Hey everyone, my name is Rosie and I'm one of the new hosts of Radio Headspace.

I'm an author and a yoga meditation teacher and my new episodes are debuting February of next year.

I can't wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, I'd like to let you know about a new show from Headspace Studios called Dear Headspace.

It's a call and advice show where Headspace teachers answer questions each week about anything and everything.

We talk about family, relationships, mindfulness and so much more.

You can find Dear Headspace on the Headspace app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening.

Hi and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday morning. I'm Sam.

So I've been studying psychology for a while. I developed a serious interest in the field when I was about 16, mostly because I was fascinated by people and I wanted desperately to figure myself out.

My journey studying psychology has been so enlightening and I never regret the path that I pursued.

Some things I've learned have been so foundational that they inform all of my work with others and I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of those with you.

So years ago I attended a lecture at UCLA presented by Dr. Dan Seagal and he's the clinical director of psychiatry at UCLA and a specialist in interpersonal neurobiology.

One concept he discussed involved integration.

So just take a moment to think about what integration really means.

It's the opposite of feeling scattered and dissociated. It implies that we feel gathered, whole and balanced. When we're integrated, we're accepting our experiences and making sense of them instead of ignoring or rejecting them.

And it turns out that integration is a crucial aspect of mental health.

Green has two hemispheres, multiple lobes and structures and some that are more superficial like the outer cortex and others that are deeper and older like the amygdala.

So when we talk about neural integration, we can think of two different types, vertical and horizontal.

Vertical integration in a nutshell means that areas like our amygdala, which is our brain's deeply embedded emotion center, are communicating effectively with more surface level areas like the prefrontal cortex.

If communication is cut off, as is often the case when we have overwhelming emotions, we can help reestablish it by noting or naming our emotions and then checking in with the sensations in our bodies.

As our brain becomes more integrated, we respond to situations more flexibly and we're less likely to get stuck emotionally or cognitively.

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