Lisa’s Note of the Day: Hormones, Neurotransmitters, and Brains Oh MY!
As we know our brains and emotions are intimately linked in a dance facilitated by hormones, neurotransmitters, and a myriad other stimuli. So it stands to reason that if women experience a radical hormonal flux each month, that their brains might respond accordingly. Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz, author of The New Feminine Brain notes that “before ovulation, […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day: Inner Navigation
We spend lots of time learning how to navigate people, things, situations, environments and any other external influence we can think of. But it is the inner navigation, called interoception, that can be pivotal in our ability to heal and be compassionate in the world. The quiet information and stories our nervous systems tell us […]
Lisa’s Note of the day: Mindfulness
Loneliness and social isolation can be a major contributor to some common neuro-degenerative diseases like alzheimers. A new study led by Carnegie Mellon University’s J. David Creswell offers the first evidence that mindfulness meditation reduces loneliness in older adults. If meditation has such amazing preventative health benefits, then which five minutes are you setting aside today […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day: Insidious Stress
Your thoughts and perception create the environment of the brain and vice versa. It’s the chicken and egg conundrum–is the thought the signal for the strss response, or is the brain chemistry the signal for the thought? No matter which comes first, stress is insidious. Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz does an amazing job of succinctly […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day: To See
Neurosculpting Note of the Day: Are you in unconscious blindness? David Eagleman, Neuroscientist, notes in “Incognito” that “to see something you must attend to it.” Here’s a neat experiment I do with my law enforcement workshops. I show a video of a basketball game. In it, a man in a gorilla suit walks onto the […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day: Change
Change. Change, whether positive or negative, often brings up levels of uncertainty which wire into our brains to trigger a threat response. But we can rewire that response and navigate our changing world differently. By noticing each small accomplishment or win during any changing event, we can spike a little dopamine and give our brain […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day: Beautiful, Ugly or Disgusting
In studies done in fMRI machines on the brain’s of individuals looking at art that they labeled either “beautiful, ugly, or disgusting” one area of the brain consistently got active while observing beauty: the medial orbitofrontal cortex (in the front of the brain). (Ishizu, Zeki, London). If we continue to feed our fear centers and […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day – Experience
Experiences create the “repeated neural firing that can lead to gene expression, protein production, and changes in the regulation and structural connections in the brain.” (Dr. Daniel Siegel, 2010) BUT the brain is not just housed in the skull. We have these neural networks that deliver complex input from other areas of the body up […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day – Which Brain Are You Ruled By?
Which brain are you ruled by? Is your life defined by survival struggle and emotionally difficult relationships — those attributes map to your limbic brain. Does your intellect get in the way of your joy so that you can’t experience life without analyzing it– those map to your neocortex. Are you flighty with your head […]
Lisa’s Note of the Day – It’s Written All Over Your Face
It’s written all over your face! In 2001 neurologist Patrik Vuilleumeir found that a person’s amygdala responds in threat mode to the appearance of fearful expressions of others EVEN IF that person is paying attention to something else. So even those in close proximity to us will feel our fear and brace against it, putting […]
