3. A Week of Silence
4. Suffering and the Streams of Awareness
PART III FACETS OF THE MINDFUL BRAIN
5. Subjectivity and Science
6. Harnessing the Hub: Attention and the Wheel of Awareness
7. Jettisoning Judgments: Dissolving Top-Down Constraints
8. Internal Attunement: Mirror Neurons, Resonance, and Attention to Intention
9. Reflective Coherence: Neural Integration and Middle Prefrontal Function
10. Flexibility of Feeling: Affective Style and an Approach Mindset
11. Reflective Thinking: Imagery and the Cognitive Style of Mindful Learning
PART IV REFLECTIONS ON THE MINDFUL BRAIN
12. Educating the Mind: The Fourth ``R'' and the Wisdom of Reflection
13. Reflection in Clinical Practice: Being Present and Cultivating the Hub
14. The Mindful Brain in Psychotherapy: Promoting Neural Integration

Afterword: Reflections on Reflection
Appendix I Reflection and Mindfulness Resources
Appendix II Glossary and Terms
Appendix III Neural Notes

The book is well referenced and there is a good index.

As you will see from the chapter headings, the book is rooted in neuroscience and reviews the empirical evidence that our minds can not only control our brains, but also grow and develop them. Healthy experiences can help us cultivate our brains, our minds and our sense of well-being. What he has done in this book is to provide a theoretical foundation for the neuropsychology and consequences of mindfulness. As a neuroscientist, I thought that his models made extremely good sense. He writes well, and I do not think that what he has to say would be difficult for anyone with a high school education.

Why is this important? Because it shows that there are ways of maintaining and perhaps restoring mental health without medications or other external interventions. Of course there are times when medicines can be the only option, and literally life saving. But they are not always necessary. This brain-based approach is also very helpful for people who re already engaged in meditation, prayer or other forms of mindfulness training. It can be very helpful to know something about what is going on inside your head, without having to rely on experience alone.

Daniel shows that mindfulness is something that can easily be taught and learned, and that the consequences of using the techniques can be extraordinary, not only for ourselves, but also for our families and friends.

Though not, strictly speaking, a "how to" book on achieving mindfulness, there are ample descriptions of the keys that we need to attain it. He also provides details of some organizations that offer mindfulness training.

Very highly recommended.

I found the content of this book fascinating and important (5 stars) but the writing ponderous and redundant (2 stars), for the most part. It is an ambitious attempt to synthesize and interpret scientific research and the author's personal experience in an emerging field that is fraught with speculation. Perhaps because of this, the author appears to have cobbled together every study potentially relating brain function and mindfulness, weaving back and forth to make every possible connection, rather than following a few salient lines of thinking and explicating them clearly. Difficult as it was to digest some of the material (I am a practiced reader of science but had to read too many sentences too many times), I benefited personally and immediately from several of the concepts presented such as streams of awareness, parenting styles ("secure attachment"), approach mindset and mindful education, and I look forward to further research in this field. I had imagined the brain research to be further along than it is and expected more about research on meditation, so I was a tad disappointed, but this is not the author's fault. In spite of the poor presentation, there was some delightful new learning for me and I am glad to have read this.

I've always been a fan of this author, he is a scholar, excellent writer and based on his writing a wise individual. What makes this book especially good from my perspective is the balancing of subjective information from the world's wisdom traditions and his own interior experience with their physical correlates i.e. rigorous science without reducing either to the other. This is extremely refreshing and this carefully researched book adopts an attitude of openness, curiosity and wonder.

In addition, THE MINDFUL BRAIN is NOT written soley for academically minded individuals or psychologists. It is very readable by any intelligent layperson and extremely engaging. It is theoritical, but also compellingly practical in the spirit of Parenting From the Inside Out, which I highly recommend as well.

I also The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are is an incredible book. However, this is much less accessible to the average person than this volume and the one in the proceeding paragraph.

More concisely, what Daniel Siegel has done is brought together what we know from the various contemplative traditions, mind-body medicine and neuroscience together in a compelling argument for the value of mindfulness to everyday life, happiness and health. I would think this would be something everyone would be interested in.

While it's a wonderful adaptation to be able to think ahead, plan, etc. This often carries one out of the HERE and NOW moment and keeps us on a treadmill of postponing our fulfillment. This book is about balancing our ability to look forward while remaining anchored in the present... the only place where love, happiness and peace could be found.

I work in this area and have graduate education in biology, biochemistry and psychology. This is my life's passion and I own many books on this topic and present workshops. This is in many ways the book I wish I had written although humbly I must admit Daniel Siegel would be an extremely difficult person to top. Hopefully, however, someday I will be able to add value by complimenting his and other people's good work.

The topic of mindfulness has been around for many millenia, & espoused by many religious & spiritual sects throughout the world, primarily in the East. The topic fascinates me, as I have taken a course in Asian Philosophy and have read many neuroscience books the last couple of years. Despite this, the book was unable to keep my attention, ironically, because of the redundant writing style. While eloquent, Siegel is often rearranging the same statement without adding much knew to it. Perhaps this is great for a more global, holistic view of the subject, but it is difficult to maintain attention (ironically) when you lose your place from feeling like you just read the same thing.

The neuroscientific aspects of resonance circuitry (and mirror neurons) isn't a new idea but Siegel skillfully expounds upon it and how it relates to mindfulness. All in all, despite some glaring flaws in my opinion, the book was worth buying for this alone, but if you're expecting an emphasis more on the brain rather than a subjective perspective on mindfulness, I find the balance of the book to be tilted in the other direction--so it may disappoint you if that's the case.

I read widely on mindfulness, meditation, neuroscience, and psychology. I didn't expect to find a book that provided so much insight into the practice of mindfulness from a neuroscience perspective. There are many useful ideas here about how to deepen and extend mindfulness practice and to sustain mindfulness over longer periods of time.

Though I'm not a therapist or educator the suggestions about how mindfulnesss can contribute in both of these fields seem very promising.

I've been a fan of Siegel's work for years (see my review of The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are) and again, he has done a brilliant job highlighting not only brain science and mirror-neuron theory but offering a practical way to make use of this neurological information in our personal lives. I listened to the CD first, then bought the book, and they are both excellent. The CD is an abridgment of the book, which means that a lot of the detailed neuroscience is left out, but this has benefits for those who prefer to shy away from the intricacies of medial prefrontal circuits and the like. In the CD, Siegel explains how meditation practices can be used to make our brain, and thus our personality, function better by enhancing cognition, social awareness, empathy, intuition, and emotional control. Siegel also shares personal stories of his week-long silent meditation retreat. By the time you finish listening to the CD, you'll want to add meditation to your lifestyle - not to improve your spiritual well-being, but to keep your social brain tuned up. (Interestingly, Siegel came to nearly the same conclusions that Andy Newberg and I independently arrived at by analyzing the vast data concerning the effects of meditation on the brain, something that rarely happens in the fields of neuroscience and psychology; we report our findings in our forthcoming book, How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings by a Leading Neuroscientist)

I think that this is most important book that Dr. Siegel has written. There are many comprehensive reviews here, so I want to limit this one to a few additional points. First, Siegel has integrated mirror neuron theory into his model, with great finesse. Mirror neurons hypothetically allow us to experience in our brain what other people are thinking and feeling in their brain. This neural "resonance" may be an essential key to understanding how empathy and compassion works, and meditation practices appear to strengthen those parts of the brain where mirror neurons reside.

Siegel's model, as a prior reviewer pointed out, is hypothetical, but interestingly Andrew Newberg and I independently came to similar conclusions, based on our brain-scan research of a wide variety of contemplative meditation practices, which we report in our forthcoming book How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist. Although the neuroscience of compassion and empathy is in its infancy, we concur with Siegel that meditation may be the best psychological tool we have for enhancing social awareness and responsiveness. It can be combined with psychotherapy and medication, and may even have a longer lasting effect than either, especially when treating chronic forms of anxiety and depression. I also want to point out that Siegel and our research emphasizes the plasticity of the human brain, and in specific our ability to consciously rewire our own neural circuits in ways that appear to increase cognition and perhaps longevity as well.

I listened to the CD version first, then bought the book. The CD is excellent (it's narrated by Siegel) and is an abridgment of the book, which means that a lot of the detailed neuroscience is left out, but this has benefits for those who prefer to shy away from the intricacies of medial prefrontal circuits and the like.

I was very eager to read this book after hearing the author interviewed for an hour on episode 44 of Ginger Campbell's "Brain Science" podcast. However, I found the book a great disappointment.
Dan Siegel is obviously very interested in mindful meditation, but unfortunately he is not at all mindful of the needs of readers. His book struck me as an almost shapeless mess of repetitions over which a "structure" of chapter and section headings had been imposed with little or no discernible relation to the actual contents of each chapter or section. Some sections of the book are not even paragraphed logically.
For much of the book Siegel refers to what he calls "resonance circuits" in the brain, but it's not until you get near the end of the book that he explains what he means by this term, and why he has chosen to use it.
At one point in the book Siegel refers abruptly to some incident that occurred in Mexico where he fell off a horse, as if we already know about this (we don't). A hundred pages of so later he refers to an incident where he once experienced amnesia for a day (is this the horse incident, or another?). There's no introduction to his reference: it seems we're supposed to know about this already.
Siegel seems to be compelled to invent the most ludicrous acronyms. Thus we get COAL, for example, for "curiosity, openness, acceptance and love". It doesn't seem to have occurred to Siegel that COAL just might have other connotations for many of his readers.
This is all a pity, because there are some interesting ideas in this book (though many of the most interesting derive from authors whom Siegel cites, and are not his own). Siegel's own contributions mostly fall into the realm of the highly speculative (although, to be fair, he is very honest about this).
I would estimate that a good editor could reshape this book and formulate all the key ideas in about 40 pages. In other words, about four fifths of the book are simply redundant: Siegel repeating himself ad nauseam.
My advice: listen to the podcast (which will cost you nothing) and forget the book.

SUMMARY OF THE BOOK
Daniel Siegel's book is an attempt to link the health benefits of 'mindfulness' with current research into the neurology of the human brain. The concept of 'mindfulness' is borrowed directly from Buddhist meditation practices, and Siegel acknowledges this. After introducing us to the topic of mindfulness, Siegel devotes a full chapter to the human brain, complete with diagrams. Then come autobiographical chapters about conferences Siegel attended, where he was introduced to meditation. Then Siegel gives us a detailed exposition of mindfulness and the practice of meditation. The final chapters of Siegel's book discuss the current neurological research into meditation practices.

TARGET AUDIENCE OF HIS BOOK
The book is geared towards multiple audiences. Most of the book is expository, having the goal of explaining mindfulness and meditation to a general public. The latter portion of the book launches into a detailed discussion of the neurology of the brain; Siegel seems to be targeting a readership of medical health professionals.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CONTENT
The autobiographical sections in the first chapters of the book are somewhat surprising for the depth of personal experience Siegel shares with us. Several years previous to writing his book, Siegel attended 'retreats' in which he learned about meditation. He describes his efforts to practice silence and stillness in considerable detail. We learn how difficult it was for Siegel to quiet the background 'chatter' in his mind. He tells us how he, "had a remarkable experience eating an apple at dinner". He shares the novelty of rolling a raisin around in his mouth. He tells us how rocks and gravel felt under his bare feet. Siegel's point is that with some effort he was able to free himself from mental chatter, and return to the purity of primary sense experience. These retreats were apparently a turning point in Siegel's life; he rediscovers himself through the practice of meditation. Though a recent convert to meditation practices, Siegel goes on to embrace these subjects in his professional life as co-director of UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center. Siegel's enthusiasm for his subject is obvious; he wants to share and spread the word about meditation practices; hence this book.

THE LENGTHY DISCUSSION OF 'MINDFULNESS'
Siegel is persuasive in his argument that meditation practices have considerable merit. He draws his material from the Buddhist tradition, which is 2500 years old and well practiced. And though Siegel acknowledges the Buddhist tradition repeatedly, he nevertheless imparts to us many of his own ideas about the human mind. Since Siegel is a practicing psychiatrist, we expect that he can write competently on this subject with a certain level of expertise.

Siegel follows the main tenets of Buddhist meditation closely, explaining how to quiet the mind, how to live in the present moment, how to return to our primary senses, how to regulate emotions and feelings, how to suspend judgement, and how to go about self-liberation. An original Siegel concept is his 'Wheel of Awareness", a parallel metaphor to the Buddhist "Wheel of Life". Siegel provides a diagram of his 'Wheel of Awareness' as an aid to explain how our minds work.

The goal of mindfulness is remarkably parallel to the goals of psychotherapy, and this helps explain Siegel's interest in the practice of meditation. He explains how mindfulness can help us better cope with negative emotions, such as worry, depression, and anxiety. Moreover, meditation can also enhance our positive emotions, such as compassion, joy and general well-being. In this way the practice of meditation helps relieve human suffering and develops the fullness of human potential.

The main problem with the human condition, as Seigel explains it, is that the human mind is continually beset with background chatter, a habit of mind that loops our thoughts and feelings in ways that don't always promote our general well-being. Siegel writes, "preconceived ideas and emotional reactions are embedded in thinking". He explains that we have automatic reflexes that can sometimes lead us down destructive paths. The point of achieving a state of mindfulness is to free ourselves from mental chatter; we can disentangle the mind from these automatic intrusions of thought and emotion. We can do this, Siegel argues, by returning to the primacy of our senses. The theory seems to be that there are many layers of awareness, and if we strip away the outside layer of chatter, our true selves lurk somewhere at the core, close to raw sense experience. Siegel also points out that achieving mindfulness involves the development of certain skills, one of which he tags as becoming observant. He writes, "when we observe, we disengage the automatic chatter". More detail of achieving mindfulness is given; we are advised to jettison judgement, which is deeply ingrained in human experience, and which tends to disturb the quiet of the mind.

In short, Siegel believes that the practice of mindfulness is a learnable skill that can broadly help cure the many psychological problems that plague humanity.

THE LENGTHY LISTING OF NEUROLOGICAL STUDIES ABOUT MEDITATION
While there is little original material in Siegel's exposition of meditation practices, his discussion of neurological studies does contain an original idea of remarkably good quality. He argues that "mindful awareness is a form of experience that can promote neural plasticity". In other words, the claim is that meditation can beneficially rewire the circuitry of the brain.

Siegel makes an extended effort to establish this linkage between the neurocircuitry of the brain and the benefits of meditation. To do this Siegel brings to our attention many studies describing the neurology of the brain. We are taken on a tour of therapies and research programs referred to with such acronyms as COAL, SIFT, MBSR, MBCT, FACES, YODA, CFA, SIMA, AAI, and many others. The full meaning of each acronym is usually spelled out once, yet these terms are repeatedly mentioned throughout the text. For me this list of research was dense reading and the least comprehensible section of the book. Nevertheless Siegel's exploration of neurology may have merit that I simply can not appreciate. The discussion is really targeted to health professionals and researchers in the field of neurology. But even Siegel admits that, "little is known about the neurophysiological process involved in meditation and its possible long term impact on the brain". So we wonder what is Siegel's point if this research is not yet conclusive? Perhaps it is to suggest that neurological research into meditation practices is promising, but still incipient.

CRITICISM OF SIEGEL'S IDEAS
Siegel does impart his own signature to the discussion of mindfulness and meditation. There are strong elements of the humanistic and positive schools of psychology in his writing. For example, COAL, a style of therapy advocated in the book, stands for Curiosity, Openness, Acceptance, and Love. This type of study reads more as feel-good psychology than as good science. Siegel clearly endorses this feel-good approach in his book, as can be seen in his language. He writes, "the social circuitry of the brain [...] enables us to resonate with one another". And, "we are free to flow into our balanced river of consciousness". And, "we have human minds dancing with our human brains within our social experience of the shared construction of human culture". Siegel enthusiastically gushes with such language throughout his text, even though he is no longer speaking in the language of science. I too would like to think that there are complete answers, that our goodness is radiant, that we can change ourselves and the world through positive thinking. But this is feel-good psychology, not discussion based in good science.

Siegel shows a great willingness to make proclamations on broad and complex subject matter. Are we to believe Siegel, just because he gives us a diagram of human awareness with a half dozen constituent parts? No! To be persuasive as a science writer he needs to substantiate his claims. Human consciousness is so vastly complex and Siegel's discussion is so simplistic, that many well educated readers will immediately discern the remarkable lack of substance in his writing. The science is missing in large portions of Siegel's text. He makes extraordinary claims about meditation practices and 'mindfulness', without the critical thinking we should expect from a psychiatrist and science writer.

SIEGEL'S STYLE OF WRITING:
There is nothing cogent about Siegel's writing. His style of exposition is loose and frequently without clear lines of argumentation. His heavy overuse of certain terms, such as 'mindfulness' is particularly irritating. On many pages the word 'mindfulness' occurs a dozen times or more, with perhaps a thousand occasions throughout the book. It does not occur to Siegel that he cloys the reader by overusing his favorite words. Battering his readers with his pet concepts is actually a fairly good characterization of Siegel's style.

It required considerable effort on my part just to wade through Siegel's text and extract his ideas. Despite my distaste for Siegel's writing, I have tried in this review to be judicious about the quality of Siegel's ideas.

CONCLUSIONS:
I do rather like Siegel's idea that meditation could be a scientifically proven pathway to learning, undoing self-destructive behavior, eliminating stress, regulating emotions, and living to our full human potential. It's no accident that mindfulness and meditation have already gained recognition and found beneficial applications among Western health professionals and their patients.

In rating Siegel's book he deserves a star for linking neurological science with meditation, even though this linkage is not yet well documented.

As for Siegel's exposition of Buddhist meditation practices, I give him another star. Although these ideas are not original with Siegel, he does manage to articulate them well enough.

As for the autobiographical sections of Siegel's book I deduct a star. I am doubtful that Siegel's personal experience is something of value that we should learn from. It is rather a self-important gesture to give such personal detail in anything other than an autobiography.

I deduct a star also for the general quality of discussion in Siegel's text. Most of his ideas are proclaimed rather than arrived at through careful reasoning. Siegel does not not offer any consistent quality of scientific discussion; his enthusiasm and intellect fit more comfortably into the domain of pop-psychology and self-help literature.

As for the quality of Siegel's writing, he must lose yet another star. He doesn't know whether he is writing an autobiography, a text on meditation, or a summary of neurological research. The language of his book is repetitive, wandering, abstract, and so dumbed-down that potential readers need forewarning.

My review of Siegel's book is clearly not a recommendation. I see this runs against the tide of other reviews of Siegel's book on Amazon, but popular opinion does not concern me. Scholarly opinion is what matters to me, and I have tried to provide that in this review.

This review was written by Ron Basich, a professional librarian.

This book presents an intriguing examination of mindfulness/meditation and the study of it in neuroscience. The author does a fairly decent job of explaining what mindfulness is, as well as presenting his different models for it. He also presents some interesting information about neuroscience studies of mindfulness.

However while the author does a decent job of presenting the information, the writing itself is fairly dry and the author mostly stays in the domain of theory. It would have been nice if the author had included practical mindfulness exercises to demonstrate some of his concepts, especially as related to the acronyms he threw around. It's not the best book on neuroscience, but it's still work taking a read through.