Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom

Your Best Brain A Benefit Workshop for The Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom Your brain is the bottom-line for how you feel and act: change your brain, and you change your life. In this four-hour workshop on Saturday, September 25, in San Rafael, CA, we’ll cover ten great ways to change your brain for the better – for more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. Grounded in brain science, you’ll learn practical, research-based ways to: • Feed your brain with the right foods and supplements • Calm down the amygdala for less anxiety and other negative emotions • Energize the neural networks of compassion, empathy, and love • Boost acetylcholine to light up the circuits of learning and memory • Tap into your brain’s natural core of happiness • Increase levels of key neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine without medication – for improved mood, attention, and motivation • And much, much more This will be fun, down-to-earth, and super-useful – and you even get handouts! Your presenters are Rick Hanson, Ph.D., author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, and Jan Hanson, M.S., L.Ac., who wrote Nutritional Neurochemistry in Buddha’s Brain. This workshop will benefit the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, which publishes the Wise Brain Bulletin, offers all the great resources at WiseBrain.org, and hosts the Skillful Means wiki (methods for psychological and spiritual growth). The requested donation is $40 – $60 – with any amount being a wonderful contribution to the good work of the Institute. It’s happening on Saturday, September 25, 9:30 am – 1:30 pm, St. Luke Church, 10 Bayview Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903. Space is limited, and this event will sell out, so please register now. For a good cause, this will be a fast-paced summary of ten fabulous things you can do to develop your own best brain – and we’d appreciate you putting the word out to others. Tell a friend for twice the good karma! And because the brain learns from repetition: Please register now. Your Registration is Tax Deductible Option 1 $60.00 Option 2 $50.00 Option 3 $40.00

With the neurologist and meditation teacher, Richard Mendius, MD., I founded the non-profit (501c3) Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom.

Its mission is to offer skillful means for changing the brain to benefit the whole person – and all beings in a world too full of war. It draws on psychology, neurology, and the great contemplative traditions for tools that anyone can use in daily life for greater happiness, love, effectiveness, and wisdom.

The Institute aims to accomplish this mission through:

•  Highlighting the discoveries and methods found in the intersection of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice

•  Addressing a range of needs, from psychological healing and well-being to spiritual realization

•  Respecting the unique path of each person through offering a diversity of tools that one can systematically individualize

•  Collecting, organizing, and distributing resources for psychological and spiritual growth; actively supporting the work of others aligned with the Institute’s mission

•  Maintaining an empirical, ecumenical, and pragmatic attitude; not privileging science over spiritual wisdom or vice versa, and not privileging any particular contemplative tradition (or school within a tradition)

The major activities of the Institute include:

•  Maintaining and expanding the Wise Brain website, a hub of resources for psychological well-being and spiritual depth

•  Initiating the Skillful Means wiki, an expanding resource of psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual methods; unlike most wikis, which focus on content, this one offers tools

•  Publishing the Wise Brain Bulletin

•  Sponsoring focused, low-overhead research activities, such as studies of peak states of mind

•  Supporting the dissemination of useful information and skills through lectures, classes, and workshops

•  Putting on conferences, such as an annual interfaith meeting: “This Is Your Brain on . . . God?”

We would be deeply grateful for any contribution you could make to the Institute, including your good wishes, letting us publish your work, telling us about great resources, volunteering a little time, or making a donation.

Your financial contributions are tax-deductible, and Wellspring’s tax ID is 26-0328057. Please make checks out to the “Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom,” and mail them to:  Wellspring Institute, 25 Mitchell Blvd., Suite 3, San Rafael, CA, 94903. If you would rather donate by credit card, simply click the donate button below.

Because of the leveraged nature of the Institute’s work, any support you offer will make a real difference in the great undertaking of helping us all gain greater control over the brain’s reactive patterns – for the sake of individual happiness, and for the sake of a planet poised on the edge of the sword.

The way our world tips will depend largely on whether a critical mass of people become more skillful with their own minds – and thus their own brains.