Your Truest Self – How BodyMind Supports Heart-Knowing And Spirit
Channel: Novasutras
Date: 2020-10-07

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Dr. Kendon Smith presents YOUR TRUEST SELF – New Neuroscience Identifies An Autonomous BodyMind That Supports Heart-Knowing And Spirit

Recent neuroscience has identified a BrainMind with two parts, each functioning autonomously, yet closely partnered. One is the neocortical system, which provides a neural substrate for knowing consciously, thinking, remembering, differentiating. The other is a more primitive form of cortex,
allocortex, knowing only in process, implicitly, reflexively, yet holistically, knowing from oneness! Allocortex is primary in processing of emotions, of heart knowing, of finding meaning in life, of experiencing relationships. This is our embodied self, our truest self.
Eugene Gendlin's technique of Focusing (1978) permits dialogue with our implicit, truest self. With progress is this dialogue, resolution of spiritual blockages and emotional hangups accelerates.
Focusing practice in a focusing partnership are demonstrated as part of the presentation.

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Your Truest Self – How BodyMind Supports Heart-Knowing And Spirit
- Outline -
Novasutras Presentation  10/7/20
Kendon Smith, M.D.
 
Neocortical system/allocortical system
 a representation – The Boxing Glove cradling the Egg 
 
Neocortical System:

 Connectivity
Point-for-point neural mapping across multiple neural relays between sensory organ and cortex   – Specific Connectivity
Culminating in a map in the primary cortex for sight,    hearing, touch and muscle movement  coordination
With overlapping integrating maps in neocortical    association cortices – inter-sensory and inter-   associational
 
Functionality 
REFLECTIVE (conscious)
Images (Neocortex) and thoughts and memories    (Association Cortex) experienced consciously, Permitting a conscious Autobiographical Self.
One knows in a specific, differentiated way, Predisposed to dualistic thinking
 
Development
Myelination of association cortex continues into at least the third decade of life (also true of part of the hippocampus, which has a central role in long term memory formation)
(Primary cortex myelination achieves "adult" level of maturation on different timetable, by about age 7) 
 
Allocortical System:
Connectivity
Diffuse Connectivity
Provides neural substrate for visceral function, for  reflexive emotionality, for embodied self; for "Core Self" (Damasio), for Truest Self (K.Smith)
 
Functionality
REFLEXIVE (subconscous) BodyMind
Learns experientially, through synaptic coding through inclination, and predisposition, experience by experience, throughout life
Personality is an embodied manifestation
 
"Knows"
   Holistically, in "oneness"
   Implicitly, Subconscously
   In embodied process
   knows somehow through "the seat of one's pants"
   Your Truest Self in that your sense of what matters to you in life, your values, your               relationality is coded in this system.  Conscious thought lends detail to our central, abiding "feel" for this
   Can be sensed more accurately through Eugene   Gendlin's "FELT-SENSE" technique                     (Focusing; Gendlin, E.; 1978) to sense how You truly feel
 
Development
Biologically, adult level of myelination achieved by about age 7, in synchrony with myelination of    primary cortices
Psychologically, developing in an intrinsically relational way
   initially with a primary caretaker
   then multiple figures
   then gradually with your conscious self
   ideally then with conscious Felt-Sense work  in implicit/explicit dialogue
       Ideally developing a caretaking-self within in  continuation of a partnership-need of                    embodied self manifesting in Focusing therapeutic work. 
       arguably ideally with at least a focusing  partner. 
 
SPIRITUAL ISSUES
   Observation of Virtual Satsangs led by Jon Bernie
 
DEMONSTRATION OF FOCUSING PARTNERSHIP
 
DISCUSSION

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