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An Interview with Dr. Treyvaud about the Mindfulness Lectures
Cheryl Smith: Do you find that people are increasingly interested in Mindfulness Meditation? It seems to come up all the time in news articles, etc. these days.
Stephane Treyvaud: Yes, its certainly an emerging awareness. The thing about it is that like anything else that becomes an emerging awareness, you have a lot of relatively superficial enthusiasm that accompanies it. I see that a lot of people do a lot of talk about it, but when it comes to actually developing the staying power, to actually engaging in the process that changes the neuro-circuitry of the brain, the number of (those) people who pursue it to those depths quickly shrinks. So thats the part that needs to be worked on. Everyone wants liberation from suffering and everyone wants to feel good, but everyone wants to feel good the easy way. And the thing is that there is no easy way of engaging in that because there are no shortcuts. Thats the atmosphere that I find. But the simple fact that awareness of mindfulness spreads is very important and the fact that theres a lot of interest and (people) come to lectures and think about it and talk about is all good. I dont know how much it will be translated into actual long-term rewiring, because thats the hard part.
CS: I see that the upcoming lectures at CSY studio are all around relationships. Can you talk about your thinking as you were developing these talks?
ST: There is really a fascinating finding in neurobiology and that is that the same circuitry that is responsible for our ability to connect with each other is also responsible for allowing us to connect with ourselves. So at the core of mindfulness training, at the core of meditation training, is (the possibility) of developing a deeper relationship to oneself. You can see, given what I just said about the neuro-circuitry, people sometimes ask, yes but isnt that (just) selfish navel gazing, sitting there paying attention to yourself, taking all this time every day, an hour a day of practice. Isnt that a selfish navel gazing? Well its actually the opposite. What youre actually doing is developing and engaging this circuitry, called the resonance circuitry of the brain, that deepens ones ability not only to relate to oneself, but to another person. This is why at the core of mindfulness is kindness, love and attunement. So thats why I decided to do these lectures, where we are going to focus on this particular aspect of mindfulness, which is a different one than the focus we had in the spring and the fall. There are a lot of interesting things to say about it, so its worth a little series on this topic.
CS: I was intrigued by this last one on the story of your life and the importance of narrative. We do like to have things explained to us through narrative, and we can remember things through narrative as well. Did you want to talk a little bit more about narrative and storytelling? Is it an interest of yours or is it strictly that you like to hear peoples stories?
ST: The move towards health and wellbeing happens when (we) move towards integration, and integration is a process whereby the parts of an organism differentiate from each other and then link. In order to move towards integration as human beings, we have to move towards a wholeness in all aspects of who we are. These aspects can be summarized in nine domains of integration, which correspond to nine major neuro-circuitries of the brain. One of them is called autobiographical integration; (this is) the way that we create our stories out of the non-verbal experiences of life. Because we are storytelling animals, there is no escaping that. The problem is that in that process of developing stories about our lives from the non-verbal experience of living, a lot can go wrong. A lot can go wrong depending on various factors, including what happened to us in childhood and how different parts of the brain (are connected) to each other, such as left and right brain, or the cortex to the rest of the body. What was discovered clinically is that there are different ways that people talk. You can actually sense, by listening to a person, whether that person has shut down this storytelling ability, whether that storytelling ability is so overwhelmed that they cant make sense of whats coming from inside, or whether they are well integrated and able to make sense of whats going on.
So all you need to do is sit down with a person, ( and) you ask personal questions like, why are you here? Whats going on in your life? And then they tell you, this and this and this, Im not happy about this and then you ask, tell me a bit about your Dad, and Mom, etc.. The way they tell the story tells you whether there are issues in the storytelling capacity, from which you can then come to conclusions with regards to the original childhood challenges that shaped them. So thats what this is all about.
CS: Can you give me an example. If you had a patient in front of you and they are describing their parents. What are some of the things you would notice in the way they would tell their story?
ST: To give you a simple example, I would ask you, what kind of a person was your father when you were a child? And your answer might be, Oh he was great.
I would ask, Can you tell me a bit more?
Oh, he was fine.
What kind of a relationship did you have? What do you mean when you say he was great?
He was fine. He was a Dad like all the others. I have no complaints.
I would continue by asking, Okay and how about your Mother?
Oh she was great.
And what made your mother great?
Well, she cooked and cleaned and took care of us.
And what kind of a relationship did you have with your mother.
Oh, a good one.
What do you notice about this persons answers and what consequences can you draw?
CS: Well, its not very detailed or observant or nuanced.
ST: Yes its very truncated, its very schematic. In fact its deeply distorted because no narrative like that can be true because theres no such thing as, my mother was great. People are complicated and complex. So that points to a certain problem with the way that this storytelling neuro-circuitry was affected and shut down, and with a deep lack of access to this persons inner world.
CS: And was that because the person was overwhelmed or bullied? They werent allowed to have thoughts other than those thoughts?
ST: There are several possibilities here. One possibility is that the parents were very avoidant, either withdrawn and absent or (created an environment where) nothing of emotional significance was ever talked about. That would usually be the case. When people have had the opposite, very traumatic parents who were very aggressive, usually the picture is different, the dialogue is different.
CS: Maybe these types of parents are themselves damaged, having experienced the same type of relationship with their own parents .
ST: Yes, of course, its a chain of events passed on from generation to generation which is why the work we are doing is so important because we have an opportunity to interrupt that chain of events for our children.
CS: On another topic entirely, do you find it interesting how popular TV reality shows are today? Were watching relationships being played out on these shows, and they seem pretty fake, but they still have an enormous audience. Why do we like to watch this when weve got our own lives to lead? Are we looking for guidance or role models? Or do we like to feel superior to these people who are often unwittingly humiliating themselves? Or have we always been watching human relationships in the theatre and on TV dramas and this is just the latest incarnation.
ST: Its an interesting question. The immediate thought that comes to mind is voyeurism, that we love to peek into the secrets of others because we are unable to access our own secrets. I dont know why reality shows would be more appealing than a theatre piece with actors, because of course every time you go to a theatre, every time you go to a performance, in a sense, you live through the story and actors, you live a piece of human life, it is very cathartic, it teaches us something. Maybe reality shows are so popular because they give us the illusion of bringing us even closer to ourselves because its in reality its actually happening, its not just play. That aspect may actually be the consequence of a numbing effect in society. I believe that we live in a society that has been profoundly numbed with regards to the earth and the body. Everything has to be bigger, louder, wilder, faster, more intense, more violent, because the decibel and intensity (level) of fifty years ago just doesnt do it anymore. We are so numbed, because we live more and more in disembodied lives. So maybe thats a part of an evolution of why these reality shows are exploding.
CS: Can you tell me a little bit about the format of the Mindfulness lectures, and who you see them being for?
ST: Im aiming it at human beings (laughs). Im just talking about one tiny little aspect of the work that we do, mindfulness and the importance of it, and the connection to the larger social and political processes, so whoever is interested in it
CS: So people who are meditators, non-meditators .?
ST: Anybody will find something interesting here. People will be exposed to looking at the importance of our relatedness and of our inter-connectedness on all scales, from the very personal to the socio-political and ecological. Thats what will be talked about, so anybody who has an interest in that is invited, which should be the whole of humanity!! (laughs) The structure of the lectures is similar to last term again, I will talk and there will be an opportunity to ask questions, as usual. I will also, at the beginning, introduce the sessions with a little meditation practice. In fact, Im thinking that this time, because of the topic, the first session I will introduce with a practice where people will interact.
CS: There may be people who will read this interview on the website, but they will not be able to attend the lectures. Do you want to give some practical advice on how to start a meditation practice, or just one very practical piece of advice on starting a meditation practice.
ST: The first thing that I would recommend to anyone who wants to start a meditation practice is to find a good teacher. Its so essential because we are so complex, and the way our mind works and our body works and our attention when you do it on your own, youll be very likely to very quickly get into a snag. You dont even notice that youre in a snag; all you know is that the thought comes up, oh this isnt helpful, this isnt for me. And you move on (quit meditation). So find a good teacher, thats kind of fundamental. The second thing that Ive come to after many, many years of experience is I absolutely stress and begin with connecting with the body. Thats what I call the somatic practices, learning to pay attention to the body, which of course includes the breath because the breath occurs in the body. How to do that I cant explain. Thats more complex. But bring your attention into your body and explore the connection with the body. Thats just the absolute foundation. From there everything else arises and moves.
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More Blog Posts
Forgetting that we have a mind.
Before you worry about symptoms such as depression and anxiety and how to improve or get rid of them, before you get your blood boiling arguing with people who can't deal with anything beyond their own viewpoint, before you develop and become ensconced in your own opinions, before you vilify who disagrees with you, before you shake your head wondering how seemingly obvious facts cannot be agreed upon, before you assume you have no blind spots, before you despair that crowds never learn from history, before you become bitter at humanity's collective stupidity, before you get passionate about religion, mythology, and archetypes, before all that, wouldn't it make sense to inquire into the source of all of it - these symptoms, views, opinions, thoughts, actions, distortions and, frankly, miseries?
While it does not take rocket science to realize that the source of it all is the embodied human mind, for most, embarking on its exploration is at best a big challenge, at worst insurmountable, non-sensical or incomprehensible. How many times have you heard nonsense like “I don’t believe in psychology”, as if the existence of the moon were a matter of belief? How often do patients enter their physician’s office complaining of being anxious or depressed, and are sent home with a prescription without one question that would try to understand how their mind creates such suffering? Many people, including professionals who should know better, live and act as if they had no mind.
The mind is the source of all subjective phenomena and experiences, and we are astoundingly unaware of it. Our mind’s task is to ensure survival and the propagation of our species, not to ensure we live our best life. To this end, it needs to be efficient, rather than concerned about maximizing its potential. Efficiency results by pairing down information processing to the bare minimum. Embedded in the way mind functions are mechanisms that cause reality distortions, delusions, wild beliefs, and a profound obliviousness of one’s own ignorance. Whether we like it or not, our mind drives our lives like our heart pumps blood through our veins. The universe's natural processes have caused us to evolve that way, and for better or worse, we are stuck with a mind that functions sub-optimally as it creates profound reality distortions that seem at first blush to have successfully allowed us to multiply and propagate towards earth dominance. In the long run, however, it turns out that humanity may end up stampeding dangerously close to extinction. To thrive both individually and as a species we must come to terms with our rather dangerous mind and train ourselves to use it beyond its basic survival mode by accessing its inherent potential evolution has graciously also built into it. That takes work, training, effort and patience.
Our human mind provides the capacity for reflection. The mirror reflects what’s in front of it, meaning that as reality beams itself onto the mirror’s surface, the mirror beams it back to us as an image we can then examine from the outside. Notice how what gets examined by looking at the mirror is not reality itself, but an image of it. Our brain provides a similar process in the form of consciousness, whereby it maps reality in a virtual form we then can observe and manipulate. However, while the mirror reflects reality exactly as it is, the virtual reality consciousness creates is not only a map of reality, but that map is modified into a new creation. The brain as mapper functions as our central relationship organ that enables us to reflexively develop a relationship to reality and ourselves by having access to a virtual, mapped and modified reality we can ponder and manipulate. This is how we are self-aware.
As an aside, the mind is more than the creator of a virtual adaptation of reality we can reflexively relate to and have a relationship with. It can transcend self-awareness, and knowingly experience reality and awareness without the detour of mapped mirroring duality. That is the shift from observation to being, from knowing we exist in a universe to realizing we are the universe. More about that in another context.
The eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina, but you don’t see it. You have the impression of enjoying a seamless field of vision without two black holes in the middle, even though the holes are there. The brain manages to fill in the missing information to make the field seem seamless. Extrapolate that to the whole brain to realize that to function effectively for everyday survival our brain adapts our field of consciousness in two ways: It fills what’s missing to provide a sense of continuity and simplifies available information to not overwhelm you. It hides blind spots from you to provide continuity and withholds information to ensure efficiency. Both these mechanisms distort reality to ensure survival, while simultaneously laying the foundations for ignorance and suffering.
We each have many blind spots, but the core blind spot affecting us all is the proclivity to live as if we had no mind. We use our minds without realizing the extent to which our experience of reality is created by our mind. Without our conscious knowledge our brain creates the reality we experience. We don’t notice that the reality we experience is our brain’s creation. We mistake our brain’s constructions for reality. This results in a dangerous situation, in which we ignore the fact that our experience is subjectively constructed. We mistakenly believe that what we see and experience is automatically true, and because it seems true it seems real, and because it seems real it cannot be changed. Our primordial blind spot towards the brain’s constructions robs us of freedom of choice, of the power of clear view, wise discernment, and respectfully compassionate mutual understanding.
Our mind’s constructions seem so real that we hold on to them for dear life and want to shove them down other people’s throats without exploring their veracity. We get strongly identified with what we believe we know, emotions take over, and the capacity to hear each other vanishes. Identification with mind processes is the single most destructive problem in the way humans use their minds. Emotions suffocate the mind’s spaciousness to freely consider, question, doubt and explore, and before we know it, we are in conflict. If we cannot agree on facts, emotions drive us to use force to impose our views instead of inquiring more deeply into the divergent realities, and if necessary, compromising to try to resolve complexities. Force can take the form of yelling and screaming at each other, or legal and physical action.
The reality our mind constructs and we can have a relationship with, is in fact threefold. We first have objective reality, which is what happens in the universe independent of whether we know about it or there is anyone around to witness it. This reality consists of energy flow that is independent of how our brains and minds construct reality, and therefore as far from information as energy flow can get. The black death virus killed thousands of people without them knowing what viruses are or being able to see them. Although this is the easiest reality to agree upon, like in the case of flat-earthers, emotions still manage to cause distortions of objective facts.
Subjective reality is our own private experience nobody else has access to. This energy flow is entirely within as a construction by our own brain and mind. Although it is largely independent of objective reality, it is profoundly shaped by interactions with others. Even if everyone denies that I am in pain, if I experience pain, it is totally real for me. That is a difficult reality to agree upon, because seeing it from the outside requires trust and our capacity for empathy.
Then there is intersubjective reality, which is the reality of stories. This energy flow is deeply symbolic in the sense that language and stories are symbolic, therefore experienced as information flow, and a mutual co-creation with others. It is the reality that emerges through mutual narrative construction and is neither objective, nor subjective. It only exists in the interpersonal realm containing people who are willing to participate in it by accepting the shared reality. One such reality is money, but there are many others such as all collective ideas we can share. Money means nothing and has no reality unless it is shared in the interpersonal space. This is also a difficult reality to deal with, because it depends on the mutual capacity to regulate the multilayered energy flow between our intuition, our emotions and our intellect. When that occurs, empathy and clear insight become possible, allowing a degree of harmony within the intersubjective dance of energy and information flow to emerge. Any dance couple may dance a Tango, but those in conflict will not be able to present a harmonious dance.
To manage these three realities we each have a relationship with, requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional regulation many people don’t have. Much of the time, the mind remains transparent like air to our eyes, invisible or not known, yet profoundly determining how we relate to real reality and live our lives. Like children playing in a house on fire, we remain oblivious to the many ways our ignorance of mind causes suffering and destruction all around.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Important changes to the Mindsight Intensive program 2024-25
1. Administrative introduction:
In order to accommodate divergent needs of individual students in the group, I am considering modifications in the group's process. After the first 10 weeks of the fall trimester, during which we lay foundations together as one group, we might explore the possibility of giving students the opportunity to continue through the winter and spring in one of two separate streams of their choice depending on their perceived needs. The decision to continue as one group or split into two will organically emerge from a process of discussion within the whole group when the time comes.
Here are the two streams:
- There are those who primarily feel the need to develop and consolidate the scaffolding of meditative technique as their main objective.
- Others feel generally quite confident in their mastery of meditative technique, and are therefore more focused on exploring the psychodynamic, socio-political, existential and spiritual implications of embodying the daily meditative attitude their mastery of technique affords. This includes the expansion of awareness into the modes of nothingness and emptiness.
These two interest streams are paradoxically both complementary and potentially conflicting. On one hand, mindfulness practice invites the student to cultivate beginner’s mind in a non-striving, non-hierarchical fashion. On the other hand, there is a sequential evolution of skill in one’s ability to apply meditative techniques, much like when one learns to play an instrument, creating a hierarchy of skills and stages the meditator walks through over time. Mixing students from both streams in one group is important as it allows for mutual fertilization of experience, expertise and wisdom. By the same token, this differentiation of needs sometimes requires different teaching approaches and emphases in the material that is taught. Naturally, I always endeavor to navigate those two streams within the group as a whole in a way that allows for integration of the two.
2. Long-term commitment:
Students who are interested in the Mindsight Intensive already have mindfulness experience. Therefore, they are all familiar with how challenging it is to embody mindfulness as a way of life. It is therefore assumed that everyone signing up seeks immersion into the hard work required to meet defenses and avoidances head on that can sometimes arise during practice. This can only be achieved through the long-term effort that facing our mind’s complexity deserves and demands. The program is thus structured to run through a whole academic year of thirty sessions, and students with different, more short-term needs who might want to leave after a trimester or two should not join. The work’s intensity requires group cohesion and safety, as well as a shared sense that we can count on each other to work through tough challenges and moments together.
3. Session structure:
Every session will have the following elements:
- A meditation guided by me of at least 1/2 hour.
- Time for processing individual students’ journey through the trials and tribulations of their practice. This is the difficult part, because it requires from each student to honestly take on and address difficulties, defenses and avoidances that may arise during their practice and their daily lives. Ignoring these challenges invariably causes the journey to falter and shrivel back into the automaticity of the monkey mind.
- Theoretical considerations necessary to make sense of our mind explorations presented by me, and sometimes elaborated through group exercises and processing.
4. Immersion at home:
- In every session I will suggest homework. By diligently following and practicing the homework, the student can enter a path of transformation that will automatically and effortlessly unfold.
- Before starting the program, please make sure to rearrange your schedule so that you can dedicate around an hour/day to formal mindfulness meditation practice. This may vary at times depending on both external circumstances and internal mental states, but aiming for that amount of time will ensure rewiring and transformation. Although formal practice time can occasionally be broken up throughout the day, what ensures penetration of depth (see my blog ‘Depth in Mindfulness’) is the long uninterrupted stretch of time that inevitably causes deeper conditionings and unconscious forces to emerge into the light of awareness.
- Throughout the duration of the program, students can request ad hoc individual sessions, should they feel that the available group time has not provided the opportunity to address important issues that arise. For this to be covered by OHIP, you must have been seen by me in consultation through your family physician’s referral within the last two years. If you are not a regular patient of mine, ask Reena whether you must first get your doctor’s referral to see me or not.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Silence and stupidity are the foundations of mental health.
As biological beings we function in analog mode, shifting from one physical and mental state to another, using intelligence to solve problems and consciousness to guide our intuition to make the best possible choices. In contrast to intelligence, which we also find in AI (artificial intelligence), consciousness involves both feelings and the capacity to self-reflect, resulting in the ability to resist reality and by extension suffer. Our biological organism functions naturally as a continuous energy and information flow changing with time through an infinite number of states (like the grandfather clock that shows the whole flow of time), while AI is digital, based only on two discreet states, 0 and 1, from which it organizes information (like your digital watch that only shows the exact time it is now). AI as an information processing system is completely alien to our organic nature. AI is an algorithm that like a table has no feelings and never sleeps, never needs a rest, never feels anything, and is incapable of ethical consideration (if it seems to have ethical reflections it is because it has been programmed to imitate ethical views, not because it feels anything). In social media it is programmed to make money by eliciting user engagement through emphasis on information that activates feelings in human beings, such as anger, awe, attraction, joy etc. The AI algorithm just chugs along as a soulless, emotionless information process like robots or zombies if you prefer the world of fantasy.
Humans, in turn, need rest, sleep, and the cultivation of various mental states through play, intimacy, physical activity, problem-solving, daydreaming and meditation. Within that richness of mental states lies creativity, and at the core of creativity is silence and stupidity. The cultivation of silence, and by extension unknowing, is paramount for the discovery of contexts within which all knowing is embedded. Stupidity relates to the fact that a majority of thoughts we have are crazy, non-sensical, false, deluded, unintelligible, and mysterious. Like a tree spreading millions of seeds, only a few of which will thrive into a new tree, our mind spews out millions of thoughts and fantasies, only a few of which are reflective of truth and conducive to living the good life. Nevertheless, that prolific productivity is the bedrock of creativity and requires skillful management. If we want to be healthy, we need to create a safe, private space for those thoughts to live, evolve, and be processed within the entirety of the mind. That space is the silence of contemplation and the safety of intimacy. Under the incessant barrage of the AI algorithm through social media we have been robbed of such a space, because we are swept away into the algorithmic stream of likes, dislikes, approvals, disapprovals, comparisons, competitions etc. The energy of stupidity then, is used to feed our narcissistic nature and flow unchecked into the public domain of the internet, with really nefarious results.
We are far from having developed the full potential of mind. More often than not we succumb to our internal algorithm of conditioned reflexes, behaviors, reactions and mindless activities that cause untold suffering. If mind has a choice between easy and difficult, it will always choose easy. Easy is what can be manipulated in the concrete world; it is easier to control the body and fast, for example, than to practice mind concentration. We have a certain command over the body and the external world, but not over our mind. Faced with the challenge of mind exploration, we must engage in a rigorous mind training and learn to observe it without judgment.
Most importantly, non-judgmental inquiry requires the privacy of our own intimate space with ourselves and a few chosen people we trust, where stupidity can have full latitude of manifestation. Caring for stupidity requires free private and intimate time, which should be a basic human right. Stupidity and silence are gold mines guaranteeing mental integration and expansion of awareness towards larger contexts. Once we have incorporated such mind hygiene into our lives, we are better equipped to meet the demands and responsibilities of reality, including social reality, and wisely chose what we responsibly allow into the public domain. The non-judgmental attitude of intimate and private investigation needs to give way to the discerning attitude of social manifestation and public expression. In the public domain it has catastrophic social consequences if anything goes and the first thought that enters one's mind is spewed out. Social authenticity in the public domain has nothing to do with spontaneously spewing out whatever stupidities and unformed thoughts fly through one’s mind. It is rather based on one’s capacity to cogently and responsibly express what is relevant to the demands of any life situation after having sifted through the chaos of one's thoughts. In that sense, opinions must be carefully crafted if we want a society that functions wisely.
This dialectic between internal freedom for stupidity and silence and external responsibility for wisdom and perspective requires a difficult ingredient – the capacity to face the truth. Information and truth are not the same, and most information is not truth. We are flooded daily with plenty of information, but truth is a rare and costly kind of information integration process that requires hard work and time to be discovered. Truth is costly because it demands research and investment. Fiction and fantasy (not as literary genres) are cheap and don't require any investment; they can be made as attractive as you would like them to be. They are simplistic, deluded and disconnected from reality. Truth on the other hand is complicated and complex, often painful and unattractive, and the hallmark of our mind’s connection with reality.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
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