Video Transcript

Video Transcript: The Self-Reg Triune Brain Glove : A great teaching tool 

Hello everyone, we want to introduce you to a really quick version of the Triune brain metaphor and then some options about how you can use our Triune brain glove so over to you first of all Stuart for explaining what the metaphor is.

For self-reg, there was a sort of pivotal event, which we describe as the start of a paradigm revolution, and it was in 1990 when a neuroscientist called Paul McLean published a book called The Triune Brain and Evolution and his idea was that our human brain is composed of really three separate brains. So we have an ancient brain what he called The Reptilian Brain, and that brain is around 300 million years old and it was designed for solitary creatures that needed mechanisms to deal with danger or to hunt, and it was preserved in us, according to Mclean to oversee our core metabolic functions, but also as this sort of survival system that sends us into fight or flight or freeze when we are threatened.

Then 100 million years later, a new kind of species evolved mammals and these are social creatures and according to Mclean they needed a brain suited, designed for social existence and that meant a brain that that was equipped for raising babies, for forming alliances, but also a brain that was constantly on the lookout for friend, or foe.  Sort of a sentinel and when it sensed potential danger send a message down to that brown brain to that Reptilian Brain saying you know I need I need adrenaline I need you know either to fight or free.

And then finally around 3 million years ago the neocortex which has been evolving for a long time suddenly took a leap forward it began to fold and make these these grooves in itself  that dramatically increased our capacity to plan to be aware of things aware of ourselves and so this neocortex is what we call the home of the learning brain. So that’s the Triune brain in a nutshell. Three brains in one.  Each of these brains in us has its own quite distinctive rules and functions and we shift back and forth seamlessly from one brain to another depending on what kind of conditions we are in. So it is very funny here I feel like Vanna White with the fancy nails.

You know people are asking how to use this. The Triune brain model glove is is something that we designed a couple years ago basically taking everything Stuart just explained and pairing it with an idea that Dan Siegel first put forward, which was about flipping your lid with a hand model and so when working with kids we created our own, and I’ll give you some ideas if you don’t actually have a TMC version. You can make these yourself quite easily, but the idea is again the brown brain, The Reptilian Brain that Stuart was talking about that’s the one that takes over in times of threat or danger the danger response all these sort of automaticity pieces the limbic brain which is your social brain which we just use the thumb and that’s in the in the center of the brain and that’s the social brain it’s what connects us but it’s also the one that’s on the lookout for for you know threat danger, but equally safety which is the friend or foe that Staurat was referring to. The blue brain which is the neocortex. This is a metaphor so when you’re teaching it to adults or children you’re not suggesting I often will crack a joke that you know it’s the brain is not three colours or three separate pieces it’s not it’s a metaphor, but it really or story it can help you understand a little bit about what’s going on and figure out what to work on.

So by that I mean that some of the ways you use it is I’ve taught this to to kids as young as three and without a glove I literally had just my hand and explained you know that I put a marker or a little red dot on my thumb sometimes and explain that that their brain has shifted and we call it gone into a red green state to help them, so its shifted and told them there is danger and its gone into red and brown brain processes going on to keep you safe. So when we do that we focus on getting blue brain back online so that’s great language for for a child especially one that gets in trouble a lot okay so cuz they’re thinking I’m a bad kid no no you’ve just gone red brain and you work on that.  So that’s an in the moment thing.

Another thing that you can do is you can make yourself some of these gloves my very first one just like this and I bought a blue glove and you know that you can see it’s even too small for me and I bought a blue glove and cut out the thumb and made my own so you don’t have to you know you can do it that way we’ve had people that paint their nails so they paint their thumb red and then they paint the fingernails blue or put a sticker on and it’s just a way of recognizing it’s it’s like a visual reminder of it’s not misbehaviour comes from the blue brain but this is a visual reminder that sometimes it’s not online. As I say that you know that it is more complex than than but it helps kids cocus on getting the blue bain and getting focused. You can also use it in stories.

So if you’re reading you know any fairytale You know and I and you know think of some of the ones that you absolutely love I love Mortimer, which is one of the my favorite stories but you take any one of those, interrupting chickens is another great great story. You can actually talk about the red brain and blue brain with any story you know conversations with the children about noticing you know whether there was a red brain state was part of what was going on it moves you away from this idea that it is all about self-control and all about should. To beginning to think about different things you can do so different solutions so all the sudden you’re making suggestions for any character that’s having a really rough time in a in a story about what they could do differently and it’s not about choosing different behaviours it might be going take a break, have a bowl of cereal maybe go outside and look at their favourite pond or you know play with their pet for a little bit and then and then come back and solve it later they’ll look later.

The final one that I’ll leave you with is is that you know you can do this with teenagers too it’s not just little kids it’s just you know with teenagers I was working with one group and I showed them this and you think that they wouldn’t be that interested and they were they wanted to learn more science so they needed to know a little bit more about the brain but there’s tons online there’s lots of ways you can learn about that. We also have a game based learning that you can do with kids to learn more about that but then it became a bit of a joke you know going a little bit red brain, a little bit of noticing it but you’re trying to invite it almost like recognizing a sneeze is coming so you see a kid and you can read the signs when you know a kid you can read the signs and they they know what to do about it they take a moment and do whatever that is right go and take a walk around the school or whatever it is that they need to kind of catch themselves in the moment.

So the last one I suggest is you strongly model it for kids by that I mean teaching them you have red brain moments too and that the whole class can be going a little bit red brain and that’s that’s one of those moments that you just sense we call it high energy in the class but it’s not that high energy can be a real positive thing right it’s it’s that uncomfortable energy that you just sort of feel is you know rumbling and you know about this okay let’s get ourselves back to blue brain as a group and figure out what we can do.

The idea is that there’s a little bit of science here you can go deeper and I suggest you do if you’ve got kids that are older or really interested in in the different parts of their brain but it’s more about recognizing that you’re not talking about misbehaviour we are recognizing the signs of stress excess of stress on our bodies and brains and and beginning to to use this metaphor this story of the brain and to try to decide as a group what we can do about it. Preventative, upstream. What can we do to lower, or dial down the tension a little bit so we are all feeling better.

So those are some ideas please share yours those were a few I use with my gloves on both hands here, but I strongly invite you to share some more because that’s really you know we love to have a bank of ways people use the Triune Brain metaphor and the glove and the idea and with their own classroom so we can share it with others.

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Transcript for “The Self-Reg Triune Brain Glove: A great teaching tool” by The MEHRIT Centre [9:35] is licensed under the Standard YouTube License. The transcript is included under fair dealing.