Neuroplasticity: the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.
The brain has the natural ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning - and new neural connections can be created even from imagined experience, as Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone from Harvard Medical School demonstrated with his practicing the piano exercise.
The brain cannot distinguish between a real event and something that is vividly imagined. This includes the bad habit of recalling past trauma, and the better habit of imaging a positive potential future. The first thought-habit will have the effect of strengthening existing neural patterns, with the second thought-habit will form new neural connections.
That is, your thoughts can create measurable, physical changes in your brain. Through conscious choice, or by default - we are always reconditioning our mind, and shaping it.
A crisis event in our lives may not be immediately damaging - but thinking about that trauma over and over again will have the effect of reinforcing networks of neural connections, thus magnifying the negative aspects of the crisis into various forms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder... which in some cases, can take considerable time and effort to treat.
Yoga To Calm The Mind, Meditation To Rewire The Brain
In an effort to address and cope with the many aspects of my recent life-crises - I have found great relief in practicing Hot Yoga in a local Moksha Studio (twice a day on most occasions), and I have started the work of following the guided meditation strategy taught by Dr. Joe Dispenza.
Guided Hot Yoga class - standing before a wall of mirrors, surrounded by other practitioners who can plainly watch your every move - demands full attention on performing the poses. The poses are physically challenging, the hot room forces the body to perspire heavily, and the continual attention to the breath, leaves little to no mental resources to be thinking about personal troubles.
At the end of a yoga class, my mind is in a very tranquil and calm state. My mind is at it's most open and receptive - and I'm certain if you measured my brain wave patterns before and after yoga, you would see a high-beta brainwave state before, and an alpha brainwave state after the session of yoga.
This is the time, after yoga, that I engage in the Dr. Joe Meditations and practice the emotions I wish to train into my future - instead of contemplating my crisis and re-living those powerful negative associations and feelings.
And it isn't easy. The negative associations related to my crisis are very real in every moment of my life at present - while the emotions I wish to train into my future are... theoretical - even though they feel better when I practice them in my meditations... the most difficult thing is to break away from thinking about the crisis and putting my mind onto the mental movies at the heart of the meditations I am practicing. Over and over again, I catch myself returning to events in the past - and I must return attention to the subjects in my meditations.
But the more I study how the meditations effect change within the physical wiring of the brain - the more convinced I am that I am on the right path. And I am making progress daily.
My Sacred List Of Changes
My own life-crisis has generated a specific list of thought patterns, behaviors and attitudes that I want to change. Without this intense crisis, I likely would have drifted on - without addressing these issues.
I would have gone on to annoy and irritate friends and acquaintances...
I would have continued the patterns that lead me to be viewed as creepy by some people around me.
I would not have addressed a problem relationship to pornography.
I would not have addressed substance abuse issues with alcohol, marijuana and caffeine.
I would not have taken action on my fitness
I would have continued to be untruthful - seeking to avoid punishment instead of valuing honor.
I would have been without compassion and empathy to those around me.
I would have continued with a manic, irritable, unhealthy focus on work.
I would not have opened my eyes to the fact that I was not living with joy - I was not basking in my successes, I was not feeling gratitude and appreciating the people I love the most in the world...
Crisis To The Rescue??
I have not come so far as to welcome the life-crisis that I'm facing. But, perhaps, in the long-distant future - I'll look back and acknowledge this as a key turning point that woke me up and caused me to view myself from a third person point of view where I could clearly see myself for the first time - and get a clear picture of the changes I need to make.
For now, I'm in the raging river of change. The waters are turbulent and I really don't know if I'll make it safely to the other side.
