Teachings Offered

I’ve been teaching seminars, classes, and workshops since 1975, and a summary of current workshops is shown on this page.

I’ve taught at universities and meditation centers in America and Europe, including the California Institute of Integral Studies, University of Oxford, University of East London, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, London Insight, FACES Conferences, NICABM, R. Cassidy Seminars and University of California, Berkeley. I have great enthusiasm for this work!

These workshops can be adapted and offered for a variety of groups:

•  Helping professionals seeking continuing education credits (e.g., psychotherapists, physicians and nurses)

•  Educators

•  Business executives

•  Buddhist meditation centers

If you are interested in a two-day workshop, or even longer, I have expanded the material from a single workshop to fill multiple days, and also integrated two or more different workshops into a multi-day course.

I have also combined different workshop themes in a single day, or summarized a theme in an evening talk.

Most workshops use Powerpoint slides and handouts; these are desirable but not mandatory. You can see Powerpoint slide sets from past workshops here.

Please contact me if you would like to explore these offerings further.

Summary of Workshops

• Taking in the Good – How the brain evolved a “negativity bias” that continually looks for, reacts to, and stores negative experiences; how this shapes the interior landscape of the mind, leading to pessimism, depressed and anxious mood, and over-reactions; the neural machinery of memory; how to “trick” that machinery into weaving positive experiences into the brain and the self, leading to greater resilience, happiness, and interpersonal effectiveness; applications to particular situations, including healing trauma, cooperation with medical or psychological treatment, and raising or teaching children.

 

• The Neurology of Awakening – Introduction to the neuroscience of mindfulness and meditation; brain-wise methods for steadying the mind, quieting it, bringing it to singleness, and concentrating it; an exploration of what could be happening in the brain during the non-ordinary states of consciousness known as samadhis or jhanas.

 

• Equanimity – Neuropsychological research on stress, emotions, and painful experiences; approach/avoid responses to the pleasant/unpleasant “hedonic tone” of experience; illuminating parallels in the Buddhist analysis of “dependent origination,” in which our reactions to the hedonic tone of experience lead to craving, clinging, and suffering; numerous methods for reducing or eliminating reactions to the hedonic tone, and thus gaining much greater emotional balance, and an increasingly unshakeable core of happiness.

 

• The Neurodharma of Love – Brain-savvy approaches to unilateral virtue in relationships, empathy, caring, and romantic love; the evolutionary capabilities of altruistic cooperation and (alas) fearful aggression, and how to work with these, including seeing beyond distinctions between “us” and “them.”

 

• Not-Self in the Brain – The biological evolution of awareness and the apparent self; what neuroscience tells us about the distributed and endlessly variable neural nature of the apparent self; the stress, suffering, and interpersonal difficulties that come from “excesses of self”; the importance of healthy self-compassion and self-advocacy; how to heal injuries to self-worth; methods for taking things less personally, relaxing possessiveness, and feeling more at one with all things.

 

• The Hard Things That Open the Heart – The effects of difficult conditions, especially ones that wear on the nervous system itself, including depression, dementia, injuries, ADHD, anxiety, trauma; how mindfulness and wisdom perspectives can nurture the brain toward healing; ways to adapt daily life and even meditation practice for particular conditions.

 

• Love and Power – Why love in all its forms – from everyday kindness to strangers to the profundities of intimate relationships – and self-assertion support each other; how to integrate love and power in daily life; practical wisdom about relationships from the contemplative traditions; how the mind and brain develop grievances; effective tools for both standing up for yourself and getting to peace about the times you have been let down or mistreated.

 

• Paper Tiger Paranoia – How the brain’s “negativity bias” makes clients overestimate threats, underestimate opportunities, and underestimate inner and outer resources, leading to anxiety, anger, depression, and conflicts with others – and how to help clients overcome that bias, see the good facts about the others, the world, and themselves, and build resilience for happiness, healthy relationships, and occupational success.

 

Detailed Descriptions

These descriptions have been adapted from the websites or promotional materials of various sponsoring organizations. They are illustrative, and can be adapted to other venues or audiences.

Taking in the Good – Weaving Positive Emotions, Optimism, and Resilience into the Brain and Self

Developmental psychology, psychodynamic theory, and positive psychology all stress the importance of acquiring internal resources such as basic trust, optimism, and a positive mood. In our clients, we want to encourage self-soothing, emotional regulation, and resilience; we want the learning from their steps toward growth to “stick to their ribs.”

The question is: How to actually do this? Particularly given the challenge of the brain’s negativity bias, which preferentially scans for, reacts to, stores, and recalls negative information about oneself and one’s world. The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones; the natural result is a growing – and unfair – residue of emotional pain, pessimism, and numbing inhibition in implicit memory.

In this clinically focused and practical workshop, Rick Hanson shows how to use the brain’s machinery of memory to get at the essence of beneficial change in psychotherapy and any other process of personal growth: the internalization of positive experiences. Drawing on recent discoveries about neuroplasticity, he will present a simple, four step process that weaves positive experiences into the structure of the brain and the fabric of the self. Participants will practice this method with different applications and client populations.

The Neurology of Awakening

The latest brain research has begun to confirm the central insights of the Buddha and other great teachers. And it’s suggesting ways you can help your brain to enter deeper states of mindfulness, quiet, and concentration.

Suffering, joy, and freedom all depend on what happens within your nervous system. Skillful practice thus means being skillful with your own brain.

This experiential workshop will offer user-friendly information with lots of practical methods. We’ll cover:

• Implications from brain research for steadying the mind… quieting it… and bringing it to singleness
• The brain during the jhanas or other states of deep concentration
• How to help lay the neurological foundation for liberating insight

 

Equanimity

Equanimity means not reacting to your reactions… and that is both a wonderful relief from upsets and traumas, and a profound resource for spiritual growth.

In Buddhism, equanimity is one of the four Brahmaviharas (“Divine Abodes”), and it’s sometimes considered the foundation of the other three: compassion, lovingkindness, and sympathetic joy. Equanimity breaks the chain of suffering by helping you not react to the pleasant/unpleasant feeling tones of experience with craving and clinging.

Your equanimity, a state of mind, is based on underlying states of your brain. Modern neuroscience is revealing new ways to cultivate those brain states – a potent combination with time-tested Buddhist practices.

This experiential workshop will offer user-friendly information with lots of practical methods. We’ll cover:

• The Buddha’s teachings on equanimity
• The neurological machinery of emotional reactivity
• How equanimity works in your brain to prevent, cool, and heal destructive emotions
• Strengthening “top-down,” frontal lobe influences
• Training “bottom-up,” limbic system reactions to be less fearful and angry, and more peaceful, connecting, and constructive
• “Neurodharma” perspectives on healing from trauma

 

The Neurodharma of Love

On the whole, we experience our greatest joys and sorrows in our relationships. Supported by both Buddhism and Western psychology, the keys to healthy relationships include empathy, compassion, and kindness. These states of mind are based on underlying states of your brain. The emerging integration of modern neuroscience and ancient contemplative wisdom offers increasingly skillful means for activating those brain states – and thus for cultivating an open and caring heart, and more fulfilling relationships.This experiential workshop will offer user-friendly information with lots of practical methods. We’ll cover:

• The primacy of relationships in evolution, and the deep capacities for both loving altruism and fearful aggression
• The deep neurological circuits of virtue, empathy, and caring – the foundation of healthy relationships
• Unilateral virtue in relationships
• Strengthening empathy
• Moving beyond “us and them” to extend lovingkindness to the whole wide world

 

Not-Self in the Brain
We all experience having a particular identity which helps us navigate in the world – but that very sense of self is also a great source of suffering, as we cling to its wants and react to how others treat it.

The Buddha taught that not-self was one of the three fundamental characteristics of existence, alongside impermanence and suffering – but what he actually meant by that has been the subject of much discussion ever since.

In this workshop, we will examine the apparent “self” – and its release – in light of Buddhism, evolution, and modern brain science; these perspectives inform each other, and together they offer powerfully practical tools for deconstructing the apparent self.

We’ll explore:

• Presumptions about the apparent “self” in Western philosophy, psychology, and every day life
• The actual, direct experience the compounded, transient, and dependently arising nature of “selfing”
• The distributed, variable, conditioned – thus “empty” – nature of self-ing in the brain
• The costs and benefits of the apparent “me, myself, and I”
• The paradoxical importance of taking in healthy “narcissistic supplies” to relax selfing
• How to activate the lateral networks in the brain that support open, spacious awareness and minimal selfing

 

The Hard Things That Open the Heart

This is for people grappling with difficult conditions – both internal and external – and for caregivers and friends who support those individuals. Some examples include:

• Bodily – aging, injury, illness, disability
• Mental – depression, anxiety, ADHD
• Environmental – poverty, discrimination, divorce, unemployment, caring for people with major needs, challenges with children or other intimates

 

On their own, conditions like these throw what the Buddha called “the first dart” of pain and stress. Making matters worse, the mind’s typical response to conditions and to their “first darts” is to start throwing “second darts” of worry, strain, discontent, contentiousness, frustration, and other forms of added suffering.

In Buddhist practice, difficult conditions remind us of the Divine Messengers of disease, old age, and death – and they call us to cultivate the wisdom of the fourth Messenger: the spiritual practitioner radiant with inner peace.

This experiential workshop will offer user-friendly information with lots of practical methods. We’ll cover:

• Buddhist perspectives and practices for difficult conditions
• Lovingkindness for oneself and for any being who suffers
• Methods from the intersection of the dharma and neuroscience for lifting mood and cultivating joyAs important as it can be to take skillful steps to change difficult conditions, the focus of this workshop is about how we face and practice with them – and it is not therapy or any substitute for professional care, or for engaged action.

 

Love and Power

To be able to enter deeply into relationship, it is necessary to be able both to love and forgive… and to assert yourself skillfully. Coming to peace about grievances clears out ill will so you can assert yourself with compassion and wise speech. Self-assertion takes care of your own needs so compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and love can emerge without the sense that you are a doormat.We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of how to bring profound teachings from the contemplative traditions on interrelatedness, lovingkindness, and virtue into the messy real world of relationships with family members, lovers, friends, bosses, and co-workers.This experiential workshop will offer user-friendly information with lots of practical methods. We’ll cover:

• The primacy of relationships in evolution, and the deep capacities for both loving altruism and fearful aggression
• The neural machinery of emotional reactivity and developing grievances with others
• Why letting go and sticking up for yourself are both important
• The foundation of basic mindfulness, precepts, wise speech, compassion for oneself and others, and emotional self-care
• Forgiveness practices
• Assertiveness practices

 

Paper Tiger Paranoia

Ignorance – not seeing the truth of things – is the root cause of suffering, and it’s woven into the brain’s innate negativity bias, which looks for bad news, reacts intensely to it, and stores it in memory for lightning-quick retrieval. Consequently, your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones – which causes suffering and harm for yourself and others.

In particular, Mother Nature has made us highly threat reactive. She wants us to be alarmed at a thousand paper tigers in order to avoid missing a single real one about to pounce.

This “paper tiger paranoia” makes us routinely overestimate threats, and underestimate opportunities and resources. As a result, we overreact to others, feel needless anxiety and anger, muzzle honest self-expression, stay guarded and superficial in relationships, and play small in life.

We’ll begin by surveying the evolutionary basis of the brain’s threat reactivity. Then we’ll explore brain-savvy methods for feeling stronger and safer, seeing the world clearly (both real tigers and paper ones), and pursuing wholesome aspirations without feeling like it’s “threat level orange.”

Keynotes

The Power of Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

This talk will explore how mental activity sculpts neural structure; the benefits and pitfalls of integrating neuroscience and psychotherapy; the neural substrates of self-compassion; and how to activate the lateral networks of mindful awareness.

New Workshops

Based on material I’ve written or taught, I am creating additional workshops on these topics:

• The Four Noble Truths and Relationship Upsets – Exploring clinging and non-clinging applied to those sticky moments in relationships, such as when someone is hurt, angry, or wants something

 

• Transcending the Sense of Threat – We evolved to be extremely reactive to feeling the least bit threatened; this has helped our species survive, but it leads to much suffering and harm. This workshop will explore the evolutionary and neuropsychological roots of threat perception and response within the framework of the Buddhist analysis of the feeling tone (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral) and the actual interdependence of all beings. We will also look closely at how people feel threatened in intimate, family, and work relationships, as well as at diversity issues and how we tend to feel threatened by “them” distinct from “us.” The emphasis will be on practical tools and perspectives for reducing and transcending the sense of threat in everyday life.