Audiobooks by Richard Davidson

Develop a Healthy Mind: How Focus Impacts Brain Function

In Develop a Healthy Mind, Daniel Goleman, author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence and Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds highlight what the latest scientific research tells us about our brain functions and common psychological conditions, habits, and what it means to have a healthy mind. They answer questions such as: How can attention training enhance emotional intelligence abilities? What are the different types of attention - and how can we recognize them? Why is it crucial to teach our children how to focus? How can we develop an attention training practice that suits our needs and style? Included are guided exercises to help you practice attention-training skills at work, at home, and in the classroom. Guided exercises include: Sensory Focus, Body Scan, Breath Exercise, Listening Exercise, Breath Count, Enhancing Listening and Communication, and Managing Negative Emotions.

Daniel Goleman, Mirabai Bush, Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Author), Daniel Goleman, Mirabai Bush, Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

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The Neuroscience of Compassion

Discuss what the tools of modern neuroscience have revealed about the brains of people who spent years cultivating well-being and qualities of mind that promote a positive outlook. Utilize the tools of modern neuroscience along with the wisdom of Buddhism to study kindness and compassion--how spirituality meets science through the new field of contemplative neuroscience. In 1992, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson got a challenge from the Dalai Lama. By that point, he'd spent his career asking why people respond to, in his words, "life's slings and arrows" in different ways. Why are some people more resilient than others in the face of tragedy? And is resilience something you can gain through practice? The Dalai Lama had a different question for Davidson when he visited the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader at his residence in Dharamsala, India. "He said: 'You've been using the tools of modern neuroscience to study depression, and anxiety, and fear. Why can't you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?' ... I did not have a very good answer. I said it was hard." The Dalai Lama was interested in what the tools of modern neuroscience could reveal about the brains of people who spent years, in Davidson's words, "cultivating well-being ... cultivating qualities of the mind which promote a positive outlook." The result was that, not long afterward, Davidson brought a series of Buddhist monks into his lab and strapped electrodes to their heads or treated them to a few hours in an MRI machine. "The best way to activate positive-emotion circuits in the brain is through generosity," Davidson, who founded the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "This is really a kind of exciting neuroscientific finding because there are pearls of wisdom in the contemplative tradition-the Dalai Lama frequently talks about this-that the best way for us to be happy is to be generous to others. And in fact the scientific evidence is in many ways bearing this out, and showing that there are systematic changes in the brain that are associated with acts of generosity."

Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Author), Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

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Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills

Understand the brain systems involved in: self-awareness, motivation, and emotional recovery The brain can be trained for a happier, less stressful life Brains are highly variable, changing systems that shift in response to our experience. Contemplative neuroscience proves that we have the power to guide our brain's ongoing development - to cultivate happiness and motivation. In this accessible dialogue, Goleman and Davidson explain the science behind our emotions, showing how we can activate our brains to recover from stress and anxiety, and conquer fear. Goleman and Davidson offer a new vision for emotional education at any age.

Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Author), Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

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