hello my name is Dan Siegel and it's an honor to introduce you to the hand model of the brain sometimes the brain in our head is modeled as a plastic model like the one you see here that's two times life size and it's fun to carry a big model around this size because you can take it apart and look at some of the insides and see what's going on but it's hard to carry this around in everyday life so what I invented was a model of the brain that you actually have in your hand my daughter has urged me not to call it a handy model but it is kind of Handy and the model goes like this if this brain were oriented in my head in this Direction with this frontal part here behind the forehead we would create this in our hand model by putting our Thumb in the middle our fingers over the top and this will be oriented this way now the hand model of the brain is very useful because when you know about the parts of the brain you can learn how to direct your attention in a way that can get certain areas to not only get activated but also to start to work together and you can change both the function and the structure of your brain by knowing about how the brain is structured so let's walk through these areas of the brain and how they can link together this hand modeled the brain has been useful in classrooms it's been useful in Corporate Offices it's been useful for mediation for meditation for people out in the field working with the stresses of working with epidemics and for people who are just in general trying to improve their lives so let's go through this hand model and see how it can support your work and your life if you take your hand and put your thumb in the middle and fold your fingers over the top this would be the completed model the top of the brain is called the cortex and would be represented in your fingers if you lift up the cortex you'll see beneath it the limbic area which should have two thumbs to be a perfect model but most of us just have one and in this limbic area you see that there are connections upwards to the cortex and even downwards to the area just below it called the brain stem in your palm and this whole head brain is connected to the body through a number of regions including the spinal cord represented in your wrist now let's quickly review what these areas do and you can see how what you do with your mind can change the way the brain functions if we lift up the cortex and lift up the limbic area let's begin with the brain stem the brain stem is the oldest part of this head brain and I keep on saying head brain because you have neurons around your heart and around your intestines that people are calling the gut brain and the Heart brain and so I'll use the word just brain but actually it's a hand model of the head brain the deepest oldest part of the head brain is this brain stem it takes in information from the body and it helps regulate things like how you breathe and how you digest food how your heart functions in addition the brain stem has a very important set of regions that create the fight flight freeze and faint response that comes when we feel threatened so if you're working in a business for example or you're in a classroom or you're at home and you feel threatened by what's going on the brain stem gets involved to create this reactive state in addition this brain stem Works closely with if you put your next area down the thumb region which is the limbic area this is a 200 million year old region when became mammals that works with the 300 million year old Reptilian Brain and together they work to create emotion in working with the body the body brain stem limbic area create emotion the brain stem works with the limbic area to also motivate us to drive our behaviors and this limbic area appraises the meaning of things whether things are significant or not whether they're good or bad in addition there are certain ways memory is divided up and connected through the limbic area with an area you may have heard the hippocampus or with its amygdala region and then on top of that you have the attachment experience we have as mammals where we connect with caregivers so that they can protect us and we can be sued by them is also mediated by this limbic region not just in childhood but throughout our whole lifespan now these limbic functions work closely if you fold your fingers over with the cortex which is basically making Maps so this region makes maps of the outside world with our eyes in the back the occipital cortex sound comes in the side the temporal lobe with the way in which we map out sound and you even have an area in the front from these second to last Knuckles forward called The frontal cortex also known as the association cortex where you make associations in thought and the front most part of this frontal lobe here is demarcated by your last Knuckles down your fingernails and this is called the pre-frontal cortex now you may have heard a lot about the prefrontal cortex because it's involved basically in something called integration it integrates cortex limbic area you can see it sits on top of it brain stem body and even the social world together now when you do a practice let's say like we have a wheel of awareness practice as a form of mindfulness meditation or do any kind of mindfulness reflective practice you are integrating the whole system when you're not integrated it can become chaotic and rigid it's like flipping your lid so instead of living with Harmony within yourself and Harmony and connection to others you're literally becoming chaotic with an outburst or rigid and withdrawn that's demonstrated by literally lifting up your fingers and showing how this prefrontal region is no longer linking the cortex limbic area brain stem body in the social world it's become disintegrated now the amazing thing is there's a new set of studies called the connectome studies which show how the areas of the brain that are differentiated can then become connected so it's connectone and what research has shown from the human connectome project is the best predictor of your well-being is how interconnected your connectome is so anything you can do to understand your hand model of the brain and to bring an honoring of differences and a connection of these areas you'll be promoting integration and you'll be giving yourself the gift that keeps on giving and the amazing thing too is that integration is likely the source of well-being not just in our bodies including the head brain but in our relationships with other people and even with nature around us creativity emerges from this integration collaboration emerges from integration so the hand while the brain reminds us to know the different parts understand how they may be differentiating themselves if we're angry or getting upset feeling sad feeling lonely making faults that emerge and then opening ourselves to all of these and connecting them together whether you do this in the wheel of awareness practice or some other kind of reflective practice having this brain of yours become more integrated is the pathway toward more well-being in your life whether it's at work at home or in your communities integration creates well-being thanks for joining me and goodbye