• The Evolved Nest
• Neurobiology and The Development of Human Morality
• Restoring the Kinship Worldview
• Four Arrows (co-author / co-editor, “The Kinship Worldview”)
• 9 components of the Evolved Nest
• Alloparents 
• Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary
• Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Honorable Harvest (from Braiding Sweetgrass)
• Linda Hogan (Chickasaw Nation)
• Genevieve Vaughan,  Maternal Gift Economy
• Nature’s Gift Economy
• David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous 
• Human microbiome 
• Symbiosis
• Melvin Konnor
• James Prescott 
• Allan Schore, neurobiological attachment
• Jon Young, Coyote games
• Tamarack Song, games to develop intuition
• David Bohm, physicist, “The real intelligence is insight intelligence and it comes in from the outside.”

Everything the baby experiences engraves the brain for life. So you want to make sure you don’t distress the baby because then you’re shifting the trajectory away from wellness towards illness or ill-being or adversity.

(In a) welcoming social climate, the mother feels supported, the baby is wanted, the community is delighted with having the baby around, and the baby feels like they belong, that they can make a difference, make other people smile and laugh as they are made to smile and laugh…

The mother is there to be affectively attuned to the baby’s emotional systems to keep maintaining them in the best bio-chemistry for growth.

You want to let children have that (self-directed play) experience when they’re young so they can build self-confidence. . . When you don’t provide the nest, in general, you’re deflating that individual…

We can get caught up in ruminations, because of this left brain, especially if we weren’t raised in a nurturing way, we’ll have OCD, worry, depression… all this stuff that goes on when you’re un-nested… So we need healing practices to get back into centeredness, into relational connection with others and the natural world, back into gratitude and into our bodies…

Our sociology relies on good biology.

If we’re raised in these nested communities, virtue is a byproduct, is the result. You would not survive in a community, dependent on others, if you were vicious. So, virtue is part of our heritage as well.

In the primal wisdom, the kinship worldview, life is relationships with everything, with All other relations, animals, plants, spirits, etc.

We’re trying to get back to connection, to understand that we are all connected, and that part of being connected properly is to be present, to honor the spider, the tree, the Earth, the computer, these are all things that people are relating to…

We are embodied creatures, we’re bio-social.

Another piece is holism. The way to be human isn’t just to be in this thinking mind, that left brain eco-consciousness. It’s actually quite distressing to be there.

The left brain thinks it knows everything.

If your survival systems are overdeveloped and you’re easily triggered, the authoritarian is going to be easy to pull you in. . . We forgot that we need to nurture, nurture the heart. And, you have to be immersed in relationships to build the empathy, the sensitivity, and the understanding, and the willingness to forgive, and be generous… All that is part of the Indigenous way, you’re immersed in that kind of  social, loving community. And this then allows you to grow your human potential. Which is another thing we’re not doing…

Generosity is part of who you are a human being. But what Capitalism (to the Gift Economy) has done is stop that flow and allowed people to hoard resources, and force others to not have any resources…

Writing “Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality” brought me to the realization that Indigenous wisdom, the kinship worldview, is our heritage. It is what comes about when we honor our physicality, our embodiedness, our species wisdom, and it’s what will save us…

The Western wisdoms tell us, "Clear your heart, clear your fear, clear your ego, and then be open to divine energies.”