I'm attending a fascinating conference at UCLA on trauma, brain science and the healing effects of practices like mindfulness, yoga and meditation. It's called "Healing Moments in Trauma Treatment."

Some of the highlights from today:  

Dan Siegel, a reknowned professor of psychiatry at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA Mindful Aware Research Center proposed a working theory (or part of one, at least) of "mind." He said he has asked 98,650 therapists if they have a theory of mind, and between 2-5 percent say yes. Siegel says one aspect of the mind is "an emergent process that’s self organizing, that regulates the flow of energy and information."  

What does this mean?  

"There’s one reality, it’s energy and information flow," Siegel told the crowd of 800 or so mostly therapists, teachers, researchers and mental health workers, "The brain is the embodied nervous system. Relationships are the sharing of information flow. As energy and information flows, there’s a regulatory process that arises, we’ll call it mind." 

People who have been victims of trauma, Siegel says, have gotten stuck.  The peak experiences of their trauma hold them hostage in a sense because those regions of their brains that help protect them from harm also prevent them from regaining a sense of normalcy or perspective.  Siegel again:  "In trauma, the nervous system has impaired its integrative capacity to move to the open plane of possibility…mindfulness practice is one of the most powerful forms of integration that we know of."

More on that down the road. 

Bessel van der Kolk, one of the nation's leading experts in trauma and brain science, meanwhile, painted a bleak picture of what trauma is doing to America's youth.  3 million American kids get reported every year for neglect and abuse. Many of those same children consumed $16.3 billion in anti-psychotic medication last year -- medication that van der Kolk believes is having catastrophic effects on their development. Anti-psychotics work by blocking the dopamine system. That often makes unruly kids behave better, but it also can shatter their capacity for meaningful engagement with the rest of the world. 

"I bet half the kids on these medications will never be functional members of society," van der Kolk said, "It’s a national catastrophe."

There's quite a bit of important and meaningful research being discussed, some of which I'll be writing about here, and some in the Oakland Tribune in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned, and please feel free to chime in with your questions and thoughts.