Category Archives: Amazing Brain

Do You Have Intuitive Intelligence?

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Intuition is now considered an “intelligence” and like emotional intelligence, social intelligence, creative intelligence, intelligence for reading, writing, & rithmatic, and a string of others, we can now acknowledge, claim and explore intuition without being ridiculed, even in scientific circles.

Intuitive intelligence is being researched scientifically and HeartMath Institute has been immersed in exciting and heart intelligence affirming research since 1991. Their research is showing that the heart appears to be involved in the processing and decoding of intuitive information. It also presents evidence that females are more attuned to intuitive information from the heart.

I read that there is an “underlying nonconscious aspect of intuition which includes implicit learning, implicit knowledge.” It is being acknowledged more openly now that intuitive perception plays an important role in business decisions and entrepreneurship, in learning, research, medical diagnosis, and healing, in spiritual growth and overall well-being.

Several researchers have contended that intuition is:
– an innate ability that all humans possess in one form or another
– is arguably the most universal natural ability we possess
– could be regarded as an inherited unlearned gift.

Although intuition is often felt as a sensation in the body, that physical sense can come with a knowingness and recognition of information from any or all of our five senses, with a vision, colour or sound, even a taste or smell. We interpret the sensations we experience.

There are times our drive to produce a particular outcome can provide a rational direction or decision, yet … a “bad feeling” gnawing away at you is a sign that your intuition is telling you that, no matter how much you might want to talk yourself into this direction, it’s somehow not right, it’s not in sync with your “inner knowing”.

Research and experience at HeartMath Institute suggests that emotions are the primary language of intuition, and that intuition is a largely untapped resource. They teach how to engage heart felt emotions, like compassion and gratitude, with breathing, to entrain the brain frequency to be in sync with the heart and generate the calm experience we intuitively seek.

Implicit knowledge or implicit learning could be knowledge we gained in the past and either forgot or did not realize we had learned something unintentionally. Like the monkeys in the mirror neuron experiments, we watched, absorbed, integrated and stored, to later bring forward the knowledge or skill as the need arose. There was no logical or conscious need to understand, just integration of how to achieve a particular result, simply by watching and registering in our own body the same muscle and energy patterns of the person we are watching. We can learn by mirroring behaviour.

The brain has a highly efficient and effective pattern-matching ability. Your brain matches the patterns of new problems and challenges with implicit memories base on your prior exposure and experience. We are not conscious that the brain is pattern matching, we just find our body is moving as needed, an idea or a thought pops up, or a solution appears in our awareness. It’s not a conscious process.

Another type of intuition might be called energetic sensitivity. Our nervous system detects and responds to changes in the electromagnetic field around our body. A common experience is becoming aware that someone is watching or staring at us. Their attentive energy focused on us has penetrated our field and registered in our nervous system.

Walking in nature we can perceive change of the Earth’s field as we move through areas of trees and plants, rock formations, and flowing water. To be walking in the bush and come round a bend and suddenly find ourselves in a clearing can starkly highlight awareness. The atmosphere can be quite different, very palpable, as our skin sensors register the change.

That change is visual and also energetic. Close your eyes and you can still feel it. Walk back and again approach the bend, more slowly this time, and pay attention to when you become aware of the change. Native tribes have grown up being sensitive to their land and its special places, for healing, for peace, for recovery. Westerners may not have honed that awareness but by paying attention in different environments we can become more sensitive to environmental energy.

Albert Einstein has been widely quoted as saying, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

To enhance your awareness of your intuition do a Touch For Health Goal Balance on:
I easily and readily access and align with my intuitive intelligence for … (problem solving, inner guidance, clarity, next step, etc). Touch For Health kinesiology uses muscle response monitoring to communicate with your subconscious, and bring up to conscious awareness that which is usually hidden from our everyday awareness. It also shows which part of our energy system to stimulate to become more aware of our intuitive ability and direct it to a specific area in our life.

Touch For Health program builds sensitivity to energy change and increases your intuitive intelligence. Workshops are held regularly.
For more information on workshops email: anna@annamcrobert.com.au

Is Your Energy Field Healthy?

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What does your body energy field say about you and your health?

Every one of us has a magnetic field that emanates from our body, so that when we approach another human being, our two fields meet before our physical bodies interact as we greet and touch to shake hands or give a hug. We register the vibe intuitively and subconsciously, before we engage consciously and physically.

Every electrical signal, within cells, between individual cells, among clusters of cells that form an organ, signals from organ to organ, signals along the nerve fibres to the brain and back to the body, the millions of electrical firings that are continuous and constant in the living body, generates a magnetic field. This body-field is unique and constantly moving, expressing into the outer world the electrical activity of our inner workings.

The field you create when you are healthy and vibrant is very different from the field you emanate when tired, depleted, unwell, angry, frustrated or depressed. Learn how to balance your energy field with Touch For Health kinesiology muscle and energy balancing.

Bruce Lipton tells us that “the mind is an energetic field of thought.”

The energy of thoughts and intentions contribute to your body-field. Wiring up the brain to an electro-encephala-graph, EEG, every thought produces its own firing pattern of neurons that is recorded on the graph printout. Functional Magnet Resonance Imaging, fMRI, measures blood flow changes occurring as you process a thought or visual stimulus. Now we can also read the field around the brain with an MEG, a magneto-encephala-graph, without using probes or contacts on the body at all. The whole head activity measured by MEG can capture the result of the brain processing visual stimulation, or spontaneous oscillating activity, such as alpha rhythms.

So, what does all this mean?

In the documentary movie, The Living Matrix, Bruce Lipton said, “the magneto-encephala-graph is a probe outside of the head, and it reads the fields of neural activity, without touching the body. Basically, it says when you are processing in the brain you’re broadcasting fields.”

What kind of field do your thoughts and body activities and health broadcast?
What do others intuitively pick up about your body-field?
Some people have the specific gift that allows them to read the body-field without MEG. Not everyone has developed this gift, but everyone can get feedback about the inner body and brain activity through muscle response monitoring. When you learn Touch For Health kinesiology a whole new world of awareness opens up.

Touch For Health 1 is due 7th & 8th October. Contact me for details.
anna@annamcrobert.com.au
Cheers, Anna
PS. Scientists and researchers call it the body-field. You might know it as the body’s aura.

The Face Is A Goldmine Of Communication

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Silvan Tomkins, psychologist, personality theorist, author, with a PhD in Philosophy, believed that faces held valuable clues to inner emotions and motivations and could predict behaviour.

Paul Ekman, a pupil of Tomkins, found the face is an enormously rich source of information about emotion. He claimed the information on our face is not just a signal of what is going on inside our mind, it actually is what is going on in our mind. The facial expression is a goldmine of communication, both conscious and unconscious.

The key universal emotions, validated by Ekman’s research with people from different cultures round the world, are fear, anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise.

So we are likely to recognize each of these facial expressions of feelings, but there are time when the facial expression and what we say do not match, because what we are saying is not what we are feeling.

What Happens When We Lie
Put simply, there are times we lie. Whether it is just wanting to be polite, or to cover up a mistake or to avoid creating a scene, facial expressions can give it all away, without your even knowing it. You might say, “Thank you, that was lovely,” or “Nice meeting you,” when you don’t feel that at all.

Whenever you experience a basic key emotion, that emotion is automatically expressed by the muscles of the face – it’s involuntary so can betray what you want to hide. That expression may be on your face for just a fraction of a second, just a flash. You may immediately use your voluntary muscles to try to suppress the involuntary reaction when you want to hide our true feelings, but the truth is already out.

Ekman reported on facial micro-expressions which could be used to assist in lie detection. Videos slowed down to frame-by-frame viewing clearly capture the fleeting involuntary facial expression that betrays the automatic reaction and the immediate recovery using consciously controlled muscles to hide the existence of the original expression.

That micro expression may be too fast for most viewers to pick out consciously but the amazing thing is that the subconscious can and does register it. That’s why we can get a sense that something is not right, not congruent, even if we can’t put our finger on why we have that feeling. So pay attention to your instincts on this. Your instincts can be spot on.

Dr David Craig wrote Lie Catcher and collated just what to look for to pick when someone is lying to you. Developing your eye to notice key tell tale signs can make all the difference between being taken for a ride or getting someone you can trust in a business deal, between knowing when your kids are going to visit friends versus slipping into town, or hiring the right person for the job who can do what they say they can. David Craig’s book provides clear photos of the facial expressions and body language that are a give away when all is not as open and honest in communications as others would have your believe.

And it may make you more aware of your own facial expressions too. When you are in two minds about something, it can show. When you are holding something back, it can show. When you are covering up, it can show. The face is a goldmine of communication and honesty may well be the best policy.

We are not always aware of our expression, yet others observing us can notice. “You look upset,” may be countered with “I’m not upset, just thinking,” and quickly the topic is changed to distract from further prying. So what we may think was hidden from others may not be so.

An incongruent reply, where the face and body language say one thing and the words another, can throw doubt on your truthfulness, create distrust in communications, and block open and effective communication from there on. Your facial muscles express feelings and create feelings that are real.

How can you avoid creating distrust, and how can you repair the damage and continue to build rapport? These questions can be answered in the Dynamic Communications Program. Attend now and learn more
.
If you missed the start date on 29th April find out how to catch up. Contact me straight away by email: anna@annamcrobert.com.au or phone 07-3378 2050
Cheers
Anna

Maintain Your Brain – Keep Your Marbles In Good Shape

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We all dread “losing our marbles” as we age. Watching someone you love with Alzheimer’s disease progressively deteriorate before your eyes is heart breaking. But even if it runs in your family, it’s not inevitable. Watching others decline is a great incentive to maintain your brain and keep your marbles in good shape.

Dr Bruce Lipton in his book The Biology of Belief presents his scientific research and clearly shows we are not the victims of our genes. The environment we create in the cells will determine which part of our genetic blueprint we turn on. We have a choice. We do not have to turn on a weakness or activate a tendency. We are not doomed to dis-ease.

Yet some people are definitely doomed to disease, often by their own making and lack of interest and knowledge. But for most of us, no, we are not doomed to disease, if we take charge of our wellness. Thank goodness we can learn from those who go before us, can choose to adjust our course of action, and reap the benefits from what we have learned and applied.

“For years, scientists thought that Alzheimer’s was primarily genetic,” said Gary Wenk, professor of neuroscience at Ohio State University. “We now believe that, while there’s a genetic component, Alzheimer’s is primarily a lifestyle disease.”

Science is proving that lifestyle diseases are our major causes of decline and death. Diseases are linked to wear and tear faster than repair and attempted repair going haywire. Why is that? It’s becoming clear that decline is about stresses we create, physical stress, mental and emotional stress, and nutritional stress. We are not paying enough attention to what the body requires to stay well.

Our cellular environment needs to be conducive to healthy cell repair and replacement to avoid setting up dis-ease and declining function. Being overweight, inactive, eating a poor diet, and stressed to your eyeballs, all contribute to Alzheimer’s and numerous other diseases associated with aging. But you don’t have to go down that track.

Your Brain Needs Oxygen And Water
All the researched indicators point to recognizing that the state of your body reflects the state of your mind. Brain cells need more oxygen than any other part of your body and that’s why exercise is so important.

Exercise increases delivery of oxygenated blood to your brain so that the brain can effectively monitor your entire body and its functions, from breathing to digestion, liver detoxification, kidney filtration, immune response, to elimination of waste materials … and all the rest.

A sluggish brain means sluggish organ function too. Turning to sugar to lift the sluggishness is not the answer, as long term this sets up conditions for dis-ease in the form of diabetes, with further serious side effects from that too. Letting your brain dehydrate compounds all ills.

Your brain is 75 to 80% water. Even a 2% reduction of brain hydration reduces efficiency of the whole body. With even mild dehydration your concentration can decrease 13% and short-term memory 7%. You become irritable, heavy headed and clumsy. No wonder your brain seems sluggish – it ‘s thirsty and needs at drink of water.

Your Brain Relies On Your Heart
It’s your heart’s job to get blood to every part of the body, including your brain, to deliver essential nutrition, including water. Dehydration can have an impact on the mechanical function of your heart. Cells shrink when dehydrated which may affect the transmission of electrical impulses that stimulate your heart muscles to contract.

Your heart will beat about 100,000 times in one day, about 40 million times in a year, and about 3 billion times during your life. It will pump blood through 60,000 miles, or over 96,000 kilometers of tubes, your veins and arteries. How far is that? About twice round the world. Your tubes for blood circulation range from nearly the diameter of your garden hose to capillaries so fine that it takes ten of these fine capillaries to equal the thickness of a human hair. What a phenomenal effort your heart puts in!

Be Grateful and Exercise
Day in, day out, your heart keeps working for you! Your brain keeps working for you. Your organs keep working for you. This happens without your conscious awareness or command. So what is your part in all this? All you need to do is exercise your body, provide quality food for maintenance, repair, and replacement, and give your body some down time to rebuild what you have worn down during the day. And, you need to stimulate and exercise your brain as much as your body.

Dehydration means waste products in cells and around cells accumulate and clump instead of being diluted for easy collection and elimination. No wonder your brain and organs become sluggish. Dehydration leads to thicker blood. With less fluid in the arteries the artery walls adjust by constricting. Yet the volume of blood cells and nutrients for delivery to organs, muscles and other tissues remains the same. So the viscosity of the blood has gone up. Your blood is thicker.

Now your heart has to pump harder to drive the thicker brew to every destination in your body. Thick blood is one of the main reasons for high blood pressure. Doctors prescribe blood thinners when you might need water first. The other causes for thick blood come from what you eat. Be aware that some drinks actually dehydrate your system. Coffee is a diuretic as is alcohol and sugary soft drinks too.
So often people are on blood thinning drugs, which have disturbing side effects, instead of drinking more water, breathing more fully more of the time, and adjusting their food choices. So now the medical drugs add to liver’s load, which sets you up for liver issues. Drugs of any kind always add to liver and kidney load, and add to brain deterioration, just as surely as poor diet undermines brain cell function.

Choose Brain and Heart Enhancing Foods
Cut out sugar saturated fats and trans fats. They are bad for the brain and all cell membranes in your body. The double layered membrane of cells is filled with essential fats. This cellular skin has to allow in what feeds cells and supports function and allow waste out. With the wrong kind of fat within the double membrane it becomes harder to discriminate what to allow in and what to dump.

Specific foods can boost and protect brain and cells. Include omega 3 rich foods like fish, nuts, seeds and their oils and antioxidants, the plant nutrients evident in the colour of fruit and vegetables. Fat soluble vitamins like E come from the yellow of egg yolk, and Vitamin A from avocado. Both are protective and aid skin and tissue healing. Yellow, orange, red fruit and vegetable provide fat soluble carotenoids to protect your brain and cell membranes, and the dark coloured ones like beetroot, black grapes, blue berries, provide water soluble antioxidants.

So to maintain your brain and keep your marbles in good shape: exercise, breathing, water, and nutrition, all enhance the life of the cells in your body and in your brain, keeping them healthy and productive. Even if there are various tendencies in the family you are not doomed to disease. By maintaining a healthy environment in your cells you don’t have to be a victim of your genetics nor of lifestyle diseases. You can keep your marbles in good shape in old age.
Cheers
Anna

How Body Patterns Can Program Your Thinking

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It’s not surprising our body gets out of balance regularly – because we do not use our body symmetrically. And the hidden effect is that your body patterns can program your thinking and left and right brain communication.

Each of us is either left or right handed and left or right foot dominant. This will predispose us to favour activity initiated by one arm and one leg, putting more demand on that shoulder and hip and the teams of muscles throughout the body that work with our dominant pair. Lifting, carrying, pulling, writing, kicking, digging, climbing stairs, whatever, we will tend to rely more on our dominant arm and shoulder and on our dominant leg and hip.

Even getting out of a chair, or walking to the letter box, doing the shopping, mowing the lawn, all the various activities at home or at work, we will “put our best foot forward” with greater demand on one side compared with the other. Little by little it leaves its mark.

Brain Activity
This lack of symmetrical physical activity in turn activates more of one half of our brain than the other, one of the influences that creates a dominant brain reference in our thinking as well.

To shift thoughts something as simple as using the non-dominant hand for gesturing, and putting more weight on our less dominant leg, can facilitate access to another perspective, another range of possibility in mental activity, another way of doing things. Our thinking and our body movements and posture are closely linked.

What is Ideal
There is no static ideal of body balance in life but a fluid unique way of moving for each of us that reflects our flow of energy and our ability to handle life’s events and recover from the stresses we personally experience. Stresses will register in both the tension and in the lack of tone in muscles.

If stress is not released the evidence in our muscles of further stressful events builds on each previous layer till they “weigh us down”, muscles give up under the load, till shoulders droop and the spine curves, clearly showing the burden is too much to carry. Or the reverse happens. The muscles get tighter and more rigid showing the strain of carrying on under duress. Eventually the joints become stiff and unyielding, our muscle range limited, as is our activity in life. We can look and feel old long before our chronological age says we are.

We are designed for movement, and the more varied our movements the more variety we create in out thinking and solutions to the myriad life challenges we encounter in our time. Challenge and change provide the opportunity to continually adapt, extending our emotional, mental and physical range, and provide the means of escaping the gradually increasing fixations of spine and posture, of thought and emotions. We can slow the down hill deterioration, plateau out, and then continue to increase life enhancing activity to improve health and resilience at any age.

Keep Moving
Life keeps happening and we will either rise to challenges, build knowledge, ability and strengths and deal with the challenges, or we will hunker down, shield ourselves, withdraw from the challenge, ignore it or push it away. And it will show in our general posture, our muscles, our range of movement, our attitude, thinking and problem handling capacity.

Take Charge
Take charge and be kind to your body. It is your instrument for playing your part on this planet. Regular health and body maintenance, regular attention to tone of muscles, releasing overworking tight areas and stimulating under working areas, is anti aging maintenance that brings short and long term health benefits. Maintenance can effectively rebalance tissues before stiffness becomes debilitating, before pain becomes chronic, before we become one eyed or lop sided in how we go through our experience of life.

TFH Kinesiology muscle response testing easily and readily identifies the particular emotion held in a specific muscle that is too tight and painful or too flaccid and unresponsive.

Applying TFH Kinesiology stress release techniques and balancing procedures change the energy concentration, drawing off excess energy from the over working muscles and redistributing to the under active muscles by stimulating their uptake capacity. The resulting postural changes reflect in more balanced thinking and reduced stress levels.
New body patterns can program new thinking.
Cheers
Anna

Boost Your Brain Power & Support your New Brain Cells

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Scientists are researching what you can do to boost your brain power and support your new brain cells to enable more to survive. What your new brain cells need is the same as what all the cells need, the right internal environment.

Here is what we know so far:

Physical Exercise, cheap, easy, effective:
– physical exercise boosts survival of new brain cells
– exercise increases supply of blood, oxygen, nutrients
– increases brain hormones
– also increases the specific brain-derived factor which encourages growth, communication and survival of neurons
– increases volume of grey matter for processing skills
– boosts memory
– also boosts mood
– improves verbal skills
– exercise with music is even better eg Vivaldi’s Four Seasons improved mood and verbal skills more than exercise without music
– physical exercise improves quality of sleep
– aids immune function
– mental exercise is as important as physical exercise

How much exercise do you need:
20 minutes of walking a day gives positive and measurable results in senior citizens so for the younger set I would expect a whole lot more can be achieved in the same time by younger bodies. Exercise is an essential anti-aging activity and brain booster.

I have also found rebounding, a gentle to super-active form of exercise popular in the past, improves lymphatic clearance of cellular waste products and brings results in a short time. Rebounding helps improve co-ordination, balance, concentration and the ability to learn in young children, adults and the elderly alike. Dyslexics benefitted further by saying the alphabet, reciting tables and other activities while rebounding.

Brain Food: what to eat:
– essential fatty acids, particularly omega-3, found in deep water fish, nuts and seeds. About two-thirds of your brain is composed of specialized fats. The membranes of neurons, the brain cells that communicate with each other, are composed of a thin double-layer of fatty acid molecules. Myelin, the protective sheath that covers communicating neurons is composed of 30% protein and 70% fat. Low essential fats, like omega-3s, are linked to Alzheimer, depression, schizophrenia.

– antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables protect new cells from damage, keep memory sharp and aid new learning, at any age. Can also reduce damage caused by strokes – add walnuts, blueberries, spinach.

How much to eat:
-by reducing calories by 25 to 50% in lab animals they lived longer and healthier, with improved brain function, better memory, better immune response, better coordination, resist brain deterioration associated with old age. Over eating puts a strain on the digestive function and many repercussions as a result.

Stimulants have a place:
– coffee is our most common stimulant, boosts brain arousal and alertness.
– exercise, fun, thrills, sex, success, acclaim, winning, recognition, fulfillment, all produce stimulating chemicals in the brain, including dopamine and serotonin. Too little brain stimulus can result in depression. Too much can result in jitters, anxiety and insomnia.

Brain Games
– mental exercise is as important as physical exercise
– new learning, new language, new hobbies, puzzles, reading, interactive discussions, anything that makes you think.

In the past families and children played monopoly, card games, pattern recognition games, non-verbal communication games, eye-hand coordination games, crossword puzzles of various kinds. These activities all required much communication within the brain. In our times video games have taken over from family and people-interactive games.

And it’s not just the kids that play video games. Studies show that video games can improve eye-hand coordination and dexterity, increase depth perception and pattern recognition, all of which helps surgeons make fewer mistakes in the operating room research has found.

MRI scans show the brain’s reward circuits are activated by playing video games. But it is the men who get the most kick out of video games. Male brains showed all their reward circuitry was better connected when playing video games than in women doing the same activity. And men are far more likely to feel they are addicted to video games.

The downside of kids playing video games is that they get so used to competing, wiping out others on the screen, scoring or winning, that they have lost compassion and sense of kindness to others in the real world as a result.

Music
Music keeps your brain tuned. It can reduce anxiety, aid sleep, lower blood pressure, calm the nerves, and even help premature babies gain weight. Musicians develop certain parts of their brain much more, but even if you only listen to music there are benefits too. Your brain processes the volume, pitch, timbre, melody and rhythm and can stimulate your reward centres. Not all music has equal benefits so you need to be selective.

Meditation
Meditation can increase focus and attention and increase the thickness in a number of brain areas. Brain cells usually fire at different times, however during meditation, the firing becomes synchronized. For those long experienced in meditation, their left front brain also shows spikes of brain activity. This is the area associated with positive emotions. The brain areas for body sensation and maintaining focus have more neuronal connections and an expanded blood delivery system.

Meditating regularly can alter the physical structure of the brain and may even slow brain deterioration related to aging. Meditation can help ease anxiety, reduce pain, drop high blood pressure, help asthma, aid insomnia, aleviate depression.

Your Turn
So now it’s your turn. The research is backing up what you may already know, but knowledge alone is not enough. You must take action for change to happen. Get the benefits. You boost your brain power, and support your new brain cells to integrate by including exercise, good nutrition, games, music, and meditation. Combine these by going for a walk in the bush, enjoying a nourishing picinic lunch, playing games with the shadows and sunlight, listening to bird songs and meditating by a murmuring brook. Have fun and boost your brainpower and support your new brain cells.
Cheers
Anna McRobert

Exercise Rescues Baby Brain Cells- A New Purpose For Exercise

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What comes to mind when you hear the word “exercise”?
What does exercise mean to you?
Is it: hard work, effort, have to, know I should but don’t feel like it, won’t because others say so, you can’t make me, can’t be bothered, who cares, I’m too tired, there’s no time, it’s not as important as… most of us are very good at creating a list like this.

Let me reveal my latest breakthrough. I’ve discovered a totally new connection, my new purpose for exercise, and I’m really fascinated by the turn around in my thinking and the effect it’s having on my motivation and interest in exercise. It has expanded the meaning and purpose of exercise for me. Follow the story and see what happens for you.

Science is now telling us that new brain cells are created all the time, thousands of them, but more than 50% die. Now that’s tragic. These are our brain’s offspring, our brain’s babies. And they die from sheer neglect. That’s just not acceptable to me as a mother.

All human brains give birth to thousands of brain cells in different areas, and they need to be embraced and included into their family, the brain network of that particular area, to survive. When that family network isn’t communicating, the baby is ignored, left isolated, and eventually dies. That happens in your brain and mine when we don’t use that particular brain network in our daily life.

When that brain family network is active and communicating, regularly engaged doing it’s job, than the baby cells are needed and nurtured to fill in for the brain cells that die, just like in our human family. And if the network is learning something new and expanding, more babies have a place and can be accommodated and given a job. This goes beyond just replacing the parents or grandparents. The population of the family and the whole tribe of brain cells in that location is growing and expanding their reach.

New brain cells respond to being included in the activities and communication of their family. They learn from older sibling brain cells and from parents and any grandparents still surviving, and mature into fully functional and contributing family members. Now isn’t that what we want for our own kids? And here we have the template in our brain world for how to raise our kids in the big world.

So stimulus, exercise of any kind that activates multiple connected networks, is essential to save more baby brain cells. I’m on a rescue mission. Therefore I need to exercise and stimulate my brain in a variety of ways to save babies in different areas of my brain. And so do you.

As a result at the gym today I smiled, and changed my routine. Instead of mindlessly repeating my old gym program I engaged my new purpose for exercise. I looked for new ways to exercise different parts of my body, knowing that would exercise different parts of my brain too, and save many more baby brain cells than just following habit.

It’s much easier to exercise when I’m thinking of all the good work I am doing. My exercise recues baby brain cells. Puts a whole new meaning on “charity begins at home.”
Have a go and see if you smile too.
Cheers
Anna

New Brain Cells On Demand

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While researching anti-depressant drugs Professor Perry Bartlett, of Brisbane’s University of Queensland, his team, and their co-team in Beijing, discovered that anti-depressant drugs don’t work unless, and until, new brain cells are generated. Can we generate new brain cells on demand?

Their research indicates that anti-depressant drugs typically don’t work for the first month because new brain cells need to be created for the drugs to work. Specific drug biochemistry appears to trigger cell production. When the new brain cells form, become active and are included in the circuitry, then the effect is felt as a lift of depression. So specific biochemistry stimulates production and assimilation of new brain cells and it seems making new cells is the answer to depression.

Much research is going into discovering how the brain works, how to boost your brainpower, and how to support and integrate your new brain cells.

Not so long ago medical dogma proclaimed that brain cells in adults progressively die and cannot be replaced. You were doomed to a gloomy old age with health deteriorating and no possibility of a reprieve. In more recent times scientific researchers have provided the evidence that totally negates that old dogma.

It is clear your brain can grow new cells, can rewire itself and make new connections, build whole new networks, all while running your entire body efficiently and effectively, day and night. For this massive amount of activity your brain requires constant energy supply with good blood flow to and from your brain to bring in fresh nutrients and remove waste. So what about new brain cells?

It’s not just medical drugs that stimulate new brain cell production, of course. Your brain is designed to grow new brain cells on demand, as you take on new tasks, new learning, new experiences, and as old cells die and need to be replaced. But – more that 50% of new brain cells die according to the research findings.

Now scientists are researching how to keep more new brain cells alive and active. Key elements to create an enhanced internal environment include physical exercise, brain food and antioxidants, stimulants, brain games, music, meditation.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone is a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Centre for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He says, “The brain changes with anything you do, including any thoughts you might have.”

Dr Amir Loas of Case Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland says, “Read, read, read … anything that stimulates the brain to think. Also, watch less television because your brain goes into neutral,” he said.

Your brain is very plastic, meaning able to be moulded or formed, and is shaped by the experiences you have. According to researchers Henry Markram and Jean-Vincent Le Bé the brain is in a constant mode of change, reinforcing some circuits and pruning others, “where a new experience triggers a burst of new connections between neurons, and only the fittest connections survive.” This is neuroplasticity. The message is use it or lose it.

… Our brain is designed so we can choose to keep growing in new ways all our lives, build new brain cells on demand and new networks, and uncouple and disintegrate unused or no longer needed circuitry. Thank goodness for that too. We can let go of old hurts, painful experiences so the pain is gone but the lesson remains. We can and do learn.
Cheers
Anna

Play Secret Revealed

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There are some secrets that can make all the difference in your life. And when you find a key secret it’s worth cultivating it to ease and abundantly enhance your life experiences. I recently found someone on a mission, devoted to revealing a key secret. Let me include you in what he found.

What is it that enables us to innovate, problem-solve, and be happy, smart, resilient human beings? What allows us to cultivate the skills necessary to handle changing times? Like many secrets, it’s often right before our eyes. But to see it you need to “see it” with “new eyes”.

Now, make sure you’re not looking with “old eyes” or you’ll miss it. And stop long enough to register and experience this amazing influence. Just watch young children and happy puppies and baby animals play with total enthusiasm. They have fun. They play. And in the process they prepare for life.

Dr Stuart Brown, the leading expert in his field in US explains, “play is anything but trivial.” It is a basic biological drive as integral to our health and functioning as sleep and nutrition. That means it is essential to our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

Through play we spark new insight, open new thinking and possibilities. Play joyfully weaves us together with family and friends, and without bonding through playing together we drift apart and lose connectedness. Play allows us to foster relationships that engage individual strengths and strategies into group outcomes, to form communities where all can contribute and thrive.

Play, How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul is a book by Stuart Brown, MD, founder to the National Institute for Play, with science and medicine writer Christopher Vaughan.

Stuart Brown, as well as being a medical doctor, is also a psychiatrist, clinical researcher, founder of the National Institute for Play, former clinical director at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in San Diego, and Associate professor at University of California, Dan Diego. “... The latest advances in neuroscience, biology, psychology, and social science illuminates the role of play as nature’s most advanced process for promoting brain development and social integration across species. … Even the lowest creatures on the evolutionary spectrum have a play mechanism. But humans are the biggest players of all – we are meant to play though out life.”

“Play is the single most significant factor in determining our success and happiness.” Dr Stuart Brown’s research proved that when we play we release dopamine, oxytocin and other reward neurochemicals, and those crucial for regrowth of brain cells.

Norman Doidge in his book The Brain That Changes Itself highlighted the plasticity of our brain. The more we use it the more connections we build in the brain, at any age. The more varied and unusual ways we use the brain the more connections are created. Stuart Brown’s research shows joyful experiences are crucial to the creation of synaptic connections.

Play is as integral to our health as is sleep. Play is a biological drive, opens to possibility and sparks off new insight and lines of thought. Play is the glue for relationships and releases creativity. We are designed by nature to play and flourish. Play is nature’s most advanced process for promoting brain development and social integration in all species. Humans are the biggest players of all and we are designed to play all through our lives. Play is hardwired into our brains.

Notice what happens when you take your dog to the park and let it off the leash. The exhibition of pure exuberance, speed and athleticism of a dog at play, when released from hours in confined space, be it the back yard or the back seat of the car, is a joy to see. The moment is captivating and gleeful. We laugh, our spirit lifts, tension and fatigue drop away, we breathe deeply.

Play is intensely pleasurable, energizes us and enlivens. It eases our burdens, renews our natural sense of optimism, releases stress, and opens new curiosity and interest. It shapes the brain, fosters empathy and encourages socialization. Creativity and innovation often comes out of play.

Play weaves memories and binds us together emotionally. Fulfillment is linked to our ability to enjoy and play, feel a sense of happiness, release creativity and spark solutions. Comedy, irony, daydreaming, imagination, art, music, books jokes, drama played to the max lift us out of the mundane.

Where Did Play Go?
How did we lose our sense of play over the years? When does play become unproductive? When is play relegated to unimportant? When do we consider play as a poor use of our time? When does daily life and responsibility crowd out the spontaneous outburst of pleasure through unexpected happenings? When does the fear of not enough time to do all the necessary and important things consume every thought and plan and action, till exhaustion overtakes us? Where do we find joy if we don’t play?

When your life feels hollow, routine, demanding, pressured, predictable, full of chores, or without value or meaning – add some play, fun, laughter, frivolity, joyousness, exuberance to lighten the load of responsibility, commitment or emotional darkness, to create space for creativity and insight.

The Essence of This Secret
The key secret revealed is that play makes us better people, brings us together in exuberant co-operation, and makes the world a better place for all. It’s there right before your eyes. Adjust the meaning of “play” in your life, re-tune your eyes and ears, and reconsider your beliefs and priorities.
And if you can’t update play on your own, see a Kinesiologist.
Cheers
Anna
anna@annamcrobert.com.au
PS. Science is also exploring the outcome of being “play deprived.” These are the youngsters at risk of isolation, not fitting anywhere, and violence. More on that another time.

Why Women Don’t Understand Men

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When a woman cries her man’s face either goes blank or shows panic.

“From childhood on, males learn that acting cool and hiding their fears are the unwritten laws of masculinity,” writes Louann Brizendine, MD, in her book The Male Brain. By age 13 or so, as his testosterone levels surge, looking cool becomes extra important, even essential, because then he looks confident. Boys practice keeping their emotions hidden from an early age and have trained their face muscles into a mask to hide fear from other males.

Face muscles are controlled by the brain’s emotional circuits. Researchers used electrodes on smile muscles and on scowl muscles of men and women and recorded electrical activity as volunteers looked at photos chosen for emotional content.

The scientists were surprised to discover the men, after seeing an emotional face for just one fifth of a second, so briefly that it was still unconscious, were more emotionally reactive than the women.

But then, at 2.5 seconds, well into the range of conscious processing, the men’s facial muscles became less emotionally responsive that the women’s.

The women’s facial muscles became more emotionally responsive after 2.5 seconds.

So what does this tell us? Well, scientists are suggesting that we have been in training since childhood. Men have trained themselves to automatically turn off or disguise facial emotions from boyhood to be acceptable among men. Females, whose Mirror Neuron System stays on longer, express empathy and mirror back the emotions through smiles or frowns and even exaggerate the facial expression, and are more interactive in the empathy stage.

So a blank face may be preferable or even an essential trained reflex for men amongst men, but in personal relationships with women it is easily misinterpreted as lack of interest or caring.

So going out of empathy mode into fix-it mode fast is normal and feels natural for men while building and maintaining empathy over a longer time before going into fix-it mode is normal and feels caring and natural for women.

This is estrogen and testosterone in action. When will we accept that yin is meant to be yin and yang is meant to be yang. They are not interchangeable. The opposites polarities, negative and positive, are essential to move energy in cells in the body for life to exist.
Why would we expect males and females to express emotions in the same way? That expectation is a mystery to me. How about you? What do you think?

Cheers
Anna
anna@annamcrobert.com.au