The basis of many of the psychological conditions for which people seek help is dysregulation of the nervous system. This presentation will outline some of the last decade’s research on the brain and the nervous system and enable educators to better understand self-regulation as the capacity to move flexibly through challenging life events, and resilience as the capacity to recover quickly from negative events. Participants will be introduced to the essential skill of tracking activation in their nervous system and how new work in traumatology applies to their work with students.
In this presentation we will discuss Interpersonal Neurobiology, a current neuroscience understanding of trauma, andsecure and insecure attachment ways of being-in-the-world. “Spiritual bypassing” may represent efforts to manage dysregulation in the nervous system, and may manifest in several ways including endless spiritual “seeking” and various aspects of “spiritual materialism” (Trungpa, 2002). It is proposed that working towards an “earned” secure attachment may promote a “liberated” spirituality, that is, one free of such bypassing, and that there are likely several routes to such an embodiment of security. We will encourge a sense of curiosity in our exploration of the relationships between spirituality, attachment theory, trauma, somatically-oriented psychotherapy, mindfulness, and nondual realization. The talk will be an elaboration of a presentation by Ron at the Science and Nonduality Conference in Italy in 2017.