METAREALITY
REVIEW
REMAPPING YOUR MIND:
The Neuroscience of SelfTransformation through Story
by Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D.
I
If you’ve ever noticed how
friends and family describe
themselves to new people,
you’ll likely hear them describing themselves through
stories and metastories--the
stories of our lives.
“There are no truths, only stories,” as Thomas King
points out, and yet these stories need not stay
stuck in one particular type of archetypal plot type,
but can be changed in ways that benefit our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health. Remapping Your Mind provides us with a road map by
which we view the inner landscape of our collective
minds as the territory of stories we live by. We tell
ourselves and others who we are, what motivates
us, how we arrived where we are today, and what
kinds of challenges we face in the
stories we live by. As it turns out,
stories are far from passive, inert
influences in our lives; they can be
every bit as dangerous as they are
healing. Author Lewis Mehl-Madrona and his wife Barbara Mainguy
share insights for transforming stories from their professional practices in osteopathic medicine and
psychotherapy in Remapping Your
Mind, with strong support from recent scientific research to explain
how and why story therapy can
work. Research explaining how
the Default Mode Network (DMN)
describes activities in the brain
41 | NEW CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW
region responsible for running the background activity constantly running in our minds. Scientific
studies investigating the remarkable efficacy of the
Placebo Effect provide insights as to how the stories people tell influence mind-body-spirit health
and wellbeing. While the case studies and scientific
research are quite convincing, I admit that I already
know the methods described in Remapping Your
Mind are effective--because this method is one I
have found to be quite reliable when assisting my
life coaching clients over the past sixteen years. I
have witnessed the same kind of remarkable transformations in peoples’ lives as described in this
book, in which people find profound insights in
discovering their story, and as they become facile
in changing the landscape of the significance and
meaning of events and characters in their lives.
There is a kind of magic that occurs when people
move out of feeling victimized into a bigger world
of more positive possibility, and Remapping Your
Mind provides a trusty guide to start this transformation right away. Whether or not
you can wrap your mind around
the G&