My guest on “Happy Brain” (episode 8 of Season 3 of The Positive Fantastic podcast) is Loretta Breuning, founder of the Inner Mammal Institute. She has spent the last decade really looking at the ways that our brains are wired.

She’s created a podcast of her own to help support folks on their journeys to rewiring. The good news is that we are capable of making big, profound changes in our lives. The harder news is that it takes time, commitment, and discipline. Part of what makes us human though is our capacity to rewire, retrain, and recreate our brains to be in service to more consciousness. 

Loretta explains the role of the different feel good chemicals in our brain. Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and also endorphins have historic roles in helping keep us alive. Similarly, the stress chemical, cortisol plays an important role in our survival. Looking at the ways that these chemicals served our mammalian ancestors gives us greater perspective about the ways that we have evolved to use these chemicals.

And Loretta’s work with the Inner Mammal Institute is all about how we can use this knowledge to live better. 

“You can manage your happy brain chemicals when you know how they work in the state of nature”

www.innermammalinstitute.org

In my own life and reflections, I am somewhat of a perennial seeker, looking to grow. And, I am so impressed by the research the Loretta has done. The Inner Mammal Institute offers free resources, books, and training to help you make peace with your inner mammal. I hope you’ll listen to our episode interview, “Happy Brain” so that you too can begin to train your brain more effectively.

The Inner Mammal Institute was founded in 2013 by Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhD. As a Professor of Management, and a parent, she was disappointed by prevailing models of human emotion. So she went back to basic biology and found that our happy brain chemicals are inherited from earlier mammals.