Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. 

He's been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. 

Rick Hanson

Happiness is far more than a positive feeling that comes and goes. Science is now proving that happiness is a skill that you can develop.

Bridging neuropsychology with the great contemplative traditions, Meditations for Happiness brings you a series of practices that allow you to literally rewire the neural pathways in your brain to experience deeper and more lasting contentment.

On part one, Dr. Hanson discusses the nature of happiness, its role in our evolution, how our brains both make us happy and create suffering, and how we can use and shape our brains over time to experience more joy and ease in everyday life. He then guides you step-by-step through more than a dozen meditations and exercises including:

• A Happiness Trip—explore the many shades of positive emotions that relate to your happiness

• Gratitude—an antidote to threatening thoughts and feelings

• Taking Refuge in What's Reliable—root your happiness in the safe harbors of things you can truly count on

• Coming Home to Happiness—a relaxing session to ease your body-mind back to its natural state of calm and contentment

"Emotions come and go, but true happiness endures," teaches Dr. Hanson. With Meditations for Happiness, he helps you build a foundation of skills for realizing the happiness you desire.

Course objectives:

• List some enduring benefits of happiness.

• Describe the negativity bias of the brain.

• Summarize how our brains can make us happy and also create suffering.

• Practice guided exercises for tapping your innate capacity to nurture and encourage yourself.

• Utilize meditation to shape your brain over time to experience more joy and be more at ease in everyday life.

• Apply techniques that re-wire the neural pathways in the brain to experience deeper and more lasting happiness.

Introduction

What is Happiness?

Why is Happiness Important?

Can You Increase Your Happiness?

The Brain’s Evolution and Happiness

Rewiring the Negativity Bias of the Brain

Being on Your Side

Happiness and Gratitude 

Session 1

Taking Good Care of Yourself

Self-Compassion

The Inner Protector

Your Inner Protector

What’s Reliable in Life?

Taking Refuge in What’s Reliable

Learning How to Let Go

Letting Go

Taking an Inventory of the Good Things in Your Life

Session 2

The Big Space of Awareness 

Being for Yourself 

Working Through an Upset 

Happiness as Our Natural State

Coming Home to Happiness

Session 3

Rewire your brain to experience deeper and more lasting contentment.

Meditations for Happiness

Rewire Your Brain for Happiness—A Step-By-Step Program. 

Self-Directed Brain Change is based on a key emerging insight from neuroscience: that to keep our ancestors alive, the human brain evolved to stick to negative experiences like Velcro and shrug off the positive ones like Teflon. 

The good news, teaches Rick Hanson, is that we can retrain our neural structure out of "sheer survival" mode and into one of greater well-being, mental clarity, and moment-to-moment appreciation. 

In this practice-focused program, Dr. Hanson teaches us how to:

• Shift our evolutionary fear and survival bias into one of "taking in the good"

• Use positive moments or states to rewire happiness as an enduring neural trait

• Heal difficult or painful emotional memories to ""fill the hole in the heart""

• Increase and deepen daily experiences of love, gratitude, and contentment

• Build inner resilience in the face of stress and challenging situations, improve relationships, and much more

Is it possible to rewire yourself for happiness? A growing body of evidence from this pioneering neuropsychologist and his colleagues says yes, we can—and experience greater fulfillment and contentment the moment we begin. 

With Self-Directed Brain Change, you will learn how.

How Can we Change our Brain for the Better?

The Steps of Taking in the Good

Guided Practice: Taking in the Good

Practicing Taking in the Good

How the Brain Changes the Mind

How the Mind Changes the Brain

Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

The Brain and Evolution

The Natural Rhythm

Letting In

Compassion

Kindness

Happiness at the Good Fortune of Others

Tranquility

Wisdom and Insight

The Inner Zoo of the Brain

The Responsive Mode of the Brain

The Reactive Mode of the Brain

An Experience of Feeling Cared About

An Experience of Feeling Appreciated

Discovering Your Key Resources

Dealing with Fear, Discontent and Separation

Feeling Alright Right Now

Recognizing the Fullness of the Moment

Feeling Connected

The Lessons of Taking in the Good

What is the True Path Home?

In the Green Zone

An Experience of Strength

An Experience of Protection and Safety

An Experience of Accomplishment

An Experience of Happiness

The Fourth step of Taking in the Good

Using the Fourth Step in Daily Life

The Fourth Step of Taking in the Good

The Wider Implications of Taking in the Good

Resting in Peace, Contentment and Love

Session 4

Rewire your brain for happiness, greater fulfillment, and contentment.

Self-Directed Brain Change

Seven Guided Practices to “Rebuild” Your Brain for Lasting Joy and Fulfillment

The structure of your brain changes constantly in a dynamic, unfolding process that you yourself can help directly to create the life you want. 

This is the exciting premise of Meditations to Change Your Brain, a breakthrough program from neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D., and neurologist Richard Mendius, MD.

Drawing on a vast body of research spanning more than 30 years, Hanson and Mendius show you how to strengthen the neural circuits that generate happiness, love, and inner peace. Join them to explore fascinating insights about your brain and how you can consciously affect it with good results. 

Then learn seven guided meditations to reshape your brain, including:

• Steadying Your Mind - to tap the full creative power of your attention

• Taking in the Good - to maintain a positive emotional landscape

• Antidote to Stress - a conscious way to activate your body’s relaxation response

• Healing Painful Experiences - to free yourself from the charge of negative memories

Science has proven what contemplative traditions have taught for centuries: meditation holds a key to a life of balance, peace, and joy.

Whether you’re discovering meditation for the first time or looking for a way to deepen an existing practice, with Meditations to Change Your Brain you have a full spectrum of techniques to make your brain your greatest ally on the path to personal fulfillment.

Using Your Mind to Change Your Brain

How Your Mind and Brain Work Together

Why Aren’t People Happier?

The Effects of Meditation on Your Brain

Appreciating Your Brain

Foundational Practices

How You Can Target Specific Changes in Your Brain

The Four Steps to Taking in the Good

Taking in the Good

Introduction: Antidote to Stress

Antidote to Stress

Introduction: Healing Painful Experiences

Healing Painful Experiences

Introduction: Steadying Your Mind

Steadying Your Mind

Introduction: Mosaic Meditation

Mosaic Meditation

7 guided practices to rebuild your brain for lasting joy and fulfillment.

Meditations to Change Your Brain

Train Your Brain for Happiness and Freedom from Chronic Stress

Our brains have evolved powerful tools for coping with threats and danger—but in the face of modern stresses like information overload, money worries, and interpersonal conflicts, our survival reflexes can do more harm than good.

To help you adapt your nervous system to the challenges of today's world, neuropsychologist Dr. Rick Hanson presents Stress-Proof Your Brain. Join him to learn research-based techniques and meditations that will literally reshape your brain to make you more resilient, confident, and peaceful, including:

• How to replace your brain's unhealthy reactions to stress with protective and self-nurturing responses

• Techniques for using memory to soothe and release painful feelings of sadness, guilt, anxiety, inadequacy, or anger

• Guided meditations for calming chronic worries, developing gratitude, building inner strength, and more

• How to rewire your brain away from frustration, heartache, fear, and anger toward contentment, love, and peace

Modern brain research has helped us discover which contemplative practices have the most positive impact on our physical and mental health. 

With Stress-Proof Your Brain, Dr. Rick Hanson brings you scientifically sound tools for finding freedom from irritability, worry, and overwhelm—by deepening your neurological capacity for happiness and wellness.

What is Stress?

The Stress Response

Affiliating, Approaching and Avoiding

The Affiliating System

Mindfulness

The Approaching System

Gladness, Gratitude and Contentment

Virtues and Aspirations

Deepening Virtues and Aspirations

The Avoidance System

Feeling Stronger and Safer

Anger and Forgiveness

Exploring Anger and Forgiveness

Equanimity

Experiencing Equanimity

Train your brain for happiness and freedom from chronic stress.

Stress-Proof Your Brain

Meditation Meets Neuroscience—Practical Tools to Reshape Your Brain for Awakening

We are inspired by the living example of great teachers, who have both penetrating insight and a loving heart. “With modern neuroscience, we’re now beginning to understand the brain processes that support these wonderful qualities of mind,” explains Dr. Rick Hanson. 

With The Enlightened Brain, this pioneering neuropsychologist explores how you can activate these same processes inside your own brain to accelerate your own transformation.

Self-Directed Neuroplasticity—How Our Mind Shapes Our Brain

Your thoughts and feelings continually sculpt your brain—for better or worse. As Dr. Hanson teaches, you can use the power of self-directed neuroplasticity to take control of the evolutionary tendency of your brain to react to life with fear, frustration, and heartache—and return your brain to its natural state of calm, contentment, and caring. 

With simple and potent practices, he reveals how you can weave positive thoughts and emotions into the fabric of your brain, allowing you to cultivate the qualities of mindfulness, virtue, and wisdom for your own path of awakening.

“This new science gives us unprecedented tools to individualize psychological growth and spiritual practice,” says Dr. Hanson. You’ll learn about your unique “profile of attention” and which methods best strengthen your focus and concentration. You’ll also learn how to approach life with equanimity and relax the focus on “me, myself, and I.” 

With The Enlightened Brain, Dr. Rick Hanson gives you practical tools for strengthening the neural circuitry of spacious awareness, calm in the midst of stress, contemplative absorption, resilience, and lasting happiness.

Highlights

• Knowing your brain—how to tailor psychological growth and spiritual practice to your unique neurophysiology

• Defeating the negativity bias of your brain by internalizing key resources

• Pairing positive experiences with negative material to soothe and heal old pain

• Activating the neural foundations of mindfulness

• Strengthening the five factors of concentration and deep meditative absorption

• Building neural shock absorbers for stable inner peace in a turbulent world

• Using neuroscience to relax the apparent self and take life less personally

What Happens in the Brain During Concentration

Rapture

Joy and Singleness of Mind

Steadying the Mind, Quieting It, Bringing It to Singleness

The Common Nature of Matter and the Awakened Mind

What May be Happening in the Brain During Nirvana?

Session 4 – Concentrating the Mind

Interdependence

What is Equanimity?

The Causes of Suffering

How Our Reactions Create Unnecessary Suffering

How the Brain Creates Suffering

The Four Components of Equanimity

Focusing on Change

Guided Reflection on the Causes of a Present Difficulty

Not Being Alarmed by Being Alarmed

You’re Alright Right Now

The Eight Worldly Winds

Tracking the Feeling Tone of Experiences and Their Reactions

Calm, Contentment and Virtue

Opening to a Growing Sense of Contentment

Serenity

Session 5 – Equanimity

What is The Self?

Different Qualities of Self

The Experience of Being a Witness

What is Existent and Non-Existent in the Apparent Self

Feeding the Hungry Heart

Techniques to Undermine a False Sense of Self

Dealing with a Situations Where You Have Personal Investment

Taking Life Less Personally

Session 6 – Beyond the Self

The Importance of Studying the Brain

Neuroscience, Psychology and Contemplative Practice

The Relationship of the Mind and Brain

As Your Mind Changes, Your Brain Changes

Being on Your Own Side

Mindfulness, Virtue and Wisdom

Letting Be, Letting Go, Letting In

Session 1 – Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

The Evolution of the Human Brain

The Negativity Bias in the Brain

Deepening Our Responsive Mode

How to Deliberately Internalize Experiences

Taking in the Good, Short Version

The Kinds of Good We Can Take In

Taking in the Good, Complete Version

Determining the Kind of Positive Experiences You Need

Using Positive Experiences to Heal Old Pain

Using the Fourth Step in Everyday Life

Session 2 – Taking in the Good

Mindfulness and Concentration

How Your Brain Pays Attention

Steadying the Mind

Curing Stimulus Hunger

Becoming Satisfied with Less

Six Neural Factors that Promote Steady Mindfulness

Six Neural Factors Meditation

Session 3 – The Neuroscience of Mindfulness

Meditation meets neuroscience; practical tools to reshape your brain.

The Enlightened Brain

Rick Hanson demonstrates a variety of methods for the release of negative feelings, as well as how to replace them with a deep sense of contentment.

Letting Go: A Key to Lasting Happiness

Letting Be, Letting Go, Letting In. In this compassionate guided practice, Dr. Rick Hanson leads listeners through the process of accepting, overcoming, and learning from life’s everyday difficulties.

The big space of awareness. In this expansive meditation practice, Dr. Rick Hanson teaches listeners how to let hurts and grievances occupy a space of mindful awareness. In the greater context of total presence, most difficulties will appear small indeed.

The Big Space of Awareness

To be alive is to be constantly alert for danger—and yet, most of the time you are actually safe and secure. 

Here, Dr. Rick Hanson guides listeners through a practice meant to remind you that you’re alright right now.

Neuropsychologist Dr. Rick Hanson offers the Steadying Your Mind meditation to tap the full creative power of your attention and strengthen the neural circuitry that supports focus and clarity.

In Being on Your Own Side Dr. Rick Hanson presents a contemplative practice designed to cultivate understanding and compassion for the most important person in your life: yourself.

In Six Neural Factors Meditation bestselling neuropsychologist Dr. Rick Hanson guides listeners through a meditation intended to engage and clarify six different aspects of our often-muddy thought process.

The only thing truly constant in life is change. In this engaging practice session, Dr. Rick Hanson teaches us how to respond to life’s beginnings and endings with acceptance and equanimity

Focusing on Change Interdependence

Based in the principles of neuroplasticity, Dr. Rick Hanson’s gentle meditation practice guides listeners toward greater compassion for and acceptance of your own “flawed” self.

In Experiencing Equanimity Rick Hanson guides you to develop a state of mind that is calm and collected, where you can accept and be at peace with whatever is arising.

In Exploring Anger and Forgiveness Rick Hanson lets you explore the emotions associated with anger and see how you can work with them in a constructive way to replace them with more positive feelings.

In Feeling Stronger and Safer Rick Hanson guides you how to use your affiliate system to develop a feeling of being safe and protected as well as feeling vital and strong. 

In Deepening Virtues and Aspirations Rick Hanson guides you in an exercise to look deeper into those values that you want to live with and the hopes and dreams that you have for your life.

In Gladness, Gratitude, and Contentment Rick Hanson guides you in bringing attention to the positive things in the world and in yourself that are worth feeling glad, grateful and contented about.

Feeling Connected is a practice where you are guided to develop self compassion, feel more connected with others and learn to take in the good from other people.

In this foundational exercise, Rick Hanson guides you in the basic instructions of Mindfulness meditation, centering on the breath and opening up to whatever is present in your awareness.

In Healing Painful Experiences Rick Hanson invites you into a protected space where you can experience a mildly painful memory to reassociate it in a more positive manner.

In Appreciating Your Brain Rick Hanson guides you into experiencing the feeling of being cared about and find appreciation for your own brain.

In this practice Rick Hanson guides you in engaging your needs for safety, satisfaction and connection  resting in a growing sense of peace, contentment and love.

In this practice Rick Hanson invites you to be with the whole of your experience to notice the richness of the present moment and letting you rest in a growing sense of peace contentment and love.

In this practice Rick Hanson invites you to develop a sense of compassion, kindness, happiness and tranquility and let it be felt in your body and mind. 

Then letting the experience sink into you in the form of wisdom and insight.

Practicing taking in the Good

In this practice Rick Hanson invites us to explore what lies underneath the surface experience of negative material. We are then introduced to techniques for letting go of the negative material and replacing it with positive material.

In Taking in the Good Rick Hanson guides us on a step by step journey to notice or creating positive experiences and letting it be deeply absorbed in the brain and body.

Coming Home to Happiness is a relaxing session to ease your body-mind back to its natural state of calm and contentment

In Being for Yourself we learn how to make your own happiness matter through strengthening our will to feed it.  

Being for Yourself

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Letting Go: A Key to Lasting Happiness

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