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| Dr. Koncha Pinos-Pey |
Dr. Koncha Pinos-Pey is a researcher, mother, grandmother, flamenco dancer and PhD who teaches at Barcelona University in Spain, doing research on the impact of compassion on the brain at different levels. Her PhD is in international politics focused on women and ethnic minorities in Central Asia. She has worked with the United Nations as a veteran human rights reporter working in Afghanistan, Iraq and Burma for fifteen years. It was her spiritual teacher, the Dalai Lama who suggested that she study Neuroscience at the Mind and Life Institute in Dharamsala, India when he saw that she was burning out at her job.I met Koncha at the Contemplation, Collaboration and Change Conference this past weekend in Garrison, NY. We had a chance to speak one evening about mindfulness, healing and dancing.June Tanoue: Let's talk first about your work with the brain and healing where you have found that in addition to mindfulness, kinesthetic practices are very important.
Dr. Koncha Pinos-Pey: When I first heard the word neuroscience [from the Dalai Lama] I had a strong resistance because I thought that is not for me. I am not good in math. I am not good in anything, only in abstract concepts. But slowly I understood that these people are looking for truth the same as us. They are looking at ways to understand human behavior.
So I started to study mindfulness. And I did a Master's in clinical intervention in mindfulness. But that was not enough. Mindfulness is like the icing on the cake. You need something more: maybe chocolate, maybe cream, maybe cherries.
Through my research, I met people at Harvard studying multiple intelligences. So I started studying multiple intelligences and its correlation with mindfulness and clinical intervention. How can we create therapy or a protocol using both of them? We discovered during research that there are three principle intelligences that can release the stress in the amygdala for a trauma.
The first intelligence is percussion - the musical intelligence. That means all the ancient tribes and ethnic minorities who are using percussion - drums, gourds, voices - are doing something very useful. They are releasing the trauma from their brains - their amygdala. They are not only releasing the trauma at a singular level but at a community level.
We now know more about the brain and its neuroplasticity. When trauma is not a singular trauma, it can still be in your brain, family, community for decades. So you need to release this energy.
Second is kinesthetic intelligence which means movement. First you need to connect with percussion, because percussion is like the heart of the mother when you are in the womb. After that you need to move the energy - that means dancing.
Through the study of anthropology, tribes use drums and dancing for healing. They are doing a primary and very powerful therapy. Even now we cannot understand what they do. But they have done this all over the world in different countries and different areas. It works.
JT: But those countries or indigenous groups don't necessarily have mindfulness.
KPP: Well, what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is just to be awake, to pay attention. What happens and how. When they did a study in Central Asia and of the native people of North America, I saw the similarity they have in a strong connection with Nature.
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The Mediterranean, Barcelona, Spain
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That is the third intelligence. The naturalistic intelligence. Because they have this strong connection they can read the clouds, they can read the wind, they can understand the spirits, the holy spirits. That is something like navigating in a big google or in a big internet. We cannot do it now because we have lost this power. We have the ability to do it because we have three brains: the first brain is the amygdala, the second brain is more social and the third brain is the neocortex.
So we discover the neuroplasticity of the brain, the mirror neurons. We know that people are not healing the way they think they are. They think because they go to the doctor, they are healing. But they are really healing because they are healing the trauma in their amygdala and creating more resiliency. They can be more compassionate with themselves.
To be continued 
