In Week Two, we advance the practice with an additional neurological understanding of what the brain is doing while meditating I’ve attached the PDF booklet from our class this morning This is the link to the web page with the items for this week.

Neuroscience and Mindful Meditation Practice

This is a Hidden Page on our website, so you need the link to access it and the contents. You can listen to the MP3s right from the website, The 20-minute guided visualization by Kathy Welter Some thoughts on today’s class: Why are we learning to Breathe like this What are these two systems we all have, and who knew we could control them with our breath.

 
Two Neurological Systems – it’s not left or right brain fixed, it’s throughout the whole brain, the neurons are communicating – over 86 million synaptic connections firing off and there is nothing static about their location… it's through the whole brain

1: PEA Empathic (Parasympathetic system) network - Thinking positive, hope, and uplifted 

2: NEA Analytic network (Sympathetic system) Thinking is fear-based, and contracting, should or must do

The two most important learnings are this:

1: Sustained desired change – starts in the Positive Emotional Attractor
2: If we are in the NEA – we become cognitively impaired – and close down (peripheral perception goes down to 30 percent – focused on limited thinking, we don’t focus on anything else around us, cognitively, we know we are impaired we are not functioning - we are making a change through compliance – filled with resistance and negative chemicals and emotions. It is in fact, the only internal system we can control, and we do it with our breath.

Neuro – Plasticity considers how our brain is like “plasticine” not brittle like plastic.
Plasticene has the capacity to shift, change and be molded – in other words – it changes We now know our brain changes throughout our lifetime, and there are some things we can do to Optimize brain change and keep our brains healthy too The Human Connectome: This YouTube is about 54 minutes and definitely worth your time – make a cup of tea and relax and breathe while you view it We have trillions of cells in our bodies and the connections are even more - This is the Human Connectome Project -(THE Human Connectome Project HCP) 
In the video the neuroscientists and cartographers are talking about the Neurons… well, here is what one looks like: 

They come in all sizes and shapes in our bodies. Smaller ones in the brain (86 billion of these and they are changing every day – adding in about 500K and off-loading about the same every night during SLEEP) We have longer ones too, that travel from the brain all the way to our toes and fingertips IMPORTANTLY:

A recent discovery around the – previously it was considered as “nothing special” until scientists discovered the thickness and the strength of myelin is what acts as an “insulator” to the AXON, and that is what lets information travel along the AXON at much greater speeds… (think memory recall access to information)

And that people with early dementia or Alzheimer’s have a “hardening” of the grey matter of the brain and damage to the myelin or missing myelin altogether. Another interesting note to this, in countries that are considered the blue where their elders live well into their 100’s they have done autopsies only to discover that Their brains also had hardened areas of the brain, however, what was different was the other parts of their brain became stronger to support the body and brain functions, even though They should have lost function. The out-takes on why this happened are varied and many. Beliefs around lifestyle, activity and a much deeper focus on the body’s movement daily as much as food, emotional content, and other aspects of one’s life Elder Tibetan Nun who lived into her 130s (they believed) lived her life doing the same things even until the last day of her life. Waking, dressing, Meditating, eating, walking down to the river with her sisters and doing the laundry, working in the kitchen, and the garden The keys to the Blue Zone populations were the Elders remained in their communities and their family lives, they were not sent away to be with other old people contained in places where they were disconnected from their lives, their families and the contributions they could still make. In other words, their lives were familiar, and that also kept their brains active and involved in their day-to-day living The Speed of Information traveling along the Axons is enhanced by the thickening of the Myelin:

Oh, how fast could that be With a damaged or thin Myelin, information travels at 1000’s bits of info/per second – That’s pretty fast, However, with strengthened myelin covering the Axon it is substantially better than 1.5MILLION times faster Our brains move information so quickly, that we actually generate an electrical charge from each neuron the ohms generated from our brains are enough to light a small bulb Our Brains are Amazing Keeping them healthy for our life is so much easier than we thought. The more we practice something, this is how we The more awareness we have of what our brains need to be strong, growing and changing for a lifetime, The more we can move towards supporting our brain health ourselves. Navigating the Two Systems is critical and that’s why we start with our breath. It’s the one thing we have conscious control over AND learning something new is the very best way to strengthen the Myelin. Right now, we’re learning something new:  

the FEED Acronym helps us connect to what our brains really find it useful in creating new synaptic connections Building Blocks of our Neural Pathways

F - FOCUS 
E - Exercise – do it daily
E - Easy Effortless
D - Decide – do I want to keep it? 
So this week as we FOCUS on our Breath,
Until it becomes Then all you have to do is DECIDE – to KEEP IT