Dan Siegel

How you make sense of your childhood experiences has a profound effect on how you parent your own children.

With practice, a mindful state becomes a mindful trait.

The observational distance that allows us to watch our own mental activity is an important first step toward regulating and stabilizing the mind.

Exercising attention is like building a muscle.

People with mindfulness training have a shift in their brains toward an “approach state” that allows them to move toward rather than away from challenging situations. This is the brain signature of resilience.

How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.

There are specific activities and experiences that can nurture mindsight throughout the lifespan... mindsight is a form of expertise that can be honed in each of us, whatever our early history.

One of the key practical lessons of modern neuroscience is that the power to direct our attention has within it the power to shape our brain’s firing patterns, as well as the power to shape the architecture of the brain itself.

The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.

Within each of us is an inherent drive toward health—a push toward integration.

An old, dear and now-departed friend, the poet, philosopher, and all around wonderfully wise John O’Donohue, captured the essence of this emergent flow when he said that he’d love to live like a river, carried by the surprise of his own unfolding.