Doctoral research:

Neural Luminosity

My doctoral research will contribute to the current discourse examining how our cognitive models and simulations about others and the world we inhabit is based on upon embodied mentalization. Embodied mentalization informs our consciousness and influences how we empathically cogitate and behave among the symphony of beings we share our natural world with. My research seeks to integrate concepts from complexity and systems theory which emphasize the interaction between participant and observer in all emergent experiences. I want to discuss the implications of bringing the observer back to the body, the impact of looking within rather than solely without. It is my perception that humanity has evolved towards inhabiting a diminished capacity to conceptualize and understand the impact we exert on the surrounding world due to our lost ability to observe ourselves through interoceptive awareness and locate our own interiority.

It is my deepest hope that humans will evolve towards finding their way back to re-inhabit themselves and consciously experience the vast palette of bodily awareness available within in order to deeply listen to the language of our neural signatures and interpret them with embodied cognition.  Comprehending and translating the signals communicated through interoceptivity and conscious embodiment is vitally important to awaken to the moral responsibility we must have to co-exist respectfully with the earth and all her inhabitants. The wisdom espoused within the fields of Deep Ecology, Engaged Buddhism and Whitehead’s Process Relational Ontology and Systems Theory are the next frontiers to explore more closely as I chart my circuitous path to coexist harmoniously with mutual respect for all living beings.