Hello, thanks for listening to this Darma podcast. I hope you consider that in accordance

with the Buddhist tradition all of my work as a teacher is offered without charge and

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We're a social species that survive due to building secure affiliations.

And in groups we can survive predators and build communities that thrived even in adverse conditions.

So the most vital skill human beings learn is how to connect

with each other, especially in the most important relationships of our lives.

Now, for better or for worse,

this learning actually happens very, very early in life.

It's so important that in fact the process of learning

how to connect with others starts at nine months of age and especially at around

age two when this process is at its height, the brain has twice as many

neural synapses, adult brains.

And that means the brain is learning faster, much faster than at any other time

in life and the bulk of these extreme growth of synaptic connections and neural circuits in the brain is in the

right hemisphere which stores the information about how we attach and how we act with others in relationships.

The right hemisphere stays dominant up until around age 5. And then when we start becoming more and more language-based

in our connection with others,

the right hemisphere, which has already done

the bulk of its learning about what to expect from

others, how we relate to others, whether we're lovable or not, who to connect to for support and care.

All these learnings happen, actually, a lot of these learnings happen

...