article: rewiring the mammalian brain

thanks to pat siebert for posting a link to this on facebook. click the title of this post to view the article.

stunning news: the brain rewires itself within hours after experience! don't you just love science?

the article goes into how neurons forge connections with other neurons. here's the gist of it:

Studying neuron clusters from the neocortex of neonatal rats, Markram and Le Bé found that instead of growing preferentially towards specific receivers, neurons actually have no particular affinity for any other neuron, but instead remain in a state of perpetual readiness to reconfigure circuits. They found that over the course of just a few hours, connections are formed and re-formed many times.

"The circuitry of the brain is like a social network where neurons are like people, directly linked to only a few other people," explains Markram. "This finding indicates that the brain is constantly switching alliances and linking with new circles of "friends" to better process information."

In their samples, the rewiring process was occurring continuously at a slow pace. By exciting the sample with glutamate, they found that the rate increased markedly. This suggests that with a strong new experience, the brain accelerates its reconfiguration process, allowing new connections to be made, tested, and strengthened, and weaker ones removed so that the brain is quickly better adapted to the new situation.

glutamate is also known as glutamic acid. it is a nonessential amino acid. it is the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter in the vertebrate nervous system, according to wikipedia. it is involved in learning and memory.

food sources: MSG, animal and plant sources of protein, the seaweed kombu. usually no supplementation is needed.

new article about the aging brain

it's nice to know that as one traverses middle age, the brain gets better at seeing the big picture, recognizing significance and even solutions more quickly than a younger person can. maybe that makes up for those tip-of-tongue moments.

but we need to make new neural connections:

Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor.

stop being stupid

click the title to read the opinion from bob herbert, who says it better than i could: it's time for americans to stop being stupid. about the economy, the future, industry, jobs, wars, regulation, credit, mortgages, college tuition, globalization, government spending, debt, investment, paying now versus later, infrastructure, education, the environment, health care, and consumption.

i would add another policy area that needs overhaul, where the government can stop being stupid NOW with a great long-term payoff: the farm bill. it has a huge effect on the food that's available to us and the cost of this food.

processed food (the packaged stuff that is stripped of nutrients--sometimes added back in as chemicals!--that can sit on a grocery shelf for months and has been shipped from who-knows-where) is cheap and available everywhere because the government subsidizes it.

in other words, the u.s. government is taking our tax money and paying it to farmers to grow monocultures of wheat, corn, soybeans, spraying them with pesticides, using chemical fertilizers. it's paying for research programs at universities to come up with better ways of processing these "components" and turning them into cheap, unnutrious food with long shelf-lives.

if america is to get smarter, focusing on high quality, nutritious food (and clean water) that is available and affordable to everyone is a great place to start.

after all, how are we going to get smarter? what do you think builds the brain?

the brain's subconscious vision

marco schneider sent me a link to a NY Times article about a man who had no functioning in his visual cortex due to two strokes, yet was able to navigate an obstacle course successfully and cringe at a picture of a scary face--even though he could not consciously see them.

click the title of this post to go to the article.

marco and i both speculate that there's a connection between peripheral vision (see more under the label "12 states of attention"--and the subcortical areas the researchers found this man was using.

book review: The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

I recently finished reading The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. As promised, here is my take on it. Click the title of this post to order the book from amazon.com.

Author Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist. Her mission here was to examine the cutting edge of science, quantum physics specifically, by reading studies, interviewing scientists, and translating scientific findings into a layperson's language while maintaining as much accuracy as possible.

She got interested in this topic when she kept bumping into hard scientific evidence about methods of healing that went against the prevailing ideas about human biology, including studies validating homeopathy, acupuncture, and spiritual healing.

Now some of you may think, what's the big deal? Everybody knows they work, even if science doesn't know how. Well, the answer to that is that science is a prevailing paradigm in Western culture,and science is on the verge of a revolution that goes far beyond alternative medicine. McTaggart says that scientific stories create our perception of the universe and how it operates, and from this we shape our social structures.

What McTaggart discovered is that a small number of scientists have been working on the fringe of science (although their work is slowly becoming more and more acceptable to the mainstream), using the scientific method to prove things that fly in the face of the scientific belief system. These scientists were often at risk of ostracism from the main scientific community, yet they kept at their research because like true explorers, they knew they were on to something new, and that's what is exciting about science--discovery of the new. These men and women are the revolutionaries of the scientific community.

McTaggart interviewed scientists from around the world, adding personal information about their appearance, background, and so forth to humanize them. She stuck with scientists with solid credentials--some at prestigious universities like Princeton and Stanford--and limited her reporting to studies using rigorous scientific criteria, such as the double blind study design with a control group. The bulk of the book is about their studies.

She interviewed 22 scientists, some up to 20 times, basically translating their findings into metaphors that you and I can understand, in the process receiving an education in quantum physics, statistics, brain neuroscience, and other hard sciences.

Very few of these scientists would discuss the metaphysical implications of their work. McTaggart herself says that although her sympathies lie with alternative medicine, she still demands scientific proof. "There is little of the woo-woo about me," she writes.

The prevailing scientific paradigm is based on Isaac Newton's work in the 1600s. Remember the apple falling on Newton's head and his "discovery" of gravity? Newton basically saw the universe as a machine that follows laws and behaves predictably, independent of human observation.

Then came quantum physics in the early part of the 20th century. The smallest bits of matter were not set things. They were mutable, often many possible things all at the same time, and had no meaning in isolation but only in relationship to everything else. Subatomic particles existed in all possible states until disturbed by us--our observation influenced them to settle down. Time and space did not exist except as arbitrary constructs.

Most scientists assumed the strange quantum world only existed in the world of dead matter, or that one set of laws (Newtonian) applied to the visible world and another to subatomic particles (quantum). It was all so counter-intuitive to their belief system.

Reading her stories about the studies was a good experience. Some were pretty amazing. I especially liked the studies where scientists worked with psychics--who could see inside machinery (influencing it at the same time) and also describe remote locations they'd never been to and only had geographic coordinates for. Even in Russia. (Hint: The NSA gets involved.)

In a nutshell, some of the findings are:
--Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. There is no duality to our bodies in relation to the universe. There is one field that underlies everything, us included.

--"Nothing" does not exist. Even in absolute zero degrees (the closest we can get to a vacuum), things are happening. There is a field of energy, called the Zero Point Field.

--The field is a recording medium for everything, the means by which everything communicates with everything else. It holds the memories of everything that ever happened. The brain is a receiver.
[define coherence and resonance]

--Perfect coherence is an optimum state just between chaos and order.

--Health is a state of perfect subatomic communication.

--Each molecule in the universe has a unique frequency, and the language it uses to communicate is a resonating wave. Molecules "speak" to each other, regardless of distance, virtually instantaneously.

--We perceive objects by resonating with them--perception occurs by tuning in to the field.

--Consciousness is a global phenomenon that occurs everywhere in the body, not just in the brain. (Perhaps it occurs everywhere, not just in the body. Perhaps consciousness IS the field.)

--Observation puts a halt to randomness and creates order.

--Intent can change the physical world, even the past.

--Pairs of people of the opposite sex have more power to influence outcomes, and bonded couples have even more power, than individuals.

--Women produce better results at influencing outcomes when multitasking; men when concentrating on the task at hand.

--Consciousness results when individual quantum particles lose their individuality and begin acting as a single unit.

--Coherence of consciousness is the greatest form of order known to nature.

--Wishing or intending makes our own coherence infectious.

--People can influence their body functions by directing their attention.

--Other people can have almost the same mind-body effect on you that you can have on yourself.

--Influence increases depending on how much it matters to the influencer or how much he/she can relate to the influencee.

--The greatest effect is when influencees really needed influence. Needing something such as calming down or focusing attention makes people more receptive to influence.

--Humans have a latent ability to see anywhere across any distance. Even those skeptical of this idea can be primed and do this after a little practice.

--The important ingredient in remote viewing is being in a relaxed, even playful, atmosphere that avoids causing anxiety or nervous anticipation in the viewer.

--The information often comes across as if in a dream state. Interpreting or analyzing it colors impressions as the information is still coming through and makes it less accurate.

--People can remotely view the past and the future. It's as if the field is just NOW and all points in space and time exist in a single instant.

--People can influence the future. Using a random click generator, they could influence the output of the machine before it generated clicks. Present or future intentions act on initial probabilities and determine what events actually come into being.

--It is important for the influencer to be the first observer. Others observing first make the machine less susceptible to later influence. So focused attention freezes the system.

--Theoretically everything in the future exists in the ralm of pure potential, and in seeing into the future or past, we help shape it and bring it into being.

--Theretically, the bottom level of the Zero Point Field is not electromagnetic. The secondary fields (scalar waves) travel far faster than the speed of light and provide the ultimate holographic blueprint of the world for all time.

--To remove time, remove separateness. Pure energy at the quantum levelexissts as a vast continuum of fluctuating charge. We create time and space, and therefore we create our own separateness.

--On a subconscious physiological level, we have an inkling when we are about to receive bad news or when bad things are going to happen to us.

--People communicate and respond to remote attention, although unaware of it.

--When the left brain is quiet and the right brain predominates, ordinary people have access to telepathy.

--You can block or prevent influences you don't want by visualizing a protective shield.

--The more organized a sender's consciousness, the more ordering influence on a less-organized recipient. The most ordered brain pattern always prevails.

--The capacity of our brains to receive information from the field is limited in ordinary consciousness; states of altered consciousness such as meditation and relaxation loosen this constraint.

--Children under five permanently function in the alpha state.

--Gentle wishing works better rather than intense willing when using intentions to achieve certain outcomes.

--Plants have empathy for each other. They respond when a neighboring plant is injured or dies.

--Death is a disturbance in the field.

--Human intention can be used as an extraordinarily potent healing force. We can establish greater 'order' in another person.

--Distant healing works. All kinds of healing were tested. Conventionally religious Christians, evangelicals, kabbalists, Buddhists, and healers from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Light, those changing colors/vibrations in patients' auras, using contemplative healing and visualizations, working with tones and singing or bells, a Lakota Sioux pipe ceremony with drumming and chanting, a qi gong master.

---The main commonality of successful distant healing was healers being able to put out their intention for the patients' health and then surrender to some kind of healing force.

--Asking for help was more effective than not. Whether it was Jesus, Spider Woman, or a healing energy was irrelevant. Help came in the form of energy.

--Experienced healers have abnormally high electric field patterns during healing sessions. This may be a sign of greater coherence.

--Intention on its own heals, and healing is a collective force. There may be a collective memory of healing spirit.

--Illness may be isolation, from oneself, community, and spirituality, rather than physical conditions.

--Experiments suggested individual consciousness doesn't die. Death may be a decoupling of our frequency from the matter of our cells. It may be simply returning to the field.

And there's more. I'm getting tired of summarizing; maybe you are getting tired of reading this very long post too.

One more point sticks out. McTaggart actually says, on page 159, "the left brain is the enemy of The Field."

NLPers, does this ring a lot of bells for you, about congruence, rapport, maps/territories?

Hypnotists, are you inspired to bring the implications of quantum physics into your trances?

McTaggart's next book is about Intent, inspired by what she learned in writing this book. I intend to get it!

nature relieves brain fatigue, says NY Times

click the title of this post to read the story and hear the podcast

article on olfaction

the sense of smell is the most mysterious of the five senses. read the latest on it in this article from today's NY times, by science writer natalie angier.

click the title of this post to go to the article. includes tips on how to cultivate your sense of smell.

new research on treating fear related disorders

click the title link to go to the article in Science Daily, and related articles. relates to how the NLP counter-example (allergy) cure and the phobia/trauma cure may actually be working.

great article on perception

i came across this article in The New Yorker today, referred by something in the New York Times. NLPers especially may be interested, because it's about perception, the brain and nervous system, and meaning.

the article is long, 8 pages, but you can start reading at the bottom of page 4 if you don't want to read a gruesome story about a woman with an incessant, horrible itch on her scalp. you might feel better if you skip that part.

toward the end you can read about using mirror therapy to work with phantom limb pain. there's a way to retrain the brain's sensors. no drugs or surgery needed. end suffering quickly.

one fascinating factoid i read is an estimate that only 10 to 20% of what we see is actually information entering the visual cortex through the eye. the rest comes from elsewhere in the brain, like memories.

click the title of this posting to go to the article.

jill bolte taylor gets an article in the NY Times

the article gives her background (in short, if you haven't heard anything about it, a Harvard brain anatomist has a stroke, losing her left brain capacities, experiences deep peace--some say nirvana--from her right brain, and goes public with it after recovering), and then describes the growing interest in her experience.

over 2 million have viewed her video, which gets viewed 20,000 times a day, and she was selected as one of time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.

mind over matter

a monkey can control a robotic arm to feed itself, using only its thoughts. click the title of this post to go to the NY Times article, published 5/29/2008.

brain food: the good fats

The brain is extremely metabolically active, and so what we eat very much fuels it well (or not). The fats we consume play a major role in brain health. I found quite a bit of information about fats and the brain. I'll include some findings, and at the end of this post, list the foods with fats that positively influence brain health.

Brain performance requires omega-3 fatty acids, commonly found in fish. Omega-3s are major constituents of brain cell membranes, through which all nerve signals must pass. And, for new nerve connections to be made, new cell membranes must be formed. And, brain cell membranes are in constant need of replenishment. So keep those cell membranes fueled with fish. And fresh or canned fish gets more omega-3s into bodies than omega-3 supplements or refined fish oils.

Warning about fish: a lot of it is high in mercury or PCBs. The Environmental Defense Fund (see www.edf.org/seafood) lists best, okay, and worst choices and notes which of the best choices are both high in omega-3s and low in contaminants.

How often should you eat fish? Two or three times a week.

Note that farm-raised fish are more likely to have been given antibiotics. Also, a lot of fish is sprayed with preservatives. It seems like a prudent idea to rinse fish before cooking.

Walnut oil and canola oil are highly recommended non-fish sources of omega-3s. Other sources include flax seeds***, walnuts***, cooked soybeans***, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, sea vegetables, spirulina, and dark green leafy vegetables (the usual suspects, I suppose, like kale, spinach, collards, romaine, etc.). Chia seeds! Aren't those the little seeds used in chia pets--you stick them into grooves on a ceramic animal-shaped vessel, fill the vessel with water, and sprout a green creature? I've never heard of eating them or seen them sold as a food in a grocery store! Who knew?

A 1:1 balance of omega-3s and omega-6s is required. Most Americans are lacking the omega-3s. Omega-6 is found in red meat and dairy. Americans tend to consume 10 to 20 times more omega-6s than omega-3s. So if you eat dairy, nonfat is best, and limit red meat while boosting sources of omega-3s. Avoid transfats and supermarket oils and salad dressings unless they say cold-pressed or olive oil is labeled extra-virgin.

Really avoid transfats! Transfats are unnatural oils, nearly all man-made. They are partially hydrogenated for longer shelf life, and thus are cheaper. They have a different shape than healthy fatty acids and adversely affect brain cell membranes. The western diet has included them for 50 years without much ado until recently. Who knows the long-term effects of a couple of generations of people blithely consuming them? Which reminds me, have you seen Idiocracy? That movie might turn out to be true, only instead of water being the reason for the dumbing down of the human race, it's transfats.

Another important fat-related brain nutrient is choline. It is a precursor of many neurotransmitters. Choline is a fat-like B vitamin found in eggs. (Sort of gives new meaning to the commercial of the frying egg with voiceover saying, "This is your brain on drugs." Actually, this egg is good for your brain--especially if fried in canola or walnut oil!)

Choline enhances memory and minimizes fatigue.

Oleic acid is a primary constituent of the myelin sheaths in our brains. Sources of oleic acid include oils from olives, almonds, pecans, macadamias, peanuts, and avocados. I imagine you could just eat these foods to get the benefit, but it must be nice to have all these oils on hand in the kitchen. Mmm, salad dressing made with avocado oil. I must try that! A salad of green leafy vegetables, avocados, wild Alaska salmon, and one of the aforementioned oils with lemon juice sounds like a great way to get some great brain food.

DHA is the most prevalent fat in the brain. The rise in depression in the 20th century has been associated with a decline in DHA consumption. There's also a link between DHA deficiency and hostility and aggression. It's most important for pregnant women and babies, when the brain is forming.

Fish contains DHA. Now there are two good reasons to eat fish--omega-3s and DHA.

My list of brain foods with good fats:
fish (best are anchovies, Atlantic mackerel, farmed oysters, wild Alaska salmon***, canned pink/sockeye salmon***, sardines, farmed rainbow trout, and U.S. and Canadian albacore tuna; good are Pacific halibut, Pacific cod, U.S. farmed shrimp, farmed bay scallops, U.S. yellowfin tuna)

oils, seeds, and nuts: canola oil, walnuts and walnut oil***, flax seeds and flax seed oil***, chia seeds (if you find them in a store, let me know, please!), olives and olive oil, almonds, pecans, macadamia nuts, peanuts, avocado oil

note: do not cook with these oils--use them for dressings--and store them in dark containers in the fridge--they are sensitive to heat and light

sea vegetables (dulse, kelp, wakame, kombu, arame)

dark green leafy vegetables, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, winter and summer squash, avocados, cooked soybeans including tofu***

cloves, oregano, mustard seeds

eggs, in moderation

*** very high

Avoid transfats!

the primary brain food is water

I've been doing some online research of how diet can enhance brain functioning. My technique was to use Google, read relevant links, and compile the information. I'm presenting it here.

The brain consists of a high percentage of water (either 95% or 85%, sources vary), so it makes sense that brain function is where dehydration will show up quickly. A dehydrated person may be irritable or lethargic. Mental alertness is impaired. Skin becomes dry. Joints begin to ache. The memory suffers, basic math is more difficult, and it is more difficult to focus on small print.

Many people are chronically dehydrated. The Standard American Lifestyle has gotten so far away from healthy bodies that dehydrated people cannot rely on thirst as an indicator of dehydration. Dehydration may create hunger pangs, food cravings, and other symptoms unrelated to drinking water. Seventy-five percent of Americans have mild, chronic dehydration according to one estimate. I even heard a friend say that dehydration may be a cause of Alzheimer's, but I don't know the source.

The standard measure is that adults need to drink 64 ounces (1 gallon) per day. That is for an average person not doing much physical exercise, in moderate temperatures. That does not take into account the vast range of sizes among adults, and it's too much for a young child.

One formula says to take your body weight in pounds, and divide by two, and drink that many ounces of water each day. So a 100-lb. adult needs 50 ounces. A 50-lb. child needs 25 ounces. That's three 8-ounce glasses and a sip at the water fountain. Of course, fruits and vegetables and juices contain water, but most experts say to drink pure water.

Another measure is the color of the urine. The first urination after waking will be yellow. After that, the urine should be practically colorless.

Besides being the primary brain food, drinking enough water also removes toxins, lubricates the body, helps burn fat, regulate temperature, and prevents cancer.

must-see video: author of my stroke of insight

The author of the book I reviewed earlier this month, called My Stroke of Insight, gave a presentation at a conference. An 18-minute video of her presentation is available on the New York Times, along with a brief article.

You can click the title of this post to view the video. If you watch it, please watch it all. It's very compelling. She's a remarkable woman.

Also, I learned in the article that the author has a website. Go to http://www.drjilltaylor.com/index.html if you're interested.

dancing makes you smarter!

i knew it! i just knew it! dancing makes you smarter, and here's proof. click the title to go to the article.

it's split-second decision making that creates more neural pathways and prevents dementia. so not just any dancing, especially not choreographed dancing. dancing with spontaneity, reading your partner, reading the space, reading the music and responding responding responding. dancing where you are mentally engaged moment by moment.

book review: my stroke of insight

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, is a remarkable book. One day Jill Bolte Taylor, a Ph.D. research scientist in brain anatomy at Harvard, woke up with a terrible headache. Over the next 4 hours, she watched her mind lose its many of its abilities. She had an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in the left hemisphere of her brain, and when a blood vessel blew out, the spreading leak of blood gradually shut down her abilities to create and understand speech, to move and sense the world, and to perceive physical boundaries, time, and space.

What was left was her right brain.

Somehow she managed to orchestrate her own rescue.

Taylor takes the reader through her experience with the skill of an anatomist teaching college freshmen and the zest of a natural storyteller. Taylor was profoundly changed by her experience, and her description of what it is like to perceive "in one's right mind" is worth the price of the book alone.

I learned that mental chatter (aka "monkey mind") is completely a left brain function. A sense of boundaries, of being solid and separate, also comes from the left brain, as do our perceptions of time and space. What remained, in Taylor's experience, without this left brain operating was deep inner peace, a feeling of bliss, silence, open-ended moments following one another, a sense of being enormous and expansive, and at the same time, of being composed of liquid cells.

I'll have what she's having.

Taylor no longer experienced herself as the personality she knew, and not surprisingly, in eight years of recovery, she repeatedly made conscious choices to leave behind emotional patterns from her pre-stroke personality that she didn't like, such as hostility and unhappiness. She learned that emotions are physical, that joy and peace are feelings in the body, that the chemicals of emotions surge through us and are flushed out of our systems in 90 second or less, and that she could choose to prolong a feeling's presence in her body or let it go after that.

In her "right mind," she processed information as images of the present moment, rather than in words. Later she learned to use her left brain's language abilities to talk to her brain as a whole and tell it what she wanted and didn't want.

It's like a scientist is telling us what the mystics and meditators have been saying all along. She's telling us that these experiences are accessible to all, if only we can allow our right brains to experience existence without so many left brain intrusions. (And in fact, she cites research on nuns and monks that says that's what happens in deep prayer and meditation.)

Taylor believes our brain hemispheres have two different characters, and that our inner conflicts are usually splits between our left and right brains. With very little guidance, she says, people can distinguish these characters in those they are close to and even in themselves.

She does not slam the left brain, however. It allows each of us to communicate in the external world, organizes information, multitasks, thinks sequentially, identifies patterns, processes information quickly, sees sharp boundaries between objects, and tunes into higher frequencies. It is a master storyteller, filling in the blanks where there are gaps. It can imagine alternative scenarios.

Taylor firmly believes that the more time we spend running our inner peace and compassion circuits, the more of those we will project into the world and the more peace and compassion we will have on the planet.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in the brain and anyone interested in experiencing more joy and peace in their lives and in the world, and who doesn't want that?

(click title to purchase on lulu.com)

my waking protocol

Last fall, I came up with some exercises that I do each day before I get out of bed. Several people have asked about them recently, so I'm writing it up and posting it here.

I got started with ankle rotations to prevent plantar fasciitis several years ago. I've added exercises for hip flexibility (some from Feldenkrais), for lymph flow (courtesy Nina Davis, my cranio-sacral therapist, and EFT), for brain enhancement (from Brain Gym and Smart Moves by Dr. Carla Hannaford), for neural pathways to representational systems (courtesy NLP), some yoga, exercises to release energy blocks (shamanism), and for life force (chanting).

I don't always do all of them, and I don't always do them in the same order, although I always work from foot to head.

Another main principle is that I do an odd number of repetitions, although sometimes I just do however many feels like enough.

I make sure each side of my body gets balanced exercise.

I notice where I feel tight, achy, and uneven, and work for relaxation, pain-free, and balance. Awareness is a big part of this. I have a mild lumbar scoliosis, and getting my back and hips aligned has been a major ongoing project since last summer. I do several yoga classes each week, and see a chiropractor and cranio-sacral therapist. Some of the morning exercises I do are designed to increase flexibility and strength in the areas where i have an imbalance.

I start lying flat on my back, legs extended.

ankle rotation: rotate ankles in each direction (circles), then outline a square with toes each direction--prevents plantar fasciitis

hip wiggle: alternate right and left hip and leg stretching down--scoliosis

hip circle (actually an oval): round and round--for scoliosis

hip figure eight--for scoliosis and cross-lateral nervous system

sacrum circles: with knees bent and feet on bed, move head in synchrony with pelvis. go slowly for places with hitches. After doing both sides, I move pelvis and head in opposite directions. --for scoliosis and coordination

lymphatic massage where legs join torso--for cleansing toxins from lower body

bridge pose while breathing into lower back--for scoliosis

cross-crawl (opposite elbow to knee)--cross-lateral nervous system

hug knees to chest--for scoliosis

spinal twist with legs extended--for scoliosis

tap upper chest and collarbone while affirming "I, Mary, completely and unconditionally love myself."

lymphatic massage at collarbone--for cleansing toxins from upper body

chant "om" three times--makes my energy field feel sparkly!

thinking caps (unroll edges of ears)--stimulates brain center for hearing

massage skin behind ears--ditto, also for cerebellum

massage triangle where with open mount, jaw and skull meet--for speech and hearing

eye rolling and +X pattern--creating neural pathways

tap face--for lymph flow, prevents wrinkles

pico-pico breathing: inhale earth energy through feet, bring up to fill body and head, exhale through crown chakra (prana for developing the undeveloped selves); then inhale cosmic energy through crown chakra, fill body, and exhale through legs (release baggage, stuckness, unconscious destructive patterns and habits)

alternate nostril breathing--balances brain hemispheres

By now, I'm fully awake and ready to get out of bed and go about my day. I know it must look silly, but I don't care--it really helps me prepare for whatever may happen that day, and I believe that doing these exercises daily builds long-term resources.

I'm willing to add to these as needed, and perhaps I will start an evening protocol. Right now I usually just collapse with a smile of gratitude and drift off to sleep.

left brain, right brain

click this link (or click the title to this blog entry, a cool trick i just learned): http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22535838-5012895,00.html

which direction does the dancer spin? are you left-brained or right-brained? can you switch between them?

she changed on me! the dancer initially turned clockwise, but when i looked away to read text and looked back, she spun "anti-"clockwise. whoa! what's going on here?

i played with it some more and realized it can work both ways because it's a silhouette, but i didn't get any aha's about what triggers the change in my perception about her direction, just that i need to look away for at least a split second and then look back at her. (what NLP calls a break state.) it's a mystery to me.

(an aside: my friend john gough tried it and wrote me, "She flashed me like we were on Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras...I threw her some beads. -- JG ")

i love learning about the brain. of special interest is the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain. to better integrate left and right brains, thus to have more resources-awareness-flexibility, i do cross-lateral exercises, found in the books brain gym and smart moves. figure 8s with arms that cross the midline and right elbow to left knee-left elbow to right knee are good brain exercises. so is alternate nostril breathing, a yoga technique.

i do them each day as part of my waking ritual intended to get me through my day with as many resources as possible!

once the truth about those rumors of mortality sinks in at approximately age 50, life becomes more and more precious, and i want to get the most out of it. plus, corpus callosum deficiencies may figure in ADHD and asperger's syndrome, which affect people in my family. hence the interest and the exercises...

i'm currently reading a book, my stroke of insight, by a neuroanatomist ph.d., jill taylor, who had a stroke and observed her own left brain shutting down, area by area. her right-brain-only awareness was at peace; she perceived herself as fluid rather than solid, as deeply connected to the universe. it sounds very much like descriptions of nirvana, of being fully awake, of being enlightened.

i'll post a review when i finish the book.