5 Neurosculpting Practices for Lasting Brain Change
Incorporating these five best neuroplasticity practices can open the doors to a more graceful, resilient, and lasting experience of change.
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Incorporating these five best neuroplasticity practices can open the doors to a more graceful, resilient, and lasting experience of change.
When we learn to practice these five skills, we strengthen our resilience in exactly the way the brain learns best—small experiences repeated many times. We can develop new ways to respond to pressures and tragedies quickly, adaptively, effectively.
I am honored to have this opportunity to share with you a topic that is very dear to me: work. We spend nearly half of our waking hours at work. Because of this, many of us seek a workplace that supports our personal/spiritual aspirations. This generally translates into searching for a job that is “people friendly.” Regardless of where you work, however, there are going to be situations that don’t align with your concepts, views, and preferences. When that happens, some people think it’s time to move on and find an environment that better suits them.
The Untethered Soul at Work presents a real paradigm shift from this way of thinking. Spiritual growth is always about change and transformation, but this does not mean changing the outside—it means changing the inside. A truly spiritual approach to our time at work is to see it as a phenomenal opportunity to go through the changes we need to go through to become more open and accepting. In the end, peace doesn’t mean finding a limited, controlled environment that does not hit our “stuff”—it means using our everyday environment to let go of our stuff so that we can be unconditionally peaceful.
When we approach work as an opportunity to express ourselves as well as to remove the inner blockages that keep us bound, we truly make work a holy place. The Untethered Soul at Work guides us and encourages us to view the challenges in the workplace as opportunities to grow spiritually. Many examples are given of how to face everyday situations so you come out the other side a more liberated person. When at the end of every workday you are a greater person than you were in the morning—you have used your day well. When you have reached the state where you are enthused to come to work every day for the challenge of letting go of your blockages—work becomes a win-win situation. You cannot lose—every experience is for your spiritual transformation.
We cannot always change our environment, but we can change how we interact with it. True mindfulness means staying centered and clear enough to use every moment life presents you to free yourself from yourself. Work is always a spiritual place—if you learn to use it that way.
Michael A. Singer is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself. In 1971, while pursuing his doctoral work in economics, he experienced a deep inner awakening and went into seclusion to focus on yoga and meditation. In 1975, he founded Temple of the Universe, a yoga and meditation center where people of any religion or set of beliefs can come together to experience inner peace. Through the years, he has made major contributions in the areas of business, the arts, education, healthcare, and environmental protection. For more information about The Untethered Soul®, please visit untetheredsoul.com.
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Diana Winston is is the director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and a pioneer in mindfulness education for children. With Sounds True, she has released The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Diana about “natural awareness”—an always-available, foundational flow state distinguishable from deliberate mindfulness practice. They share “glimpse practices” designed to open up perception and embodiment of natural awareness, commenting on how each can be practiced in day-to-day life. Diana and Tami discuss the value of going on retreat, the spectrum of different awareness practices, and common misconceptions about what it takes to become a mindfulness teacher. Finally, Diana explains why it’s important not to become a “bliss-ninny” as well as the difference between natural awareness and spacing out. (64 minutes)
PHASE 1
Mind wandering is associated with the DMN (default mode network)—areas of the brain that are active when the mind is in its default state of rest. In this phase, the mind seems cluttered with thoughts and feelings all scrambling to be at the center of attention. The meditator may remain distracted by what seems like an endless barrage for some period of time. The brain remains in this state especially when it is not engaged in a specific task.
PHASE 2
Becoming aware of mind wandering occurs when we mobilize a conscious mind-body practice. This phase involves purposefully placing our attention in order to steer our practice, and this effort reveals itself as activation in the insula. As noted previously, the insula is characteristic of interoceptive awareness and self-awareness. In this way, cognizance of the mind’s habitual wandering is a form of metacognition—thinking about thinking—that sets the stage for neuroplasticity. Just to arrive at this stage of meditation is quite an accomplishment, as most people never cultivate any sustained awareness of how their mind meanders from one topic to the next. Practitioners should recognize the value of this second phase because it can take years to arrive here with any regularity. Without knowing this, beginners often become discouraged.
PHASE 3
Shifting out of wandering is like flexing a muscle or changing gears in a car. This phase involves the executive function of the brain, recruiting regions like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the posterior parietal cortex. The practitioner arrives at this phase through consciously and consistently bringing their attention out of unfocused wandering. Much like training a muscle, we go through high and low points of practice, and—as in the previous stage—it is easy to feel discouraged. Unfortunately, meditators can judge themselves harshly at this stage, lose interest, or give up entirely if they do not recognize just how important this phase is in training the neural muscles of concentration.
PHASE 4
Focusing means that the practitioner has gained some meditative stability and can remain for some time in a concentrative state. This achievement shows up as sustained activation in the dlPFC. At this phase, progressive layers of our mind reveal themselves—both within a practice session and “off the cushion” over time. When the mind eventually starts to wander again, the cycle begins anew, and the practitioner passes through the phases once more to regain focus. With practice, the amount of effort, time, and repetition it takes to go through the cycles decreases, with less time occupied in the earlier phases and more time spent in a focused state.
Excerpted from Yoga & Psyche: Integrating the Paths of Yoga and Psychology for Healing, Transformation, and Joy by Mariana Caplan.
Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RTY 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and author of eight books in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and yoga. She has been teaching workshops and trainings online, in yoga studios and universities, and at major retreat centers throughout the world since 1997. She is the founder of Yoga & Psyche International, an organization created to integrate the fields of yoga and psychology globally, and lives in Fairfax, California. Learn more at realspirituality.com and yogaandpsyche.com.
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Spending time in the woods—or shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”)—has been proven to significantly strengthen our immune system and increase our overall happiness. The forest air triggers our bloodstream to produce 40 percent more natural killer cells, which help fight harmful viruses, bacteria, and other illnesses. The tradition of forest bathing goes back a long time in Japan’s folk medicine, but it has its longest history in China and Taiwan and has been called senlinyu there for centuries.
Ancient knowledge about healing from nature is also found in traditional Chinese medicine. Numerous exercises from qigong are designed to “absorb the chi of nature” and are carried out mainly in forests or green areas with trees. Even the qigong masters of the past apparently knew that nature not only heals in the form of plant- and mineral-based pharmaceutical substances, but also by a person simply being present in a green space and breathing. In qigong, absorbing the chi of nature is always associated with breathing techniques.
Xiaoqiu Li, a two-time Chinese state champion in wushu (traditional Chinese martial arts), taught me the following exercise for “whole-body breathing.” This specific exercise helps you to take in the healthy forest air quite intensely and to release old air and harmful substances very consciously. You will especially feel the purifying effects of this exercise in your body if you are a smoker or live in a polluted city.
Look for a place in the woods that appeals to you and that has an even surface to stand on, and then follow these steps:
Excerpted from The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature by Clemens G. Arvay.
Born in 1980, Clemens G. Arvay is an Austrian engineer and biologist. He studied landscape ecology (BSc) at Graz University and applied plant sciences (MSc) at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Arvay examines the relationship between humans and nature, focusing on the health-promoting effects of contact with plants, animals, and landscapes. He also addresses a second range of topics that includes ecologically produced food along with the economics of large food conglomerates. Clemens G. Arvay has written numerous books, including his bestseller The Biophilia Effect. For more, please visit clemensarvay.com.
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