Raising Your Sword to Battle an Illusion
Our nervous system is a miraculous and complex network of information and control mechanisms. Our SNS (sympathetic nervous system) readies us for action, to mobilize, to activate, charge, fight or flea..among many other things. Our PNS (parasympathetic nervous system) calms us down, soothes, relaxes, and regulates…also among many other things. So when we get stressed, […]
Meditation, an Anti-Inflammatory?
The PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) did a study in 2010 with 124 adults which showed that social stressors and pressure (such as public speaking) greatly increased an individual’s inflammatory markers. Inflammation is the result of free-radical production and is one of the most detrimental cycles to our bodies. Meditation has been […]
How Can Memory Improve Your Life?
According to Congressman Tim Ryan in his book A Mindful Nation, “When people have higher working memory capacity they can pay better attention, can solve problems more readily, and have more fluid intelligence–they use facts rather than just know them. Those with strengthened working memory capacity also suffer less from emotionally charged thoughts and are better […]
Oxytocin…it isn’t all good!
In Dr. Stephen Porges’ profound book The Polyvagal Theory, he notes the “neuroendocrine and autonomic systems that permit high levels of social behavior and social bonds regulate the management of stressful experiences and the capacity of the mammalian body to heal itself….In the context of safety or comparatively mild or acute stressors, the release of oxytocin […]
You are Five Times More Likely to Stress
Science now says we have 100 billion neurons in the brain. There are 5 times as many neuronal networks allocated for threat detection than there are for non-threat input. This is why negativity is so easy to default to AND so contagious. Believe it or not, positivity can be trained and strengthened. What are you doing […]
Is Turmeric the Door to Enlightenment?
Neuroscience and fMRI’s now tell us that insight and higher-order thought processes such as empathy, unity consciousness, and a sense of one-ness all occur in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. We also know that stress and fear strengthen the mid-portion of the brain called the limbic system. A stressful life causes the mid portion […]
Can You See What I’m Saying?
Our ability to accurately read facial expression comes mostly from our prefrontal cortex. When we are stressed we shut down our prefrontal and actually impair our ability to accurately label others’ expressions and motivations. So being in “threat” mode predisposes us to misinterpret and make false assumptions about others. What happens when a bunch of […]
Use Your Illusions for Good!
If you give the prefrontal cortex the “perception” that it has control over your stress response, it will signal all the way back to the amygdala and brain stem and override the primitive brain stress response. Creating visuals and acting them out in your mind gives your PFC this exact perception! Engage your imagination for […]
Mindfulness Changing the Political Brain?
The time has come for politics to recognize the magic of both compassion and neuroplasticity! “The fact that our brain is always changing means we’re not locked in to having the stress superhighway built into our nervous system…The cutting-edge research today shows us how mindfulness can help us reshape our brain and nervous system…Now studies […]
To Fire or Not to Fire, That is the Question
Our neurons are decisive and action oriented. There’s no maybe in their language. They decide to either fire, or not and there’s no in between. HOW they decide this is a wonderful miracle. Each neuron has a threshold of stimulation that must be exceeded for the neuron to decide the signal is worth sending to […]
