Latest / The Brain’s Body Podcast: The Brain Is the Body / Unlocking Human Systems Science: A Revolutionary Approach to Child Development and Learning with Dr. Christopher K Slaton

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Unlocking Human Systems Science: A Revolutionary Approach to Child Development and Learning with Dr. Christopher K Slaton · The Brain’s Body Podcast: The Brain Is the Body

• 0:00
  Toby Gibben: Dr Christopher K Slaton is a pioneering figure in the field of child development, founding the Progressive Investment Institute of Focus Learning in 2000.
• 0:12
  Toby Gibben: And Dr Slaton is with us here.
• 0:15
  Toby Gibben: How are you today?
• 0:16
  Toby Gibben: I'm doing well, thank you, thank you very, very much for having me so can you elaborate on the Progressive Investing Institute of Focus Learning that you've founded and how it's contributed to your study of child development?
• 0:31
  Dr. Slaton Live: Well, that's research and development.
• 0:32
  Dr. Slaton Live: Progressive Investing is a motivation strategy that I begin with anyone that comes into the Institute that's living each day to become more informed, because I'm dealing with education and science, which is first.
• 0:44
  Dr. Slaton Live: You want the person to understand how to inform the brains.
• 0:47
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's what they come, that's the education component, and then the discipline actually began to develop those soft skills that are required to interact with other people and get them to also be motivated through your teaching and practices.
• 0:59
  Toby Gibben: And what was it that motivated you to create this Institute?
• 1:04
  Dr. Slaton Live: Learning crises you know, I've come across a lot of children and parents that were in crises dealing with education, and it bottomed up as a health and wellness issue, which led me to study more the brain and then the wellness component that's the body.
• 1:19
  Dr. Slaton Live: So, from that perspective, scientifically using human system science, brain, body and sense, even studying all three, you began to realize that these are sensory seed path dysfunctions that are occurring in front of you, and so you need to understand how the brain, body and senses work together in order for you to actually begin to develop and implement an effective strategy to improve their ability to make contact, interact, move to that emotion and become more confident in their ability to cooperate.
• 1:48
  Toby Gibben: And you've applied the use of action research with children and parents in crisis.
• 1:54
  Toby Gibben: So how has this approach shaped your own understanding of human systems research and its application in real world situations?
• 2:04
  Dr. Slaton Live: It really grounds the practice.
• 2:06
  Dr. Slaton Live: You're talking about four dynamics that action learning relates to specifically.
• 2:10
  Dr. Slaton Live: As human beings, we all share this home, school, neighborhood, workplace network system that develops the economy.
• 2:17
  Dr. Slaton Live: So, action learning is when you work with a person looking at life inside the home, you can learning inside the school, looking at thinking inside the neighborhood and you're looking at how they respond in the workplace.
• 2:28
  Dr. Slaton Live: And that's really when you talk about sensory seed path functions.
• 2:31
  Dr. Slaton Live: The motivation is you got to show them, show the person you're working with, that your bottom line is human development, new self improvement.
• 2:40
  Dr. Slaton Live: Those are the foundational pillars of how that research formulates, because I can go anywhere in the world and sit down with anyone to talk about home, school name, workplace networking and how improving sensory seed path functions increase your ability to participate in performing at higher level s
• 2:55
  Toby Gibben: And how is it you actually carry out the research, as there are particular methodology?
• 3:00
  Dr. Slaton Live: Absolutely.
• 3:01
  Dr. Slaton Live: I just gave you.
• 3:01
  Dr. Slaton Live: I gave you four pillars of the background.
• 3:05
  Dr. Slaton Live: For example, I use human system research to study of self, other people and the environment.
• 3:09
  Dr. Slaton Live: So that's me as a human learning consultant.
• 3:11
  Dr. Slaton Live: I'm self, other people can be children, parents, teachers, health, human service professionals and then the environment.
• 3:18
  Dr. Slaton Live: The environment might be family, education, government, business systems, but in this sense, we taught my home school neighborhood workplace.
• 3:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: So that's the research pillars.
• 3:26
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because you're going to study the home, you're going to study the school, you're going to study the day, we go to study the workplace.
• 3:30
  Dr. Slaton Live: So it doesn't matter what you're doing with a child or adult, you're still dealing with those, those academic, economic variables that you're trying to help them begin to understand and to reduce the effect of the crisis.
• 3:41
  Toby Gibben: Now human systems.
• 3:43
  Toby Gibben: Science represents a fundamental shift in the way that we perceive brain, body and sense events.
• 3:52
  Toby Gibben: So how does this perspective differ from the conventional views and how does it impact our understanding of self?
• 4:01
  Dr. Slaton Live: When you think about the brain's body, you're talking about neuro physics, and sense of field for self in the brain in relation to self, has to be in the lead of the body to reduce the behavior that you're, whether a state of mind or mood state, you learn how to lead through the brain.
• 4:17
  Dr. Slaton Live: So everything that we talk about is how you learn first, because you want the brain and lead of the body, and that's the practice.
• 4:23
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yes, so if you so, when you, you just take that word and then you apply those variables that are neurophysics, brain, body, sense, events.
• 4:31
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's what you're working through, those are your signals, those are the, those are the brain signals.
• 4:35
  Dr. Slaton Live: The brain, body senses sending emotion, thought, reflection, all these things simultaneously.
• 4:41
  Dr. Slaton Live: And it's a response system and what you're trying to do is lead a person to show discipline, cool down, calm down, collect your sense of field for self, understand what your brain is doing Now, respond to reflection.
• 4:53
  Toby Gibben: Do you think a lot of people do understand what their brain is doing?
• 4:56
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's very difficult.
• 4:57
  Dr. Slaton Live: In my experience it's like this you can have a brain that, even though you have one yes, you're thinking here of voices, okay, so you're full of these doubts.
• 5:06
  Dr. Slaton Live: You go through life wondering, you know, because you're afraid, and you shouldn't be afraid.
• 5:10
  Dr. Slaton Live: You should settle down and understand that the brain talks back.
• 5:13
  Dr. Slaton Live: It's a social organ.
• 5:14
  Dr. Slaton Live: It's going to talk back to you and when you are in crisis it is definitely going to talk, because you're, you are the driver of the brain's body.
• 5:22
  Toby Gibben: Yes.
• 5:23
  Dr. Slaton Live: Not to participate.
• 5:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: So it's going to talk to you, so don't be afraid.
• 5:26
  Toby Gibben: Your work emphasizes the importance of education and science in informing the brain and disciplining the body.
• 5:34
  Toby Gibben: So what are some of the practical techniques or methods you've found effective in achieving that integration?
• 5:43
  Dr. Slaton Live: Let's go back to the action learning the most most dramatic part of the practice teaching a person how to act.
• 5:49
  Dr. Slaton Live: When you act, you're acting to perform.
• 5:51
  Dr. Slaton Live: The brain lights up the sensor see path response.
• 5:54
  Dr. Slaton Live: Why?
• 5:54
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because acting through that emotion, thought or whatever the conflict in your sense and receive path is you acting, elevates and gets you a flow of energy moving through you that the brain then can utilize to do that.
• 6:07
  Dr. Slaton Live: That forward, backward feet is happening simultaneously.
• 6:09
  Dr. Slaton Live: See, look, you're caught up here and you act through it.
• 6:12
  Dr. Slaton Live: You and I are talking.
• 6:14
  Dr. Slaton Live: It's very difficult and you just hit me with a real serious question and it got me.
• 6:18
  Dr. Slaton Live: Well, I threw it.
• 6:19
  Dr. Slaton Live: My brain kicks because I'm giving it that space.
• 6:21
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now that forward feet is coming, it's coming.
• 6:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: You just got to trust your brain and what is going to end?
• 6:26
  Dr. Slaton Live: Your response then is no longer reaction, because the response was to catch up to your initial reaction.
• 6:33
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now it's a formalized response because that's the reflective performance that has the emotion in it.
• 6:39
  Dr. Slaton Live: But it's the emotion deal with the initial effect that got you confused again with with the question or the hit.
• 6:45
  Toby Gibben: And that's an interesting thing because you have to kind of trust your brain, as you mentioned.
• 6:50
  Toby Gibben: But a lot of people we feel like our brain is us and yet there is so much going on in it that's subconscious, so the brain is maybe mostly not us, if you see what I mean it's all things.
• 7:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: Can I say that one?
• 7:04
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you see, you got the computer and even right now the computer cannot do the things the brain can do, because every single thing that we're doing, even with AI, advanced with, is advancing.
• 7:16
  Dr. Slaton Live: You can still not say that the brain does not have the capacity to say we have children graduating universities and going in a high level feels age 14.
• 7:25
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's because their sensor see path functions are function at such a high level.
• 7:29
  Dr. Slaton Live: And that's what we're talking about when you talk about crunching and understand how the brain actually function.
• 7:34
  Dr. Slaton Live: It still function through your sense of feel for self, because who's doing the work, or your confidence, comes from learning your brain and you learn your brain to calm it down.
• 7:42
  Dr. Slaton Live: Understand, that's me.
• 7:43
  Dr. Slaton Live: You just said it, but I take it a step Further, because you have to teach it.
• 7:47
  Dr. Slaton Live: So you teach it so that the person know you got to participate.
• 7:51
  Dr. Slaton Live: So how you identify themself, not person, self, you are the sense of feel for self.
• 7:56
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now do you feel yourself?
• 7:58
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's your brain, you're right.
• 7:59
  Dr. Slaton Live: But how you're going to teach it so that person doesn't think why is too much, is overwhelming.
• 8:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: You know, because it can be open, but you want them to calm down and settle in, especially a person that has since received path damage.
• 8:10
  Dr. Slaton Live: It's a step by step process.
• 8:12
  Dr. Slaton Live: First step is just get them to understand contact and how the brain moves through contact and social organ.
• 8:17
  Dr. Slaton Live: The next step is understanding that that interaction is confusing because you have a choice to make, that, to make this choice, and if you make this choice it can hurt.
• 8:26
  Dr. Slaton Live: Okay, so that is it.
• 8:28
  Dr. Slaton Live: Feed is coming, because that forward feed has that new information in it, as well as a predictable factor.
• 8:34
  Dr. Slaton Live: It's hypothesizing.
• 8:36
  Dr. Slaton Live: Well, if we do this, this is going to happen, but that's what we want to happen.
• 8:39
  Dr. Slaton Live: All that is confusing, but it's teacher person.
• 8:42
  Dr. Slaton Live: Step one just move through the contact.
• 8:44
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's the first experience.
• 8:45
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now you it's already happening, you're already interacting, settle down, cooperate, see, though, that's that's that's the lack of confidence to operate through the experience.
• 8:54
  Dr. Slaton Live: Right, because the reflection is coming.
• 8:56
  Dr. Slaton Live: The reflection kicks in.
• 8:57
  Dr. Slaton Live: Right, you're participating.
• 8:59
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now you got all the information.
• 9:00
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now you got a knowledge base on the effect that you're afraid of.
• 9:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: So now you can calm down and collect your sense of feel for self and believe my brain is pretty powerful as long as I can lead my body and let my body react before my brain is ready.
• 9:14
  Dr. Slaton Live: You see, that's what we talking about.
• 9:16
  Toby Gibben: Yeah, the brain's body.
• 9:16
  Toby Gibben: And then you're more than 25 years of studying brain, body and sense events.
• 9:22
  Toby Gibben: What are some of the key insights or discoveries that have significantly influenced your approach as a human system scientist?
• 9:31
  Dr. Slaton Live: We're talking through them.
• 9:32
  Dr. Slaton Live: First thing is for breast investing, because when you start off talking about the brain, people look at you like, wow, you know yes because we're in a behaviors driven culture, so everybody wants to see the response of the body.
• 9:44
  Dr. Slaton Live: When you talk about the brain, it's so complex because we didn't really begin to research and believe that the brain could do these things until after the 1960s.
• 9:52
  Dr. Slaton Live: So what I'm saying is first thing you have to understand is what's your motivation?
• 9:55
  Dr. Slaton Live: And as you begin to understand the motivation, what are you studying and how do you ground what you're studying so you don't become some blue, blue high in the sky?
• 10:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because you grounded in understanding human systems and research to study a cell, other people and the environment.
• 10:08
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now is grounded.
• 10:09
  Dr. Slaton Live: Why?
• 10:09
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because you're looking at the culture, other people and yourself, so you're not leaving your thing behind.
• 10:14
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now you look at human system, science, which is you and me.
• 10:18
  Dr. Slaton Live: Are since body, brain, activities right, it's grounded, so each step is thought of.
• 10:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now you transfer that to the sense of field.
• 10:27
  Dr. Slaton Live: The sense of field is that missing link that really grounds you, because that's that's the brain, like you said, that sense of field for self is you right Now.
• 10:35
  Dr. Slaton Live: How do you move through you to understand how you live in the home, how you learn the school, how you think in the workplace, how you respond in the workplace, how you respond Right.
• 10:43
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yeah, those are those variables that we're talking about.
• 10:45
  Dr. Slaton Live: So that that's grounding us and what we're trying to talk about.
• 10:48
  Dr. Slaton Live: A talk.
• 10:49
  Dr. Slaton Live: I can talk to anybody about participation and improve their participation, because in one of those areas, if you had a bad school life as a child, the best way to advance you, to teach you how to move through your own self, because you're in the way, see, you're in the right and we got to figure out why you're in the way.
• 11:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: But we just have to go back to those places and that the data will tell us which, really, in the way, what your mom was, your dad was with a teacher, was a law enforcement.
• 11:11
  Dr. Slaton Live: Was it because those are community cultural variables and we could define them and get this person to understand.
• 11:17
  Dr. Slaton Live: Well, let me work through that crisis and what happened.
• 11:20
  Dr. Slaton Live: Okay, I can change that today.
• 11:21
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yeah, so it's a grounded practice and it evolves.
• 11:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: So there's other sciences behind it, but these are the ones that we talked through in education aside.
• 11:29
  Dr. Slaton Live: Okay, it brings body.
• 11:30
  Toby Gibben: And how do you think your approach to human systems research helps individuals develop a sense of self that leads to personal growth and the ability to positively influence others.
• 11:45
  Dr. Slaton Live: Not being afraid to do self research, a self study In the process.
• 11:49
  Dr. Slaton Live: Self study, self discovery.
• 11:51
  Dr. Slaton Live: The realities are you in your own way.
• 11:53
  Dr. Slaton Live: And then self help, because when you turned on right, you think about thinking all the time.
• 11:58
  Toby Gibben: Yeah.
• 11:58
  Dr. Slaton Live: But you need to help to understand how to calm yourself down, because maybe you're thinking too much.
• 12:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: Self research, self discovery, self help because all three of those give you the platform of which to understand your own brain.
• 12:10
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because you're looking from the inside out and you're saying I can measure this because my response has to have neurologic imprints on it.
• 12:19
  Dr. Slaton Live: That says my brain responded and that's the evidence you're looking for.
• 12:24
  Toby Gibben: You've written a book called Education and Science.
• 12:27
  Toby Gibben: The brain's body helped to improve brain, body and sense events.
• 12:33
  Toby Gibben: What was it that prompted you to write the book?
• 12:37
  Dr. Slaton Live: You're trying to answer the question what happened?
• 12:39
  Dr. Slaton Live: You have so many kids you come in contact with, that people have given up on.
• 12:43
  Dr. Slaton Live: But the issue is, if you came into this world with damage, sense and receive past functions and you pressed into life and no one understands that your problem is you have not been set up for contact, you have not been set up for interaction, you don't know how to cooperate because those two things get in the way, because you, you're called trouble, you called, you're called high need, you know you're called difficult, but you're having a problem with the contact interaction.
• 13:10
  Dr. Slaton Live: So that's what got me involved in this study and doing this work that I'm doing, because what you're talking about is how do you improve sense and receive past function?
• 13:17
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's what you and I have been talking about.
• 13:18
  Dr. Slaton Live: We have to teach children they have a brain and how the brain is supposed to work Now, social, cognitively.
• 13:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: So we're talking about social cognition, but then we include a neurologic function the sense and receive past function.
• 13:30
  Dr. Slaton Live: So the receive path is the neurological side, the sense path is a social cognitive side.
• 13:36
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now, that's not a transfer.
• 13:38
  Dr. Slaton Live: That just means that the environment drives data that you can sense and feel, but your brain has transferred internally through the nervous system, through the nerve nervous system, and that's the complexity.
• 13:49
  Dr. Slaton Live: When you can't move through contact, interaction is that that transfer is broken up.
• 13:53
  Dr. Slaton Live: So you got a kid who's difficult to work with because they can't transfer your data, because they're afraid of what happened.
• 13:59
  Dr. Slaton Live: But what's happening?
• 14:00
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because a lot of kids I came in contact with that's the first thing they want to know.
• 14:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: Well, what's wrong with me?
• 14:04
  Dr. Slaton Live: I mean, why am I having such a difficult time?
• 14:07
  Dr. Slaton Live: You know, I have children who have six, seven years of just feeling great, and the way you reach that child is first you have to talk to them in a group setting with other children who have similar needs and they can listen and observe, and then later on, if they interact in the community Wow, dr Slaton, make a decision.
• 14:24
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's all you want to do.
• 14:25
  Dr. Slaton Live: You want to lay down the foundation, inform the brain and put it on the continuum where the child can continue to gather information.
• 14:33
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because other helpers out there I don't rely on myself or rely on myself, my team, other people inside the same field we're supposed to be informing the brain.
• 14:41
  Dr. Slaton Live: So we're going to inform the brain.
• 14:42
  Dr. Slaton Live: We got a later foundation that says they receive past functions, so if they receive your information, so if I can get a kid to receive my information, I'm not.
• 14:51
  Dr. Slaton Live: I'm not trying to control them with behaviorism.
• 14:53
  Dr. Slaton Live: I'm trying to open them up to processing OK and let the behavior evolve.
• 14:59
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because you're trying to change the mood state to blocking the contact, interaction or the state of mind the child is in, that they haven't even experienced themselves Many of them in that state of mind.
• 15:09
  Toby Gibben: And how do you envision the future of human system science and its potential applications in fields such as education, psychology and personal development again in the future?
• 15:21
  Dr. Slaton Live: I see the capacity building elements I'm working on daily and I've yet to experience breakdowns.
• 15:29
  Dr. Slaton Live: I have children that I work with and adults parents that I work with who were low functioning.
• 15:35
  Dr. Slaton Live: I have kids engineers.
• 15:37
  Dr. Slaton Live: I have kids who are doctors.
• 15:38
  Dr. Slaton Live: I have kids, but that's not how they started out.
• 15:40
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's what we human system science you teach a person about their brain, body and senses.
• 15:45
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because you can go through med school understanding medicine.
• 15:48
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because what are you using your senses and what are you trying to dissect the body and what are you using the brain?
• 15:54
  Dr. Slaton Live: Ok.
• 15:55
  Dr. Slaton Live: So when you get tired, what do you do?
• 15:57
  Dr. Slaton Live: Calm down just to feel for self?
• 16:00
  Dr. Slaton Live: Ok.
• 16:01
  Dr. Slaton Live: So now we're getting through the complexity of you being you, because now you understand the control is cannot handle me.
• 16:07
  Dr. Slaton Live: You can handle you.
• 16:07
  Dr. Slaton Live: How come you can't handle anybody else?
• 16:09
  Dr. Slaton Live: The brain has to be in the leader body, so you teach them this and it always rolls back and they got high blood pressure.
• 16:14
  Dr. Slaton Live: How do you sense and feel things?
• 16:16
  Dr. Slaton Live: How do you know you have high blood pressure?
• 16:18
  Dr. Slaton Live: You have to study your brain, body and sense events.
• 16:20
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's revolutionizing for a young person to understand.
• 16:23
  Dr. Slaton Live: I can understand what's happening to me and improve and make more confident decisions about whether I want this medication, that medication or what my body is able to do when I work with my brain.
• 16:34
  Toby Gibben: Yeah, she was the son.
• 16:35
  Toby Gibben: Are you working on any more books at the moment or any more projects of any kind?
• 16:41
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yes, so I'm glad you asked because we've been covered.
• 16:43
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yeah, talk to the brain, not the body.
• 16:45
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's my next piece, because children hear these voices, parents hear these voices, but they don't understand.
• 16:52
  Dr. Slaton Live: Calm down, calm down.
• 16:54
  Dr. Slaton Live: The brain's social organ.
• 16:55
  Dr. Slaton Live: It communicates, it sends messages all the time.
• 16:59
  Dr. Slaton Live: Sometimes you can't sleep.
• 17:00
  Dr. Slaton Live: Calm down, get out of the bed, go see.
• 17:03
  Dr. Slaton Live: No, go or write the five pillars of what I'm talking about in the next book Reading, writing, acting, performing, drawing.
• 17:10
  Dr. Slaton Live: Because when you have all that tightness in your system saying let's communicate, you have to go.
• 17:15
  Dr. Slaton Live: You go write it out, you go, act it out.
• 17:17
  Dr. Slaton Live: You go inside your, your den and you turn the music on and do some move.
• 17:21
  Dr. Slaton Live: Let that energy come out, because the brain is now taking the lead, because you're acting.
• 17:26
  Dr. Slaton Live: You're acting.
• 17:26
  Dr. Slaton Live: Now your brain is lit up, you're performing.
• 17:28
  Dr. Slaton Live: You can calm down to make six.
• 17:30
  Dr. Slaton Live: The brain is sending you information all the time.
• 17:32
  Dr. Slaton Live: Don't be afraid of it.
• 17:33
  Dr. Slaton Live: You got many outlets.
• 17:35
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's what the body is supposed to be doing.
• 17:36
  Dr. Slaton Live: The body is an outlet for the brain.
• 17:38
  Dr. Slaton Live: Use the brain and allow the body to just perform Reading, writing, acting, displaying all those.
• 17:44
  Dr. Slaton Live: That's what the next piece is about.
• 17:46
  Toby Gibben: Well, in the meantime, where can we find your current book and keep up to date with all your research and everything that you want us to find?
• 17:54
  Dr. Slaton Live: Amazoncom.
• 17:55
  Dr. Slaton Live: I have a page there.
• 17:57
  Dr. Slaton Live: I also have a website, dr Christopher K Slatoncom.
• 18:01
  Dr. Slaton Live: I also have another website that has all five of the books all six of them actually and that's brainsbodynet, and that tells you about the learning system, the brains body learning system.
• 18:12
  Dr. Slaton Live: Yeah, then I have a podcast.
• 18:13
  Dr. Slaton Live: But I just started and that's because I have a lot of people asking me all these questions about the literature, and so that's one way that I can continue writing.
• 18:20
  Dr. Slaton Live: So a lot of my writing is coming through, whether it's a blog.
• 18:23
  Dr. Slaton Live: I have a blog too, but I find it more fascinating to do part, write a podcast, these scripts, put the information out there, then troubleshoot it back to me through the backward feed, you know, and then analytically be able to build from that.
• 18:36
  Toby Gibben: Excellent.
• 18:36
  Toby Gibben: Well, many thanks for talking to us.
• 18:39
  Toby Gibben: It's been great to have you here.
• 18:40
  Dr. Slaton Live: Well, thank you for having me.
• 18:41
  Dr. Slaton Live: I appreciate every moment.
• 18:43
  Dr. Slaton Live: I appreciate you very much for the opportunity to be on your show today.