This Is the Difference Between Your Mind and Your Brain

We all know what our brain is, right? It is that three pounds of “convoluted mass of gray and white matter” in our heads “serving to control and coordinate mental and physical actions.”

OK. Now, define the mind.

Not quite as easy, eh?!

You may be surprised to find that there is no single, agreed-upon definition of the mind. The psychiatric, mental health, and medical professions each have their own functional definitions. Equally surprising to me is that, by default, a healthy mind is generally thought of as one with the absence of any symptoms of mental illness.

Really?

I would hope it can get better than that.

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Dr. Daniel Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, co-director of the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, executive director of the Mindsight Institute, and author of several books, teaches the concept of the Triangle of Well-Being to depict optimal mental health. He developed this into the field of study which has become known as interpersonal neurobiology. Interpersonal neurobiology weaves together research from many disparate fields to form a framework of mental health based on the commonalities.