Can meditation change your brain? - Emotion Regulation
There is a part of the brain whose main job is to watch for threats. You can think of it as your brain’s guardian angel or security guard or light house operator.
It scans your environment and, if it detects a threat, will gear up your body to fight it or run away using your sympathetic nervous system (that we spoke about yesterday).
However, when the security guard gets overzealous and starts jumping at shadows or dodgy looking teenagers, things begin to get tiring. In our stressful lives, with so much vying for our attention and so many stressors in our environment, this can easily happen.
So there is a second pathway. Do you remember the prefrontal cortex,? It is like the CEO of our brains. Scientist believe this is how we regulate our fear response. The security guard sees a teenager and says “OH NO, ROBBER!” and the CEO says “It is okay, that’s just a teenager”.
However, in people who meditate, neuroscientific research has found that their CEO has much better control over the security guard I.e. their prefrontal cortex is more active. their amygdala is less active and their prefrontal cortex is able to inhibit their amygdala.
The Autonomic Nervous System: The body's accelerator and brake
The Sympathetic Nervous System is our accelerator and was originally responsible for reacting to threats such as lions. These threats were often temporary and the reaction to fight or flight was only needed for short amounts of time. However, the nervous system treats today’s modern threats of stress the same way leaving us with our accelerator left jammed on. This can cause many health issues such as sleep problems, memory issues, anxiety and depression. Exercise, yoga and meditation have all been found to reduce stress by releasing the accelerator and applying the brakes.
Put First Things First - Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
We are live in a time poor world. But it is also the one thing we have in common. We all have 168 hours a week. 168 hours to prioritise, to waste, to be productive in, to procrastinate in.
Is your week filled to the brim with tasks? With work, study, exercise, TV, social media, kids. Are you neglecting important things in your life?
So often, we spend our days dealing with the urgent items.
Covey argues that the important but not urgent tasks is where we should be concentrating.
It includes things like building relationships, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance and all those things we need to do but often don’t get around to doing because they aren’t urgent.
So what do you do with your 168 hours? This week, perhaps conduct an inventory and see where you are spending you’re 168. Is it where you’d like to be spending them? Are you taking away for the important to do the urgent?
Foot, ankle, knee or back pain? Perhaps your calves are the culprit
Like many important things in your body, your calves probably aren’t something you think about very often. They just do their thing. That thing is very important…
They stop you falling on your face!
They do this all day and they do it from the bottom of your body which makes their job so much harder.
So it is not wonder that a lot of us develop tight calves.
And because of their position, tight calves can affect weight distribution and pressure on other areas of the body which can also affect the foot, ankle, knee, hips and back.
Can meditation change your brain? - Body Awareness
Meditation helps to train us to focus on our on internal experiences. Neuroimaging studies have found this can lead to an increase the size of the area of the brain associated with emotional awareness and empathy. Thus, through meditation, our brains adapt and we are better able to understand our own emotions and those of others.