The Brain Alchemist — Rewire your brain to speak your mind and be heard.

Emotionally}Vague by Orlagh O’Brien

July 27, 2011

Whenever I work with people on emotional regulation during conflicts, I like to ask where they feel the emotions in the body. Stress and emotional overload can show up as muscle tension, hair standing up, sudden headache, pit in the stomach, racing heartbeat, deep sighing or shallow breathing. The body reveals what the brain tries [...]

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Vulnerability doesn’t mean victimhood

July 8, 2011

What does being vulnerable mean to you? Most people don’t like feeling vulnerable, myself included. Without our protective stance, we feel exposed to the world that is ready to prey on our weaknesses. Yet, more and more research indicates that the expression of vulnerability contributes to our sense of well-being. In one of my all-favorite [...]

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The Art of Adversity

June 22, 2011

“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” ~ William Ellery Channing As a young boy with a severe learning disability, Chuck Close was told not to even think about college. Nevertheless, he went on to get his MFA from Yale and became a world renowned artist. [...]

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Fascinate your way through conflicts

June 1, 2011

“Fascinate?” you may wonder. In conflicts, people argue, fight, yell, accuse, threaten, push each other’s buttons…but fascinate? That doesn’t seem to fit into our typical paradigm of conflict behaviors. Perhaps, it’s time for a mind shift. Triggers are not just those pesky things that we become all worked up about and that send our brains [...]

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Resilience is empowering, but so is revenge

May 19, 2011

“Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson There is power in the ability to take action and make a choice. Our brains like the sense of autonomy and control, after all, we want to feel [...]

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Boosting creativity through passion, novelty and pleasure

May 3, 2011

I’ve just returned from Chicago, where I had the pleasure to present my program “Rewire Your Brain to Speak Your Mind: Neuroscience Insights for Conflict Management” at the Association of Conflict Resolution Chicago Area Chapter. It was wonderful to connect with other conflict resolution professionals and tap into our collective brain power for new ideas [...]

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Your Brain or Mine? Collective Perceptions and Group Conformity

April 13, 2011

Metaphors often reveal the hidden connections between our perception of the physical world and our mental constructs. The expression “eye to eye” means “in agreement.” It turns out that seeing eye to eye in the physical sense may explain our tendencies to conform and “follow the crowd” under peer pressure. Put differently, what others say [...]

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How The Grumpy Gremlin, The Inner Critic and The Mad Monkey Stole the Creative Seed of Discourse

April 2, 2011

Once upon a time, Discourse possessed a creative seed that in the right conditions had the power to germinate into better understanding among people and offer new solutions to their problems. The wise and the elderly knew how to take care of the creative seed and help it sprout into a peaceful growth until one [...]

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Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 3: Compassionate Listening

March 20, 2011

“Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually, you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.” [...]

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Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 2: Cross-Cultural Communication

March 9, 2011

I continue with my reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress and offer a few more take-aways from one of the workshops I attended, entitled “Essentials in Relating Across Cultures” by Ed Ladon and Alan Gross. We began with the discussion of culture as an iceberg metaphor. Only about one-eighth of an iceberg [...]