Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Adam Young and today I am joined by my good friend and fellow therapist Terry Bonn.

In the near future, I am going to address how healing happens in the brain, but there is a prerequisite to healing.

There's something that you have to be growing in if you are going to experience healing and that's something is awareness.

Awareness means choosing to pay attention to what is happening in your mind and your body.

And I know this sounds so elementary, but most of us don't do it very often or very well.

Today we are going to talk about why awareness is so critical for healing, what it actually means and how to do it.

I'm here with my friend Terry Bonn. Terry, it's good to see you. This is the first episode that I've ever recorded in my office with another human being in my office.

And it's my first time being interviewed on a podcast, so it's going to be with you Adam.

Say a bit about who you are, what you're passionate about just to give the listeners a sense of you.

Currently I'm a licensed therapist in Fort Collins. I'm also a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington where I did my graduate work at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.

So Terry and I get together most Saturday mornings and either hike in the unbelievably beautiful environs of Fort Collins where we both live or have coffee and invariably will kind of be part way into the conversation.

And I'll say something like I got to get you on the podcast or we should record this and just record our conversation.

So we're going to do that today. We're going to have a conversation while we're mic'd but we also have an agenda.

And let's start with this word integration. What does that word mean to you and why is it an important word?

Well, and it's simplest form for me integration is about bringing these various pieces together.

Integration is about bringing all of our selves together the parts of ourselves and the professional self and the personal self, the relational self, the spiritual self.

This is what we found through neuroscience integration leads to well-being or what the what the Bible calls Shalom.

Integration leads to healing. When we talk about a brain that is healing we're talking about a brain that is becoming more integrated and really the other word that is just more connected.

Neurons connected to each other. Trauma impairs integrative functioning of the brain. That's a quote from Dan Siegel.

Trauma impairs integrative functioning in the brain. And so when we experience harm tragedy heartache.

Our brain does not process that well and it becomes disintegrated i.e. disconnected.

Dan Siegel has identified he's a neuroscientist, has influenced Terry and I a lot and he's identified nine areas that need to be integrated for optimal health.

...