REWIRE YOUR BRAIN

Coming out of this strange state of ‘lockdown’, not knowing whether we’ll be ‘sent back into it again’ or able to keep moving into a more familiar state of being and living, the significance of the brain and how our past experiences have ‘wired’ us for resilience, becomes key.

As I have mentioned in Blogs before, the part of the brain often referred to as the Executive Brain, that top-heavy front part called the Pre Frontal Cortex, defines us as humans. It is gradually developed from birth up to the age of about 24, and is shaped to a great degree based on our experiences (and responses to them), and to the 'programming' we receive. This part of the brain gives us a multitude of abilities, including contributing significantly to our 

resilience and our abilities to;

• Stay calm under pressure and manage fear
• Manage our impulses
• Motivate ourselves – be able to generate positive emotions under stress and stay on course, even with setbacks
• Adapt and be flexible – be able to roll with the punches
• Have transparency – act from our values rather than just having a trendy vision statement
• Develop Emotional intelligence – to understand and self-regulate our emotions in order to gain the best, most insightful perspective
• Have ‘big-picture’ insight –to be aware of the present, look backward at the past, and have a vision of the future, simultaneously (mental time-travel J)
• Feel empathy – be able to step into someone else’s shoes and see their viewpoint without your own agenda getting in the way
•  Become attuned to other people – ultimately making them more likely to feel trusting and loyal towards us
• Act according to values and ethics – imagining and in-acting the greater good, above and beyond our own personal satisfaction
• Trust intuition – be able to process gut feeling and heart-felt sense and use in an appropriate way to inform decisions

Of course we’re not necessarily automatically good at any of these – for most of us it takes a bit of effort and quite frequently, a lot of work! SO what are the most recent findings that can make all this easier, to both understand and apply?

1. First of all, your personal (and professional) growth work can change your brain! 

It can be helpful to know that neuroscience and psychology have significant overlaps with each other as well as with ancient contemplative practices – (Mindfulness being a ‘modern’ version and the most commonly quoted). When you apply techniques such as the Applied Emotional Mastery (AEM) techniques and practices, you are not only helping yourself and your actions or relationships short-term, you are also actually changing the very structure of your brain, thereby impacting your life long-term. Neuroscientists can now shows us clearly that repeated emotional and mental activity entail repetition of neural (brain) activity which builds actual neural structures. It is said that neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that the more you for example feel compassion for yourself and others, the more you will be inclined to feel compassionate in situations when you previously might have found it difficult. Conversely, the more you allow yourself to feel put upon or resentful (and justify feeling that way), the more hardwired this becomes and the more predisposed you become to feeling this way in response to a variety of situations.

2. Secondly, all humans have a bias towards negativity. (It’s not just you!) Our ancestors, trying to survive cave life, would understandably place more importance on avoiding sticks than pursuing carrots. The result is that our brains are wired to pay most attention to anything that feels even remotely threatening or disturbing. In our memory bank there is a preferential ‘coding’ that makes us learn faster from pain than pleasure and be more motivated by fear of loss than by desire for gain. (This explains a lot!)

To make positive changes that give lasting benefit and become permanent traits it is not quite enough to merely think positively. We need to download it – (think of it as just like installing or downloading a program onto your computer versus just viewing a link) – and that involves emotions. To ‘download’ or install anything positive requires both repetition and prolonged experience, allowing the integration of the ‘new’ emotional experience or perspective in your brain to become traits –the desired change to become ‘hardwired’– making increased resilience, inner strength, and other desired qualities permanent.

SO: here’s a couple of tips/reminders to help you install an increased state of well-being:

TAKE FIVE!

A short, 5 minute meditation integrated into your daily routine (you can find several in the Multi-media section of our website or on our YouTube channel) will activate the ‘Executive’ circuits in the brain.

RELISH!

To recover from too many stress-hormones and build resilience, we need to generate those hormones that give us a much-needed balance, including endorphins. We do this best by RELISHING the good feelings and experiences we have. When you are enjoying something, savour it. The longer you keep that feeling of appreciation or relishing going, the more the neurons keep firing together and the more chance there is of the neurons wiring together. For example, on your way to work and enjoying the blue sky and sunshine, keep enjoying it. Stop your wandering mind by bringing it back to how good it feels to really appreciate the sunny morning, RELISH AND ABSORB THE GOOD FEELING!  Install it!

Stay safe and well!  - and may your self-mastery increase by the day J

Jennifer

LOVE POWER

Love increases endorphins – (you may know this). But that’s not all love does to us. Love also increases nitric oxide, (no, not laughing gas –that’s nitrous oxide – confusing I know!) Nitric oxide reduces blood pressure, improves blood circulation, and decreases clotting as it relaxes your arteries. In the brain, love activates areas associated with motivation, focused attention, making positive choices and taking care of yourself. 

Love also deactivates pathways in the brain responsible for negative emotions such as fear and social judgment. Aside from being an explanation for why we say 'love is blind', it also explains the many reported acts of heroism and kindness by ordinary people in recent terror attacks and disasters here in the UK. 

There are many different types of love (seven according to the ancient Greeks) but they all release chemicals and activate specific parts of the brain that propel us to connect, to care, and to take caring action. Of the different types of love studied over the centuries, the love of humanity, selfless love or what the Greeks call Agape, is often referred to as the highest form of love and I imagine that this is the type of love we see expressed in distressing times. It is the antidote to terror and facilitates clear and values-based thinking. Feeling such love gives us more clarity of mind and forward-thinking insights than any of the fear-based rhetoric we are also currently exposed to. Love in its highest form is not a touchy-feely approach, it actually makes us smarter. This is a biological fact*.

When I was seventeen, I read the first of what would become an endless array of books and papers on the subject of love, ‘The Art of Loving’ by psychologist Erich Fromm. It inspired a lifelong fascination with the subject in its many forms, a fascination which is just as strong today as it ever was, not least because of the one factor that has been present in every single book, study and paper: that loving is part of the inherent human condition. We are innately programmed to love in all its forms, whether physiologically, neurologically, or otherwise by some means we have yet to discover. Fromm famously claimed that love is not something that just happens to us, it is a decision we make.

So, in this time of hate and self-interest all around us, to feel love and compassion for the victims of horrendous acts of terror and violence is a no-brainer and for most people comes quite naturally, but how, you may ask, can we ‘make the decision’ to sustain those feelings of love in the process of seeking solutions, when it feels so much more natural to slip into anger, even fury? I admit, it does take a conscious intention, and a decision to refrain from what feels like the ‘natural’ path. Ironically, acknowledging the anger and other emotions you might be feeling is the first step, regardless of whether you choose to channel those emotions into a more positive force. However, acknowledging doesn’t mean getting stuck in the emotion. It is equally important to ask yourself whether the emotion is working for you; i.e. is it depleting your health or enhancing it; fogging your brain or helping you think clearly and creatively; is it helping you achieve the outcome you want?

Making that observation and then making the decision to change to a more productive, constructive emotion (and yes, you can change what you feel), to channel the emotion into a positive force, that decision is the first and most important step you can make. The choice and intention to act from state of centred love, must surely be the only way forward.

A famous quote by Jimi Hendrix might be an appropriate conclusion: “Only when the power of love overcomes the love of power will the world know peace.”

*For references and information on research please email us at jennifer@AppliedEmotionalMastery.com

The Hedgehog and the Human

Have you heard of the hedgehogs’ dilemma? The philosopher Schopenhauer wrote a parable about it more than a century ago. It went something like this: In the wintertime when the cold became almost unbearable, the hedgehogs tried to get close to each other, seeking to huddle together and share each others’ body heat. Unfortunately, as soon as they did, their spines pricked each other, which of course hurt and they recoiled. The cold however, drove them towards one other again but the same thing happened time and time again.  Eventually the hedgehogs learned that they were best off maintaining a little distance from each other – in their own space.

Freud quoted this parable in his explorations of human relationships, posing a number of questions including how much intimacy can we as humans actually endure? It’s a good question and one I think many of us grapple with at some time - I know I certainly have! It’s especially interesting –almost paradoxical– in light of the recent findings by neuro scientists that our brains are hard-wired to connect. In fact, the same circuitry that processes pain when we are not connecting (experiencing social rejection for example) is layered right on top of the circuits involved in physical pain. This isn’t surprising when we think of a baby’s need to connect with a parent or caregiver on whom the infant is completely dependent for food, water, shelter and safety. No connection, no survival!

But as we grow and become more able to take care of ourselves, we also experience rejection and loss, social pain as well as social pleasure – somewhat like the hedgehog. Curiously the brain’s circuitry that we use to navigate this, our social life and all relationships, is very different from the circuitry we use for problem solving and logical, coherent thinking. In fact, when one circuit is ‘switched on’ the other is in effect switched off. The more we function from a rational, practical or ‘sensible’ place, the less we are using our social antennae. The more we, for example, focus on solving a problem from a logical reasoning perspective, the more likely we are to distance ourselves from the other person or people around us (even those who could help us solve the problem!)  Conversely, the more we focus on relating to and communicating with others, the more we learn to understand how others might be feeling. Interestingly, we may also feel we are neglecting the ‘problems’ and even ‘wasting’ our time. A human dilemma, although maybe not as dramatic or black-and-white as the hedgehog’s :-) Good to be aware of, so we can better know ‘where we are coming from’ (and self-regulate if we decide it’s not appropriate!) Knowledge is power!