 All right, so thank you all for joining us today. Today we have Dr. Ford Dyke joining us from Auburn University. So I will not speak long, I'm gonna give you a brief intro about Dr. Dyke's experiences and why he's here to talk with us today and then I'm gonna hand it over so that you have maximum amount of time with him. Dr. Dyke is an associate clinical professor in the School of Kinesiology at Auburn University. He teaches courses in pillars of performance and health, motor learning and performance and performance-based psychology. Additionally, Dr. Dyke serves as the director of mindfulness at Auburn and evidence-based approach to optimal performance, health and well-being. Dr. Dyke collaborates globally with high-level performers such as corporate executives, elite athletes, physicians, academicians, first responders and military personnel. His methodology integrates components of his professorship, team USA athlete career and experience as a performance coach for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the Auburn University wheelchair basketball team. So I will turn it over. Dr. Dyke, thank you again for joining us. Thank you, Leana. I appreciate it. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we get started, we're just gonna take a nice deep breath. We're all coming from different spaces, different locations. So just take a nice slow inhale and exhale. And let's try that one more time. Nice deep inhale through the nose, pause for a moment and exhale. Welcome to the human experience. Our journey truly begins with one inhalation and we transition after the final exhalation. As human beings, we refer to everything in between that space and time as life. That's it. Thank you for attending my lecture opportunity. Thank you. Let's examine the human experience through the lens of human performance optimization. Whether you're an educator here at the War College or a tactical athlete off base, an executive, an administrator, or even an astronaut as a human, you're a performer. And this is regardless of your roles, responsibilities, titles, et cetera. Now you can probably imagine just from the bio, I'm not interested in sub-alphemal performance. My assumption is based off your attendance this afternoon is neither are you. So let's dive deeper into what human performance optimization is all about. In order to optimize the performance of the human, we should emphasize the human. So this is where we're gonna spend most of our time today during this lecture of opportunity, exploring what makes us human. We all have three things in common, brain, lungs, heart. These organs are vital to the human experience and vital organs are defined as indispensable to the continuance of life. So in other words, if one of these fails, we're in trouble. If two or they all fail, we're definitely in trouble. These organs also play a critical role in regards to human performance optimization. So let's spend some time here breaking each of these down. For contextual purposes, go ahead and take your left hand and make it into a fist and take your right hand and make it to this exact same fist and put those two fists together and just have a look at the space your hands take up, the three-dimensional representation of your brain and of your brain and of your brain and of my brain. Now don't get too worried if you have small hands, you might be thinking, and gentlemen, don't get too excited if your hands are large, it doesn't mean that we're on some sort of genius. It's a representation of this relatively small organ in our body, 2% of our entire anatomical mass, but very powerful in nature. Take one of your hands and open it up into a flat shape and place it over your forehead and just take a look at the physical space that your hand covers. It's quite large. This is covering the frontal cortex, the prefrontal cortex specifically or the neocortex, the newest region of the brain in human evolution. This region implicates a sizable portion of our entire cortex itself, and it's responsible for higher-order cognition, such as executive functioning related to planning, problem-solving, making judgments, contemplation, self-regulation, et cetera. So this area of the brain is really what separates us, highlighted here in red, from other mammalian counterparts on planet Earth. It's truly what makes us human, and this is where our mind resides and our mind is our brain in action. As humans, we pretty much function by way of a differential nervous system. And just a few examples here, hot cold, happy sad, hunger satiation, energy fatigue, focus distraction, the list goes on. And fundamentally, we operate within our mind. But oftentimes, I'm sure you all can relate to this, our mind runs around on an untamed horse, jumping from thought to thought, idea to idea, memory to memory, you kind of get the picture. Of course, the details differ from individual to individual, but the primary motivators are exactly the same. Pleasure, pain. We have binary options within our nervous system. Gravitate towards pleasure, avoid pain. That's pretty much it, and by definition, that is the human experience. A binary option also exists within human performance optimization, which can be directly observed through our respiration cycles. Inhalation, exhalation, just like how we started at the outset, zero and one. These two processes cannot occur at the exact same time. It's anatomically impossible and it's physiologically impossible. You cannot inhale and exhale at the exact same time. As humans, we can self monitor our respiration cycles. So for example, we can become aware of our lungs breathing. Go ahead and take a hand, open hand, place it on your abdomen. Wherever you're sitting, seating or whatever position you're in, just place that hand on your abdomen and notice the general functions of your lungs right now. Your belly starts to move out on the inhale. Your belly starts to come forward towards your spine on the exhale. You can close your eyes and really tune into this. Noticing your abdomen moving as you're processing your inhalation and exhalation. But we can also self regulate our respiration cycles. So with your hand on that abdomen and your eyes closed, go ahead and take a nice slow inhale through your nose, expand your diaphragm, fill up your lungs, pause for just a moment at the top and slowly exhale through your mouth. And try that just two or three more times, in through the nose, expanding the diaphragm, filling up the lungs, pausing for a moment and slowly exhaling through the mouth. This particular form of self-regulation is fundamental to human performance optimization. At this point in the lecture, hopefully you understand now that we have the ability to modulate our respiration cycles. We can monitor and we can change or control our respiration. Of course, we all know this as human beings. We breathe to survive. If we stop breathing, we're pretty much done. But I think we can take it a step further instead of just breathe to survive. And that's where we're gonna spend some time here unpacking what I refer to as the ABCs of human. So first we need to deconstruct this word and bring our attention to the central idea. That is awareness, breath, concentration. The concept here is to build awareness in order to facilitate concentration. We place awareness on one side, concentration on the other, as well as inhalation and exhalation. As we've established those binary options that exist within the respiration cycles themselves. As we inhale purposefully through our nose, expanding our diaphragm, we build awareness. Concentration drops off. As we exhale, we facilitate concentration, awareness drops off. Binary options within our respiration cycles and therefore the allocation of our neural resources based on that frontal cortex, the prefrontal cortex. Build awareness on the inhalation, facilitate concentration on the exhalation. But how do we build awareness outside of our respiration cycles? This is where we insert mindfulness. Awareness, concentration and self-regulation are the fruits of establishing a consistent emphasis on consistent mindfulness practice. So before we dive any deeper, I wanna give you 90 seconds and your partner, your neighbor, 90 seconds. We'll have three minutes here to discuss amongst each other. What is your definition of mindfulness? Have you heard the word before, seen it, read about it? You know, deep into it, you've practiced it before. Whatever comes up, you need to get 90 seconds. I'll let you know when the switch occurs. Grab a partner, time begins. What was that? Question. Can I show you my partner's? Oh, no. Good. I'm not sure if you can say that. I'm just a little bit of a sp blir. First step was to say that I'm just a little bit of a sp blir. I'm just a little bit of a sp blir. Here, we've got a little bunch of this awareness. You can't do that. Yeah, we're not really just a lot of awareness. You're a little bit of a sp blir. I guess we can make that experience in each. I like the other guy for some reason. But kids, it's just a little triviality, I'd like to point out that this is a new umbrella for our different people, so I think just the awareness is just in the context of being aware of what we're not great at. I hope it's in the middle of that. I think I'd like to point out that this is a new umbrella for our different people, so I think just the awareness is just in the middle of that. I'd like to point out that this is a new umbrella for our different people, so I think just the awareness is just in the middle of that. We do a lot of important, I see what we've always done, we've done a lot of important work on it. So I wonder if there is that one of the other things that you think those are supposed to be the one that you're trying to find out about. You know, she's got an actual level situation. So 30 more seconds. So 30 more seconds. All right, let's go ahead and wrap up. Our examples are definitions of mindfulness. You will have the next couple minutes to share what you came up with. So if anybody would like to share the group today or definition, your perspective, what comes to mind when you hear or see or you potentially practice this construct. Yeah, I agree. So I'm happy to share someone else's really good ideas. We were discussing some other words that come to mind when we talk about mindfulness and self awareness came up. Vertical development, being able to view oneself, one's actions from a place outside of the immediacy of what's going on. And this gentleman is captain here had a really interesting thought that, you know, when we were discussing, well, what's the difference between self awareness and mindfulness and suggested that maybe self awareness is a subset of mindfulness, whereas mindfulness is an overarching, not just about you looking inward but also you looking outward and being mindful, being able to observe your effect outwardly as well. So just speak speakerphone for some great ideas. I was going to say you want to come teach with me. It's fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Anyone else like to share their perspectives or their definitions of mindfulness. For me there's a component of intentionality. And I think that that Oh, sorry. I would say for me there's a component of intentionality, and that deliberate choice of the disposition that you're going to take in order to engage in the observation of self and surrounding. I love it. We set out for you a teaching position up here as well, if you want to join. Thank you for sharing anyone else would like to share it. Scott. Looks like you got something. Well, I think we talked about the awareness aspect certainly and the deliberate nature of it. What is it in terms of like focus. So, do you are you focus, do you focus on self, do you focus on others do you focus more globally. So just different a lot of different terminologies. But perhaps they mean the same thing or just mean mean the same thing in different contexts. I'm doing some interdependence current within the synonyms and the different lexicon associated with this construct. And that happens all the time. And I believe it should happen everyone should have their own perspective related to something like a constructive mindfulness, but I do want to take some time providing you with a very simplified definition or perspective of what mindfulness is at the end of the day. It's a situational awareness essay of internal and external stimuli. A very simplified example of this core temperature versus really temperature internal external. You can tell right now and even for those joining us via zoom, you can tell what your core temperature is you really don't need a thermometer. If you're getting a little bit warm you probably shed a layer, you're getting a little bit chilly you probably out in layer. That's based on what's happening in your environment around you. So awareness of how your body feels internally and externally in the moment, but we take it a step further. And we start to dive deeper into what's referred to as the five facets of mindfulness, observation, description, awareness, non judgment and non reactivity. These are the building blocks of a mindfulness practice. These are truly the fruits of a mindfulness practice as well. And note the placement of each facet. On the bottom left side of the screen observation description those form the foundation. On the upper right side of the screen, non judgment, non reactivity associated with higher levels of proficiency with awareness right there in the center serving as the fulcrum. If we plotted level of proficiency on the y axis, the vertical axis, as a function of time or frequency on the x axis, and we superimpose a 30 degree line to see the progressive and linear changes that occur throughout practice. This is exactly why as I highlighted earlier, the emphasis is placed on consistency. In other words, we will never reach these higher orders of the five facets. If we don't have consistency within our practice, we may find ourselves noticing changes in observation with situational awareness of internal external stimuli. Maybe we're able to get into description. But do we ever find ourselves in these upper order areas. So let's spend some time here on the one and only I promise text heavy slide, breaking down the definitions and explaining each of these facets. Number one is observation as we established. This is the idea of recognizing what's happening like we said, in the environment, both internally and externally. Sensory modalities that we have as human beings, tactile sensations, old faction, auditory information, visual systems, kinetic data, there's a whole host. All of the sensory modalities, are we able to truly observe what's going on internally and potentially externally. If we are, can we then move to the next level of description, articulating that information through language, it could be verbal or non verbal. It could be written, it could be assigned language. It could be arts, like music. Or it could be colors. Any way to describe what's happening within these thoughts and these perspectives, and potentially even these emotions. Awareness, the here and now. Just out of curiosity, raise your hand if your mind has wanted at all during this presentation. Look around. We're human beings. We have 6200 dots per day. That's okay. That is totally natural and totally normal. Awareness is the fulcrum between observation and description and the upper side of non judgment and non reactivity. And speaking of with non judgment and non reactivity. Are we able to possess this non evaluated perspective towards this information towards this stimuli. These thoughts these feelings these emotions. If so, can we move to the highest level level five. I'm saying that things will change throughout time throughout our day, we're given 1440 minutes per day, things will change information is in flux. So can we monitor without distracted rumination and mind wandering. Let me ask you again has your mind wandered since I last asked you if your mind is wanted raise your hand. In summary trait mindful individuals possess all five of these. That's what we're born with essentially. And state is all about the practice of mindfulness. So let me paint a scenario for you. Let's say this morning, you came in and you received an email from a colleague or student, potentially the second floor of the office is what I've learned is the higher levels. And you open this email. And before you even know it, you're already smashing the reply button, because you're ready to do something that you probably shouldn't be doing. Are you aware of that moment. Are you aware of what's happening physiologically and anatomically has your body language shifted. Are you starting to persuade are your eyes dilated. You're going into full flight or fight mode. It's just an email. State it otherwise can you observe can you step back can you describe and articulate what's happening within that moment in time. Are you staying in the moment. Are you lost in thought based on something that happened yesterday or something that hasn't even happened yet may happen two years from now. Can you practice non judgment and non reactivity to that moment. The moral of the story is, these can be calibrated with practice trait is innate. Remember state is developed and calibrated with practice. So the main takeaway is that all of these facets are interdependent and can be calibrated by way of consistent daily intentional practice brain lungs. All vital to the human experience and play a critical role in regards to human performance optimization. Go ahead and take that same right hand and place it over your heart space. This time definitely close your eyes and tune into what's happening anatomically and physiologically. Notice the general sensations of your heart rate your heart beating up against your chest walls. That muscle in action. Now with your eyes closed bring your focus to your respiration cycles. Without changing anything just yet just simply noticing where your respiration is when you're ready go ahead and take a few slow in house through the nose. Exhaling through the mouth. Inhale through the nose expand the diaphragm fill up the lungs welcome the oxygen into the system. Pause for just a moment. Exhale slowly with control through the mouth and pay close attention to the changes occurring throughout your body. You may notice your heart rate slowing your respiration rate lengthening your awareness broadening. Which helps with the facilitation of that concentration. Our heart rate is the conduit between our mind which is our brain in action in our body by way of respiration. That's the conduit. Collectively our ability to number one build awareness of our own awareness through metacognition and vertical development. Facilitate concentration number two. And lastly self regulated is what makes us human. If you learn anything today. All those three together to provide some perspective. Let's consider the human lifespan. Around 100 years, give or take from zero to 100 or 10 decades. Each decade. Can be thought of as a chapter. Within our story. Chapter one. All the way through chapter 10. Road zero. All the way through to 100. As of today. I've had. The opportunity to write 34% of my chapters. My brother's story transition at 19%. And my grandfather's at 89%. Take a moment this afternoon to pinpoint. Exactly where your personal story is on this continuum. As well as the past, present and future stories of your six degrees of separation. As we write our stories. Each chapter. Is the result of the pages. The paragraphs. The sentences. The words. The punctuations. The breath. At the outset, I mentioned that our journey begins with one. Inhale. And we transition after the final. Exhale. So essentially. Life is one long breath. But one relatively short story. Our stories are written chapter by chapter. Moment by moment. Breath by breath. And we're not here very long. So every single breath counts. Let's take a moment. To reconnect with our own personal stories. So do me a favor and push back from your table. We won't need anything for this exercise. Get nice and comfortable in your chair. I like your feet to settle into the floor in front of you. You want to sit in a position that has some good posture. But you're also comfortable. So if you're sitting so tall that you feel stiff and upright. That's not necessarily what we're looking for. We want you to be relaxed and comfortable. And make sure your ears are over your shoulders and your shoulders are over your hips. And your knees are over your ankles. You're in a good balance position. Where you feel stabilized. Can allow your gaze to fall softly on the floor. In front of you or you can close your eyes. You're in a good balance position. So whenever it feels more comfortable to you. And as we begin to settle in, just simply notice our environment. That we've cultivated this afternoon. Sounds happening inside of the room. Down the hallway. Your watch ticking. The fan of your keyboard or your computer moving. Just bringing your audition into this space. Potentially what the room smells like. Maybe detecting some sensations in your mouth. Earlier from breakfast or lunch. Or the toothpaste you utilized. After your brunch. We're just. Observing what's going on internally. And externally. Start to bring your awareness down into your body. Into your personal space. And taking a moment here to notice how you feel physically. You notice any tension or discomfort. Any tightness. Without changing anything. Just simply noticing. What you're experiencing. And let's draw our awareness down. Even closer. Into our respiration cycles. Noticing the easy rhythm and flow of our inhalations. And exhalations. Let's take a nice slow inhale through our nose. Expand our diaphragms to fill up our lungs. And as we exhale bring your focus and awareness. Down into your feet maybe wiggle your toes. Roll your ankles stretch out your arches. Let your feet settle into the floor. Even further. Again we'll take a slow inhale through the nose and pause. As you exhale. Scanning through your lower legs into the joints of the knees. Upper legs hips lower back. Settling into your chair a little bit further. While still maintaining that upright posture. Another slow inhale through the nose. Filling up the lungs and pausing. And as you exhale. Scanning through your torso releasing any tension in your abdomen. Your lower back. Shoulders upper back. All the way through your arms. Into your hands and fingers. And once again allowing yourself to settle into your chair. Even further. Slow purposeful inhale into your nose. And exhale scanning through the muscles of your neck. In your jaw. Around your eyes and forehead. Releasing any tension. Softening your affect. Allowing yourself to drop into this moment. And let's take one more purposeful inhale. Pause for a moment at the top. And as you exhale visualize this wave of relaxation just flowing. From the crown of your head. In through your body. And out through the soles of your feet. Pay close attention to how easily that next breath comes. Perfect rhythm. And perfect flow. As we rest here for a moment. Your mind begins to wander. Or you get distracted by your to-do list. Or sound in the environment. Just gently observe. And bring your focus and concentration. Back to your respiration. Concentration has been lost. Going to take a purposeful inhale through the nose. Build the awareness. And on the exhale. Bring that concentration back. To the moment. Just quietly. Building coherence between our mind and body. You get to visualize where you're from. Your origin. Now visualize where you are. Not just physically. But cognitively. Emotionally. And perhaps even spiritually. Lastly. Visualize where you want to go. Aint any of your concentration. By way of your respiration cycles. Inhalation. Building the requisite awareness. Exhalation. Concentration. One more slow inhale through our nose. Expand the diaphragm. As you exhale. Begin to welcome some movement back into the body. Wiggling your fingers and toes. Rolling your wrists and ankles. You're ready you can open your eyes. If we don't remember where we came from. Then we don't know where we are. If we don't know where we are. Then we don't know where we're going. Despite all of our differences on the outside. Humans are 99.9%. Similar to one another. How we think. How we breathe. How we feel. Is what makes us human. Differences in the remaining 0.1%. Are what make us uniquely. Human. Human beings. Color, creed, sex, national origin. Just to name a few. According to the United Nations. The world population. Reached 8 billion humans. On November 15, 2022. Regardless of our minute differences. We all reside. On planet Earth. And at the last three years have taught us anything. It's that we're all interconnected. By way of our brains. By way of our lungs. And by way of our hearts. We think. We breathe. We feel. Thank you all for your attention this afternoon. And we may have a zoom. I think we may have lost connection with our. Starship. Yes. So in zoom and they cannot. They're not seeing your slides anymore. But they're still seeing you. They're still seeing me. Yes. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Happy to open it up for questions. Dialogue. Any points of interest or inquiry. We have plenty of time this afternoon. I wanted to facilitate. Some thought-provoking. Information for you all. Within what makes us human. And then ideally open it up for any sort of dialogue. They may have a relationship to this content. So thank you all again for your attention. And happy to answer any questions.