Contact, Simulation, and the Felt Experience of Space
We’ve long understood that the brain mirrors other people. We’re now beginning to see that it may also be mirroring the environment itself. There’s new evidence that the brain’s mirror neuron system responds not only to social interactions, but also to interactions and perceived relationships between inanimate objects in our environment. For decades, the mirror neuron system (MNS) has been understood as a mechanism for social cognition and connection. Observing another person
Rewriting the Nervous System Blueprint: Top-Down vs Bottom-Up
Sometimes the practices that once helped us feel calm start to feel ineffective. We sit down to meditate and our minds spin faster. We try to focus, reflect, or reset, but nothing really lands. We feel restless, overstimulated, or flat. It’s easy to assume something is wrong with us, that we’ve lost discipline or that we’re doing the practices incorrectly. But often, the issue isn’t the practice at all. It’s the state of the system we’re trying to apply it to. Our nervous sys
Relearning Pleasure: Healing the Dopamine Hangover
Have you noticed that we live in a culture that never stops reaching for the next hit of excitement, novelty or ‘success’? Most of us scroll, sip, snack, message, click, win, shop or -insert vices here- until we get a quick jolt of validation. It’s constant. That’s why so many of us now exist in a strange, tense space between feeling overstimulated and undernourished. Our brains are flooded, but our bodies feel empty. There’s a quiet but distinctive crash that comes after too