Returning to health!

Most people have been subjected to reward and punishment

In my book Red Brain Blue Brain, I describe how the ‘red brain’ is created by our being subjected to reward and punishment as we go through childhood and our childhood mind, rather than simply fading away as the adult mind emerges, persists into adulthood hedged around with all sorts of triggers and automatic responses.  When the ‘red brain’ triggers we only have access to what the childhood mind had access to – we become self-focused, usually anxious or fearful and prone to rumination.

The focus of the book is on how we can manage the ‘red brain’, extinguish its triggers and ultimately cause it to fade away.

This is a lot of effort to make ourselves healthy again.  Wouldn’t it be so much better not to create this condition in the first place?

This is the promise of bringing up children in the teacherly authority-based paradigm (still no name yet!) rather than subjecting them to reward and punishment – the Behaviourist paradigm.

It is ideal to start engaging with children this way as early as possible, but it is never too late to start the process of bringing young people back towards full health.

The effort required to do this will be developmental for the adult as well, issues lingering from their own early years can be resolved.

Learn about Teacherly Authority at a one-day program (Re)Building Teacherly Authority on 10th November (Sydney).  For more information and to register for this event, go here.  To get a fuller overview of Teacherly Authority, go here.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation.  At the core of this work is the concept and practice of teacherly authority.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

• To purchase a copy of Red Brain Blue Brain, Student Feedback or Why We Teach go here