Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story

Description

A guide to retelling your personal, family, and cultural stories to transform your life, your relationships, and the world * Applies the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy * Details mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities * Explores how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with ones that build healthier relationships with each other and the planet We are born into a world of stories that quickly shapes our behavior and development without our conscious awareness. By retelling our personal, family, and cultural narratives we can transform the patterns of our own lives as well as the patterns that shape our communities and the larger social worlds in which we interact. Applying the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy, Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy explain how the brain is specialized in the art of story-making and story-telling. They detail mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities. They explore studies that reveal how memory works through story, how the brain recalls things in narrative rather than lists, and how our stories modify our physiology and facilitate health or disease. Drawing on their decades of experience in narrative therapy, the authors examine the art of helping people to change their story, providing brain-mapping practices to discover your inner storyteller and test if the stories you are living are functional or dysfunctional, healing or destructive. They explain how to create new characters and new stories, ones that excite you, help you connect with yourself, and deepen your intimate connections with others. Detailing how shared stories and language form culture, the authors also explore how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with those that offer templates for healthier relationships with each other and the planet.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician, associate professor at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and executive director of the Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation. The author of several books, including Narrative Medicine and Coyote Medicine, he lives in Orono, Maine. Barbara Mainguy, M.A., is a psychotherapist and education director for the Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation. She lives in Orono, Maine.

"In this superb contribution to the field of self-transformation through story, Dr. Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy present important scientific research in approachable language as they demonstrate the intrinsic therapeutic value of story at all levels of our being. The authors have all the qualities of true 'medicine' people--they heal, they bless, they give thanks, they teach, they respect those who approach them for help--and so join the ancient lineage of storytellers who ensure the continuity of life giving, universal healing wisdom." * Jack Angelo, author of Self-Healing with Breathwork: Using the Power of Breath to Increase Energy an * "Our life is a storied life. Where we may have been thrown into an unhappy or even hostile story, we have ways to remap and re-story our lives. I have read each of Dr. Mehl-Madrona's books, shared them with clients and students, and witnessed how his words help transform the inner and outer landscapes of our lives. He shows us how we can experience transformation and transcendence by being able to story our life differently. Remapping Your Mind satisfies in every way." * Julie Tallard Johnson, author of The Zero Point Agreement: How to Be Who You Already Are * "Remapping Your Mind" finally gives a clear guide to that elusive "how" using the techniques of narrative therapy and reframing to assist people in shifting perspectives about incidents and actions from their past and present. An addiction to alcohol might be reconstructed as a medicine-gone-wrong via a fairytale narrative. Running away from home as a child might be reframed as going on a heroic journey. Other methods, such as movement, language change, and conscious application of placebo all appear, complete with anecdotes and step-by-step application. These methods do, undeniably, lay a path for radical change." * Facing North, Diana Rajchel, February 2016 * "Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy breathe new life into helping people transform their inner landscape and inner world. Remapping Your Mind is filled with powerful case studies and tools that combine ways to reprogram the brain and peoples' lives through storytelling, art, movement, witnessing, and honoring and respecting each person's healing journey. Lewis gifts us as he shares some native teachings. This book is simply brilliant!" * Sandra Ingerman, M.A., author of Walking in Light and coauthor of Speaking with Nature * "This must-read book sheds light on the profound relationship between storytelling and our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Through Mehl-Madrona and Mainguy's engaging stories we learn how reframing our narratives can lead to unexpected personal and social healing. I whole-heartedly recommend Remapping Your Mind." * Itzhak Beery, author The Gift of Shamanism, editor of Shamanic Transformations and publisher of Sham * "The work of Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, based both on indigenous knowledge and cutting edge scientific data, is of utmost importance and scope, both on the personal and collective levels. We do not live in the world, as we believe. Instead, we live in the story of the world we unconsciously create for ourselves. Becoming aware that we are story creators, and learning how to (re)create our stories consciously, as Lewis teaches, gives us tremendous power over our lives. Book after book, the author gives us the keys to becoming free of the matrix of our old inadequate stories!" * Olivier Clerc, author of The Gift of Forgiveness and The Five Agreements Game * "Once upon a time the stories we were told about ourselves were constricted to the fact that you are what you have experienced and that you can't get away from that. In this book, Lewis and Barbara clearly challenge all these notions of lifelong ill-being, of being weighed down by the past. They use many cases from their own experience and match these with the latest experiments in neuroscience to show this not to be true. This book will infect those who read it with hope, humor and energy. This book offers to the mind, what Copernicus and Galileo gave to the sun and moon." * Venetia Young, M.D., coauthor of 10 minutes for the Family *