The Lost Keynote - Stanford University School of Medicine, Autumn 2022

In the autumn of 2022, I had a pretty weird experience with the Stanford University School of Medicine, which had asked me to keynote their autumn conference at the Prevention Research Center, along with Bessel Van der Kolk and Peter Levine. I was honored to be asked, and thought it likely to be a breakout moment for our work. The keynote was supposed to happen on campus, at Memorial Auditorium, which has a seating capacity of 1,705 seats, on a Friday night at 7 pm. It was going to be like giving a large concert. Here is the event listing, which they never took down.

When they pitched us on this, they basically told me that they wanted me to teach our work to the entire faculty of the medical school. The conference was a multi-disciplinary campus-wide program, and they expected a large turnout from students. I was excited and nervous.

Restorative Practices of Wellbeing had just come out, and there was a buzz building around our work. For a variety of reasons, that I explain in the talk below, I did not end up giving the keynote. You, dear reader, can watch it below.

In August we launch a moderately low-cost way to receive structured training in Autonomics from our core team. Our new Practitioner Training Series uses our vast library of interviews with many of the world’s leading luminaries in the art and science of connection, our educational films, and keynotes as the jumping off point for a curated monthly discussion as deep and wide-ranging as the participants would like. The first film (in this case a keynote) that we’ll discuss is the Lost Keynote, which frames the case for our work, and a complete reconceptualizing of healing in healthcare and mental health. If you are ready to study autonomics, and the neurobiology of connection in a more rigorous, structured, and interactive way, please consider joining us on the 3rd Thursday of the month for the…