Daniel J. Siegel

Mindful Awareness, Mindsight, and Neural Integration

Mindful awareness has been demonstrated to alter brain function, mental activity, and interpersonal relationships toward well-being. This article hypothesizes that mindful awareness promotes these positive changes through a proposed “internal attunement” that catalyzes the fundamental process of integration. Integration—the linkage of differentiated elements of a system—leads to the flexible, adaptive, and coherent flow of energy and information in the brain, the mind, and relationships. This coherent flow enables the individual to attain an intentionally established state of mindfulness with practice in the moment and creates the experiential substrate for developing mindful traits in daily life. By freeing the individual from the top–down associations of memory, mindfulness also promotes an emergent sense of a vital and resilient self.