I’m sure we’ve all heard of intentions by now, in their New Age spiritual interpretation where you set intentions in order to ‘manifest’ your own destiny. Intention is defined as “an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.” Setting intentions can be anything from communicating your future plans and goals to a friend, family member or therapist, to writing out a list, or simply sitting with your plans and goals for the future in your mind.
To set intentions you first need to decide on your focus by spending time checking in with yourself to ascertain your true desires. An intention should be goal-oriented, and actionable, but it should also include steps to realization. An intention needs a heart centered goal rather than a physical end-reward. Intentions should be something you can easily remember and reference as time elapses. Often intentions end up sounding like mantras, for example, “I intend to give my body what it needs as it asks,” which typically works better than, “I’m going to feed myself 3 meals a day.”
Intentions should always be phrased in a positive way, and in an active form. Language matters, always, but especially with intention setting. Intentions are about changing mindsets, and getting to know ourselves deeper, not about checking items off of a list. Using flimsy language gets you flimsy results. Compare: “I would like to try to take care of myself today.” vs. “I intend to give my body what it needs as it asks.” The first feels more like a question, doubt, or excuse than an intention to me. As Yoda would say, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”
Making a list of intentions is an excellent way to ensure that you stay intentional. When we physically write things down we connect ourselves to a deeper, more emotionally aware part of our brain, and we also slow our minds down to the speed of our handwriting, which is a sort of sweet spot of our brains preferred speed for thought. Once you write it down, it’s important to keep it in the forefront of your mind, refer back to it, or think of it often, until it becomes positively reinforced in your mind—or until you don’t have to consciously think of it to do it, this is when you know it is assimilated. As you come up against decisions throughout your day, consider your intentions, and do your best to follow through on the spirit of your intentions, rather than thinking of them as hard rules. Intentions are not about control, they are about fulfillment, growth, and change.
Intentionality is spoken of frequently in our culture, because regardless of your personal methods of intention setting, most people find that setting intentions benefit them in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Intention setting is a part of every mindfulness practice, some people swear by it for manifesting purposes, others find that idea a tad too wishy-washy. I believe we all set intentions at some point in our lives, and doing so is simply an intuitive piece of human existence. That is why I was thrilled to come across this chapter in The Mindful Brain by Daniel J. Siegel on how mindfulness, and intentions play out neurologically. The entire book is fascinating, but chapter 8 is where I will be focused for the purpose of this discussion.
Siegel takes the time to break down the latest neuroscience, and theories on how awareness, intentions, and mindfulness intersect and affect each other, as well as how they create both inter- and intrapersonal attunement. “Intentions tie a given moment of life together, link actions now with actions of the immediate next moment, creating the underlying ‘glue’ that directs attention, motivates action, and processes the nature of our reactions.” Because at any given time we are only capable of existing in the present moment, our bodies hold us here, but our minds are always free to move through time and space, so it is our intentions that glue our fragmented pieces together.
Siegel’s book is a fascinating read that dives deep into the functions inside our brains that create mindfulness, speaking of both the physical brain structures that facilitate these functions, and the more abstract theories we can derive from this knowledge [referencing the ‘mind,’ if you will]. This chapter takes an in depth look at intentions, attunement, metacognition, and resonance. The author also has a background in attachment research which offers us invaluable insights into secure attachment from a neuroscience vantage point. He shows us that mindfulness can be measured neurologically, and there are many ways that can be done. This example is complete with a case study of a woman who couldn’t experience mindfulness, despite an avid practice in it, until she had a slow-growing tumor removed from her prefrontal cortex, showing us that mindfulness is a function of the brain, as much as it is of the mind, and just like any other function of the brain it can be altered, slowed or stopped through physical manipulation of the brain itself.
Intentions are discovered through practices of mindfulness, as we see when Siegel notes that, “Intentions create an integrated state of priming, a gearing up of our neural system to be in the mode of that specific intention: we can be readying to receive, to sense, to focus, to behave in a certain manner. Intention is not just about motor action. For example, if we have the intention to be open, our brains likely will create a priming of areas involved in the inflow of neural firing of sensation from the five senses, interoception of the sixth sense, mindsight of our seventh sense, and relational resonance in our eighth sense. This intention to be open, not the receptivity alone but the intention to be receptive, is itself something which can be perceived by the mind. This is the perception of intention. Intention is a central organizing process in the brain that creates continuity beyond the present moment.“
In other words, intentions are not something you do, they are something that you integrate into your neural circuitry, which is one reason I believe so many people struggle to be consistent with intentions. Because they are not integrating their intentions, but merely stating desires, or resolutions. I can resolve to do anything I like, but if the intention isn’t there, I won’t understand why I made the resolution, or how to fulfill it for myself. Resolutions do not create continuity beyond the present moment, they merely state a resolve for the vague, never arriving future. Resolutions do not have a prerequisite of mindfulness, and can therefore be much more shallow, and fleeting. We could understand resolutions as orphaned intentions, they were made, but they weren’t taken care of by the people that made them, and that is why they are so often abandoned [the resolutions, not the orphans].
One crucial facet of mindfulness is something called reflective intelligence, which is a fancy way of speaking about our ability to notice what we’re experiencing as we’re experiencing it. Research shows that this function is made possible largely through mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons that were discovered in the early 90’s, that fire both when we perform an action, and when we witness that action being performed. They have wide ranging implications in social behaviour. They were previously thought to be utilized only in interpersonal communication, but they are now implicated in intrapersonal communication as well—meaning that not only are we able to resonate with others through these specialized neurons, but we are also able to resonate with ourselves. We’ve even found that the mirror neuron system has a set of circuitry that maps out ‘self.’ This is a huge step in understanding the role of mindfulness in a healthy brain. Understanding the intrapersonal implications of mirror neurons opens up new doors to understanding how intentions and mindfulness play out in the brain.
But how do mirror neurons help us connect to ourselves? Well, first we must understand that the brain is an associational organ, as well as an anticipatory one. What this means is that the brain is always automatically engaged in a process of using association through firing previously fired neurons, which it then uses to anticipate what is to come. It does this moment to moment, very quickly, constantly, and unconsciously. The whole process looks like this: as we hold an image of what is currently occurring with an automatic readying for what will come next, we are using a form of ‘priming’ or opening of our minds to take a receptive stance to the future, rather than utilizing a prefrontal planning process consciously. Priming is what prepares us for the steadily emerging future. As we enter that future, we call it ‘now.’ When that next ‘now’ matches with what our mirror neuron system anticipated, congruity between what was anticipated and what actually happened creates a profound state of mindful coherence, or harmony. Since the timing of all of these processes is quite quick [10s of milliseconds], this experience yields a sense of neural integration, which we refer to as intrapersonal attunement. In other words, in these moments we are able to intentionally witness ourselves and imbue even automatic processes with intentionality.
[It will probably come as no surprise that one of my favorite party games in high-school was ‘Random Association.’ The premise being that one person chooses a word, phrase, animal, etc. or reads off a card and everyone else says the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how strange. It produces some pretty silly, and some pretty deep expressions, and can be quite entertaining. Yes, I am a nerd.]
Perhaps a simpler example of intrapersonal attunement is breath awareness. Breathing is an automatic function that is initiated by deep brainstem structures, but it is also directly impacted by our emotions, and it can be intentional, making it the perfect example of this scenario. In addition, the interval at which each relaxed half breath is occurring is consistent with the interval of time defined as the ‘present moment.’
As we inhale our brains automatically anticipate our future exhale based on past experiences of breathing, therefore as we exhale we create coherence with our brain’s predictions and the reality of concluding that cycle of breathing. The existing imaging findings show that with mindful awareness, even just of one round of breathing activates our resonance circuits. “This focus of awareness, when created in a process of clarity, then creates a dual-matching system in which we have a neural map of intentions and we have the sensory map of the carried out action in our focus… that matching set of maps creates integration and a deep feeling of wholeness, of harmony.” In this way we discover the intersection of mind and body, between automatic and effortful expression we find a deep feeling of unity with self. With this knowledge of our intrapersonal, neural map of intentions perhaps we can see how the “human brain creates representations of other’s minds… at a neural level, we embed in our brains not just what we physically see, but the mental intentions we imagine is going on in someone else’s mind.”
That is exactly what was discovered through this in depth look at mindfulness and intentions in the brain. These are the same systems and functions involved in empathy, [the mirror neuron system, and the superior temporal cortex, and others] and they are tuned into our intentions! Babies as young as 10-months old are able to differentiate between animate and inanimate objects. “There are actually special regions of the brain, such as in the superior temporal cortex, that activate only with ‘biological motion.’” Our brains can tell the difference between animate and inanimate objects, because living organisms move with intention, which exhibits the fact that our brains are hardwired to sense intentions from ourselves and others! “The larger resonance circuitry also enables us to know what ‘is on the other person’s mind’ by examining the neural network activations of our own brain and body proper.”
We’ve already identified many reasons why this function may be useful to humans, but one application that I find particularly interesting is attachment, or attunement. In secure attachment, sharing mental states is the underlying experience between child and parents, this promotes resilience. “Intentional states integrate the whole neural state in the moment. When we tune into intention, in others or in ourselves, we are attuning our state with that of the ‘being’ with whom we are focusing our attention. Because the resonance circuitry not only detects intentional states but creates them in the self, attention to intention creates attunement.”
In this respect, mindfulness may be a means of developing a secure attachment to yourself, as well as to others. This has massive implications in the psychology of the fluidity of attachment styles, as well as the study of highly sensitive persons and empaths. Since “relational experiences promote the development of self-regulation in the brain,“ mindfulness practices, setting intentions, and awareness of awareness itself should be useful tools in healing from maladaptive attachment styles formed in childhood—good news for anyone working on healing from abuse or neglect. Because when we are able to come to the realization that mental activity is a product of our minds [meta-cognition] we engage our mind’s ability to dissolve top-down influences of automatic living, and we are able to live with more intention, no longer a slave to ingrained patterns of belief or thought.
I believe that many of the mental health diagnoses and complaints of this modern age could be wholly helped, fixed, or reversed through intentional mindfulness, awareness, and acceptance of self, paired with psychological, nutritional and biological aids to recovery. I believe that most dis-eases of the mind are a symptom of imbalance and splitting off from oneself, or one’s reality in order to fit into a falsified external reality [fragmenting self]. So-called mental dis-orders, are exactly what they sound like, they are symptoms of a broad spectrum of misalignment with the self and others, and uncertainty in how to proceed. What they absolutely are not are ‘incurable’ or life sentences. I believe that the path to healing dis-ease states, and dis-orders is to unearth the complexity of the individual, while working to de-pathologize the mechanisms our exceedingly intelligent, and intentional brains and bodies employ for self-protection.
This is where New Age Fundamentalists get it right— we shouldn’t be striving for status, money, or power, but for abundance, acceptance and intentionality in being. Humans are innately spiritual beings. We are body, mind, and soul, and it is only when we forget that very real, very simple truth that we fall prey to our own coping mechanisms. In mindful awareness, intentionality, and reflective intelligence we are able to be open to all layers of self, every form of our consciousness is once again welcome, and in that sense we are able to welcome our whole selves back into our bodies, we are able to put a stop to splitting, and we are able to find a deep genuine love and connection with ourselves, first and foremost. “In fact, all streams of awareness filling the river of consciousness are welcome within the open hub of mindfulness… Mindfulness embeds an integrated multilayered dimension to awareness beyond just sensing in the moment and mapping the changes in the proto-self as the core self does,” because, “mindful awareness is open to all layers of self, all forms of consciousness.”
Mindfulness goes beyond core self and present awareness. A mindful state is equally imbued with awareness of what is and meta-awareness. Strong ties to reality are a sign of mental stamina, as is a strong imagination, and curiosity. Humans are diverse, complex creatures, who require strong ties to themselves, and those around them. We are literally hardwired for connection, and complete with a failsafe to ensure integrity of intent. We intuitively feel more connected to people who are authentic.
In summary, intentions are a function of the mind and of the brain working in tandem. When you map your intentions on paper, you are also mapping them in your brain, creating resonance, this is not ‘woo-woo,’ it’s brain science. This has far-reaching implications for our ability to heal longstanding and often troubling issues of disconnection with self and others since Siegel’s collection of research has uncovered links between awareness of one’s own intentions and “a special form of internal attunement, a secure self-relationship that promotes neural integration.” This attunement creates a state of internal resonance. Resonance being the functional outcome of attunement, which allows us to feel felt by another person, thereby creating deeper relationships in our lives. So I say set intentions like your quality of life depends on it.
If you want help on how to get started with a mindfulness practice without the New Age mumbo-jumbo, I recommend picking up the book Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It’s a lovely little number with wonderfully short chapters [1-2 pages] by a mindfulness meditation expert with an excellent grasp of spirituality. He offers various body-based methods for practice, and further understanding of how it can benefit your life, and none of his reasons involve the hyper-spiritual language we’ve all come to disdain for it’s platitudinal nature.