Table of Contents
Foreword: Reflections on Mindleap by Don Hanlon Johnson, PhD
Introduction: Notes from the Frontier (CLICK TO READ ONLINE)
Chapter 1: Applying Systems Thinking to Neuroscience and Education
Chapter 2: A Bit of History About Systems Thinking
Chapter 3: The Next Level of Systems Thinking— Complex Dynamical Systems
Chapter 4: Deepening Systems Understanding
Chapter 5: Expanding the View
Chapter 6: The Embodied Brain and Emergent Mind
Chapter 7: A Framework for Optimal Human Learning Throughout Lifelong Brain Development
CODA: Systems Perspectives on COVID-19 and Beyond
Appendix A: Discussion of the Initial Five Phases Diagrammed in the Chapter 7 Table
Optimal Human Learning and Development
Appendix B: Reflections on an Above Average Public School Education by Marika L. Foltz
Bibliography
Index
MINDLEAP: FRAMEWORK FOR OPTIMAL HUMAN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
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What People Are Saying about Mindleap:
As someone who has been both excited by the rapid expansion of the scientific knowledge base in areas such as neuroscience, physics, biology, developmental psychology, systems thinking and consciousness, but also overwhelmed at the explosion of research and publications, this book is a godsend. It integrates much cross disciplinary material to address critical human developmental and learning processes. As an educator myself, I am already applying my new understandings in my teaching and training. — David Lukoff, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California; author or coauthor of 80 articles and chapters on spiritual issues in mental health services.
Mindleap reveals how the innovative methods of neuroscience can be applied to create a system of education that is better able to meet the challenges of our accelerating world. Essential to this endeavor, Brown emphasizes, is understanding the value of enhancing self-actualization of learners within the context of relationship. He invites not only psychologists, educators, graduate and post-graduate students to explore this new model of thinking, but it also encourages other seekers and creators to join together in shaping a culture of life- long learning.
His brilliant offerings are applicable to every day perceptual experiences, as well as to the development of new paradigms in education. He is a generous writer, passionate about translating complex systems of thought into a relatable scientific-poetic style. After constructing a solid foundation of current information and theory from brain research, he respectfully creates a covenant with his readers by translating the vast array of technical language into understandable metaphors and concrete life examples. — Susan S. Scott, PhD, Jungian Analytical Psychology practitioner, Author of Healing with Nature and eight published essays.
Mindleap is a breath of fresh air. Jim Brown has introduced a radically different approach to education, asserting that the current system is overly linear and reductionistic. He proposes an educational system based on current evidence from the neurosciences and insights from chaos and complexity theory. The educational reform he advocates would not only foster creativity but would help students thrive in a world that is neither linear nor reductionistic in nature, a world that is becoming more complex with each decade. Bravo to this author for his insight and prescription! — Stanley Krippner, PhD, co-author, Personal Mythology, co-editor, Varieties of Anomalous Experience
Foreword: Reflections on Mindleap
by Don Hanlon Johnson, PhD
As the world darkens and my mood reflects a despair in the many destructive forces storming about us, this book gave me some cheer. It returned me to the beginnings of my now very long adult life of teaching, constructing institutions of learning, and healing. At the time of those beginnings, many of us were brought together from different realms of expertise sharing a realization that “learning” cannot occur successfully unless those in charge address serious questions about how people actually learn. If all the efforts of educators are focused on content (learning outcomes, skills to be achieved, materials to be memorized) and not on what is happening in the learner (a particular person’s residues of history impacting their orientation to learn, family tragedies, illness, abuse and trauma, feelings of inadequacy) there is very little return on all the efforts expended on the process. Which is what has happened too frequently in the decades that have passed since the fertile time when so many innovations were occurring.
We also began our careers under the revelatory impacts of humanistic psychology, psychedelics, and transformative bodyworks which enormously expanded our understandings of what “reality” included as the horizon of any educational venture.
In light of that forgetfulness of what we thought was so obvious half a century ago, and how that forgetfulness has contributed to the thoughtless and conflictual period we are now confronted with, it is auspicious that this old veteran of a lifetime of raising these questions of how each of us actually learns most effectively has returned with new material to add to the analysis drawn from fresh insights afforded by advances in the neurosciences and systems thinking. These two communities of inquiry have added specificity to the more generalized notion of the human potential which motivated us half a century ago. In doing so, they both add heft to arguments in favor of cultivating the experiential, psychedelic, and energetic foundations of learning and suggest more precise strategies for so doing. A desperately needed nudge forward for those in control of designing the various institutions of learning.
I write these reflections in the midst of having spent the last 8 weeks with my new granddaughter, beginning with being present at her birth. I have spent hours with her as she awakens to this amazing world, wiggling, sounding, struggling, but most profoundly gazing…into my eyes, into the eyes of each of our family, and slowly more and more into the world about her. And with no agenda, just the openness like that of the clear sky. The very big question: how do we manage to protect and nurture this openness to the vastness of the real, instead of trying to squeeze it into packets shaped by a culture of consumers? To discover some unique and well-supported approaches to answering this very big question, read on…
Don Hanlon Johnson is a professor of Somatics in the doctoral program in Integral and Transpersonal Psychologies at The California Institute of Integral Studies and author of several books, articles, and collections.
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