Training the mind muscle – Enhancing the human super power (Part 1)

How you can train your brain and enhance the most valuable organ we have as a species, the mind – Part 1 of 2.

Meditations and mindfulness are probably two things you have been guilted into attempting or considering but not actually amounting to anything of substance.

You’ve been told that it is great for your mind and the evidence behind it is compelling.

You have probably gone as far as wanting to but you don’t really know what the hell to do. You may have tried and not been convinced by digital apps or YouTube guided meditations and finding the right yoga practice may not be for you.

So what do you do?

Accept that “it’s just not for you”?

Well, that’s not necessary.

So before you jump to the conclusion that you “can’t” take a second and wrap your head around how your brain works because after all, using it is our species’ super power.

Do you control your brain or does your brain control you?

Are you a person that gets “hangry”?

Do you find yourself being reactive (we’re talking shouting, ignoring or verbally abusing) to people around you? Particularly those close to you?

Do you find yourself craving food or other substances out of boredom?

Wrapping your head around neurology and what drives it may feel a little be daunting, but we’ll simplify a couple of things for you.

For one, we are controlled by two major parts of our brain.

Not left and right, but actually mid and peripheral. Better known as premotor cortex and motor cortex or primitive and thinking.

The mid part of your brain, your primitive brain, is the part of the brain that is responsible for all the things you don’t think about, also known as your autonomics.

Digesting food, balance, movement, your heart rate and blood pressure are all examples of systems in the body that can be influenced by the brain.

This part of your brain also decides your nervous state (rest and digest or fight and flight) and the nervous state you are in can easily influence how the rest of your outside brain (the thinking and processing part) functions.

And this is where it gets interesting.

Because the part of the brain we think, remember, reason and process with can also directly influence the function of the midbrain and its decision on your nervous state which us a huge influence on the rest of the body.

For example, if you’re stressed about money.

Money is something, we as a species have made up to determine a set of rules and influence the way we our lives cohesively.

Now that stress about money can easily represent itself in your body, through a sympathetic (fight and flight) nervous state which is decided by the mid brain as a result of the cognitive brain choosing to stressed about money. Think increased blood pressure, heart rate and stored energy (body fat) as a few physical representations.

Now it doesn’t just have to be money, it can be a whole number of things in our lives from Instagram likes to your boss at work or reading something in the news.

So before you get completely wrapped up in the current economic meltdown (it’s March 2020 for those that read this later) consider the influence it is having on your mid brain and thus the rest of your body.

Details of how you can influence this will come next week.

#teamSOF