Research
The research behind the work.
Studies and books behind Mind Mastery and Body Mastery, by topic. Each one links to the original.
Body awareness
How well you sense what’s happening inside your body, and why it matters.
- PaperThe Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, Version 2 (MAIA-2)
Body awareness can be measured: UCSF’s questionnaire, and the one our MAIA assessment uses.
- PaperInteroceptive Ability Predicts Survival on a London Trading Floor
Traders who could sense their own heartbeat more accurately earned more, and lasted longer.
The nervous system & trauma
How the body decides it’s safe, and how it holds what it couldn’t process.
- PaperThe polyvagal theory: phylogenetic substrates of a social nervous system
Your nervous system decides whether you feel safe before you think about it.
- PaperSomatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy
Paying attention to sensations in the body can help resolve trauma.
- BookThe Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
How trauma is held in the body, and the approaches that help release it.
- BookHealing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body
A step-by-step program for releasing trauma through the body, from the founder of Somatic Experiencing.
- BookNo Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
The Internal Family Systems approach: every part of you, even the difficult ones, is trying to help.
- BookThe Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
Aron’s research on the 15–20% of people whose nervous systems take in and process more deeply.
Stress, tension & pain
When the body carries stress as physical tension.
- PaperEtiology of neck and back pain. An automatic myoneuralgia?
Chronic back pain can be driven by tension and stress, not just structure.
- BookAdverse Mechanical Tension in the Central Nervous System
Mechanical tension in the spinal cord can affect the whole nervous system.
The mind
Mental noise, and the beliefs that shape how we meet a challenge.
- PaperA Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
People’s minds wander nearly half the time, and they’re less happy when they do.
- PaperMindsets: A View From Two Eras
Believing your abilities can grow, rather than being fixed, changes how you meet setbacks.
- BookMindset: The New Psychology of Success
Dweck’s research on fixed and growth mindsets, written for everyone.
- BookNot Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty
How to stop people-pleasing, and start speaking up, saying no, and being yourself.
- BookBreaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One
Breaking old patterns of thought and feeling, and building new ones on purpose.
- BookIt’s Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body
How to find the core emotions under anxiety and depression by listening to the body.
Healing
The body’s capacity to reorganize itself, and the stages it moves through.
- PaperReorganizational Healing: A Paradigm for the Advancement of Wellness, Behavior Change, Holistic Practice, and Healing
Healing can work with the body’s own capacity to reorganize itself.
- BookThe 12 Stages of Healing: A Network Approach to Wholeness
The stages the body moves through as it heals, from the creator of Network Spinal Analysis.
- BookYour Hands Can Heal You: Pranic Healing Energy Remedies to Boost Vitality and Speed Recovery
An introduction to Pranic Healing, a hands-off energy practice you can learn to do yourself.
Quantum physics & consciousness
The open questions at the edge of the science: attention, energy, entropy, and how we become aware.
- PaperConsciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments
Experiments on whether focused attention can affect a classic physics experiment.
- BookWhat Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell
A Nobel physicist on how living things hold their order against entropy, by drawing it from their surroundings.
- PaperThe Awareness of the Fascial System
Fascia is full of sensory receptors, and part of how you sense your own body from the inside.
- BookPower vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior
A map of the levels of human consciousness, and what moves a person up them.
- BookLetting Go: The Pathway of Surrender
A simple way to surrender feelings instead of suppressing them or acting them out.
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