Rewire Your Brain for Love - Paperback

by Lucas (Author)

On the way to finding and creating vibrant, successful relationships, too many of us end up tangled in the same old patterns, tripped up by relationship habits that get in our way whether we "know better" or not. In Rewire Your Brain for Love, neuropsychologist and psychotherapist Marsha Lucas, PhD, helps you untangle those relationship snarls, bringing together the latest neuroscience with a practice consistently heralded by top academic institutions for its effectiveness in changing the brain: the practice of mindfulness meditation. Dr. Lucas's clear, unintimidating, often laugh-out-loud style invites you to explore how the brain functions in relationships, helping you understand how your current relationship wiring developed and showing you how you can rewire your relationship brain through mindfulness meditation. A down-to-earth therapist and self-described neuroscience geek, Dr. Lucas has written a chapter-by-chapter guide with compassion, wisdom, and humor. In Rewire Your Brain for Love, she takes you on a journey through seven high-voltage relationship benefits--everything from keeping your fear from running the show to cultivating healthy, balanced empathy--and offers specific mindfulness practices to help bring those benefits into your life. With a few minutes of practice a day, you can change the way you interact with everyone around you . . . especially those closest to you. You can transform your brain from an enemy to an ally in all matters of the heart, creating more loving communication, building emotional resilience, and reducing overreactivity--not to mention enjoying better sex. You don't have to become a monk, or a vegetarian, or spend hours contemplating your navel--you just need to update the relationship wiring of your brain. The simple practice of mindfulness can help get you there, with Dr. Lucas showing you how.

Author Biography

Marsha Lucas, PhD., is a licensed psychologist and neuropsychologist, and has been practicing psychotherapy and studying the brain-behavior relationship for nearly twenty years. Prior to entering private practice, she was a neuropsychologist on the faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine.She fell in love with interpersonal neurobiology in a conference room full of 750 other people--finding herself getting some odd looks when she had tears of joy rolling down her face at the mention of the anterior cingulate and the insula in the same sentence as "greater empathy." She appreciates the integration of mindfulness, neuroscience, and relationships as a perfect confluence of many of the previously unintegrated aspects of her life.Dr. Lucas maintains a clinical private practice in Washington, D.C. She lives in suburban D.C. with her husband, Duncan Krieger, their son, Gabriel, and their dog, Bodhi Tzedakah