still face experiment

A presentation from “The Five Keys to Mindful Communication” retreat/class series

Dr. Edward Tronick of the University of Massachusetts Boston presents the “Still Face Experiment.” This short video demonstrates how communication is natural, how attunement in communication can be broken, how the loss of attunement is painful — even before we have the language to describe it — and how attunement can be regained.

This video is also a powerful expression of “the Three Lights.”

…Green Zone Institute uses Mindful Communication to understand the Yellow Light crisis, allowing us to gently relax into the reality of communication blocks…

The Green Light is the attunement of the mother and child at the start of their interaction.

The Red Light is when the mother presents “The Still Face,” which disconnects the natural communication.

The Yellow Light is the crisis that the baby experiences, where this blockage of communication is internalized, becoming fear of the unknown, and anxiety about one’s self worth.

The core work in our workshops is to become more and more familiar with this Yellow Light Crisis, allowing us to gently relax into the reality of communication blocks. This stimulates our innate curiosity, warmth and intelligence, so that we can feel the total situation without succumbing to tunnel vision, simplistic thinking or lashing out. This preserves our best qualities, while allowing us to let go of more problematic, reactive patterns.