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

Mindfulness has never met a cognition it didn't like.

Attuning inwardly felt like a welcome home celebration.

As adolescence begins, the second genetically programmed growth of synapses is followed by a long decade of brain remodeling that involves the programmed destruction of neurons and their connections that are not being used. The parcellation process in which connections are pruned is thought to be a 'use -it-or-lose-it' neural reshaping that is exacerbated by stress. Such a period of brain change is also marked by vulnerability , as underlying neural deficits, unrealized before adolescence, may becomes exposed during the pruning process.

the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” (Kabat-Zinn,

The busy lives people lead in the technologically driven culture that consumes our attention often produce a multitasking frenzy of activity that leaves people constantly doing, with no space to breathe and just be. The adaptations to such a way of life often leaves youth accustomed to high levels of stimulus-bound attention, flitting from one activity to another, with little time for self-reflection or interpersonal connection of the direct, face-to-face sort that the brain needs for proper development. Little today in our hectic lives provides for opportunities to attune with one another.

Things as they are clash with things as our top-down invariant processes expect them to be. We shove sensation through the filter of the past to make the future predictable. In the process, we lose the present. But because the present is all that exists, we have lost everything in the bargain.