Body Brilliance

The pre-frontal cortex is that part of your brain that is involved with decision making, creativity, prioritising, leadership and people management. It does not function unless the conditions for its function are optimal. When there is too much going on, it ‘chunks’.

 When it is fatigued it is just like a muscle that gets tired and can not generate power anymore. So if you have overstrained your higher brain functions it is very similar to having done biceps curls with heavy weights, non-stop for half an hour…… you hit failure! If you have overused your prefrontal cortex’ s energy, you need to give it a rest before expecting it to function again. David Rock describes the prefrontal cortex as being like a small stage in a theatre. It is disastrous if there are too many actors on it at one time. We need to get some actors off and start again if a reasonable performance is to be given. We need to see to it that only the correct and most critical actors are on the stage at any time. The stage must not be crowded by irrelevant people. If we translate this into brain terms, it is crucial that we do not try to hold too many thoughts in our minds at the same time.

Trying to multitask, or think about two or three things at a time is disastrous. Being online and in contact all the time is also catastrophic to our brains. Every time we get interrupted we waste huge amounts of brain power trying to re-focus. When I think of the busy schedules and high demands on our attention made by society it is clear to me that we need to give our pre-frontal cortex plenty of rests and we need to clear the stage often. We also need to prioritise very wisely. This will enable us to utilise its resources carefully so as not to waste them. Tr

ying to remember things wastes precious pre-frontal cortex energy. So write down whatever is filling your head. Have a pen and paper ready to jot down ideas, thoughts or chore lists as soon as you can. Multitasking not only wastes energy, but it reduces the ability of a brain of genius intelligence to a brain with the intelligence of an eight year old, almost immediately. We have been misinformed about this and this misconception has led to many brains needing long term recharging and functioning at less than optimum levels of function.

 So my second intention is to preserve the energy of my pre-frontal cortex by doing one task at a time, to completion so it does not waste space on my ‘stage’, and to keep as few thoughts as I can in my mind at a time. I am making spring cleaning my mind a priority, finishing tasks I have started a must do, and managing my time as I choose a rule. I can’t do justice to answering my phone whenever anyone wants to talk to me, so I won’t allow myself to do it. I will answer emails when I can and I will trust that anything truly urgent will get my attention timorously.

 I hope these intentions are useful for you too. Remember the Body Brilliance philosophy is: Instead of settling for feeling ordinary, do what it takes to feel extra-ordinary! Sue

Many people consider that the change of the seasons is a dodge time for health. They think they are more likely to get sick at this time. They also think that there are bugs floating around at the moment that are really hard to get rid of. I wonder if our belief systems regarding these matters are in fact what make us sick or make us take a long time to get over being sick?

I have been watching myself this week and as always have learnt from the science laboratory my body is. I have had a few weeks of mental strain in the form of running courses, and pushing myself out of my comfort zone repeatedly and I am now somewhat sick. I am blessed to be ‘the healthiest person on the planet’ or so I repeatedly tell myself. I haven’t ever missed a day of work for illness in 20 years and have not spent a day in bed for illness since I was in junior school. You may think I am bragging, and maybe I am a bit. I just find it so interesting that I have now become a bit sick and I have been figuring out why.

 I do not hold the belief that I can get sick because of bugs flying around, because I trust my immune system totally. I constantly say: I can fight off anything. I think our bodies are being invaded constantly and we have to repeatedly detect and overpower germs and our bodies do this all day every day. I also do not think the change of seasons is too much of a factor, because even although it is stressful for the body to be cold, or to have its temperature regulation ability challenged repeatedly, it is inherently able to cope with this. Unless its adaptation capacity is overridden. In other words the body can cope with a lot, but not more and when we demand constantly we may over-demand and the system will fail.

I watched myself closely last week. I was exhausted and dying for some down time and to have no mental challenges to figure out and nothing to strain my brain over. I felt a bit sorry for myself being so overloaded. I forgot I had some choices and I felt lie I needed some TLC and nurture. Since my inner dictator was doing its usual ‘drive, drive, drive’ thing I allowed a thought to come in to combat this inner message. The thought was that I would love to just have to rest, be unable to do anything else. I felt myself getting sick within hours of this thought. I combated it with plenty of soothing self talk and self support and I got better again. Sunday I taught a physiotherapy course which was a really big deal to my mind and had to be done ‘perfectly’. I was so relieved when it was over and had gone well. I felt I needed to celebrate and relax, but then I thought of my busy week this week and of all I had put on hold to accomplish Sunday, and I felt sorry for myself again. Again I forgot I had choices. This victim mentality started off a post nasal drip again and this time I did not work so well with myself… I got sick because I felt sorry for myself for being tired and needing a rest and being ‘unable’ to take one. 

I am not saying that everyone who gets sick has ‘made’ themselves sick, but I am saying: we have choices and our body is our team mate. If we need rest and can’t see how to get it, our body will ‘help’ us. I just have seen that a rest without sickness would have been so much more fun. My inner dictator ‘thinks’ I have to be a superhero, and I can over-ride this notion if I am wise enough to. So as I get better, I wish you all health!

For all of us left behind after that amazing event called the World Cup, my question is how can we keep the up beat and euphoric feelings coursing through our veins?  I am sure you will all agree that your energy is higher when you are feeling positive. You feel more alive. For one whole month our media sold newspapers that were full of good news. And people bought them and read them with relish. Wherever you went throughout the month everyone talked about all the great and good things that were happening in our country. Let’s carry on…..

We have had a taste of how nice it is when we shine the light on the great stuff.  I do believe we have a choice of whether to go back to our old ways of discussing crime, Eskom etc or whether we continue to look at and talk about all our successes and the great stuff the tourists saw so much of. The foreign journalists have painted our picture in the foreign press as a country with ‘Ubuntu’ and warmth. If we could project our bright and beautiful side onto the world and our fellow countrymen for a whole month, why not continue to do so?

If we can go forward and focus on our brilliance and our uniqueness, we can continue to have energy and zest for living AND we can continue to surprise ourselves and the world with all we can achieve.

Close your eyes for a second and think of the crime situation and then the global economic ‘disaster’. Watch how your body changes when you think of this disheartening stuff. It is amazing how fast the urge to slump comes into play. The tension doesn’t take long to set in and your breathing patterns become shallower and more gasping in nature. Now take 3 deep relaxing sighs out and let that image go. Next, create a new image in your mind’s eye of the soccer opening ceremony or the hours just before it began, when all South Africans were wearing Bafana Bafana  shirts and feeling proudly South African and excited. Really let this feeling grow within you and feel the lightness it creates in your body. You may notice your face break into a semi smile and your chest swell. Your breathing will deepen and your body will relax. This little experiment will show you how powerful it is for you to focus on the good things instead of the less good things. It feels good and so do you!

Let’s keep the euphoria going and create a whirlpool of lightness and relaxation around ourselves!

It’s easy to change the outside of our lives, but I think it’s hard to change the inside and I think the real value for us lies in inner change. In fact I know that nothing exists on the outside that doesn’t exist on the inside first, but I think sometimes we change the cosmetics of things and then pride ourselves in changing. While our address, surname, or work title changes, little else does. I am not sure this is necessarily very valuable.

For me, I want more relaxation and still time in my life right now, so I am working towards finding the change within me that makes this possible. I have made many changes on many levels, none have really shifted this. I wonder what still needs to change within me to allow for this! I will keep you posted, if you are interested.
What do you really want to create for yourself? What needs to change within you to make this possible for you to find?

One minute USA was celebrating, the next they were fighting for a position in the quarter finals and the next they were preparing to fly home. The England team has had a similar rollercoaster ride. If we can learn one thing from these brave, committed players’ experiences in this World Cup it would be, to live in the moment fully and accept whatever comes when the next moment takes its place.

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”- D. Thompson

Some how life has become even increasingly more sedentary. Our bodies have not evolved for this yet and maybe they never will. We have remotes for our gates/ garages/ TV’s and evens our hifi’s. We have washing machines to do our washing and portable phones to ensure that we never have to run to the phone. I wonder if all this is actually good for us. Why not see how you can move more instead of less in your life?

The human body was made to move. The more we move, the better our bodies function and feel. Do some of the physical things in your life yourself. Wash your car, run up the stairs, and walk to your local shop for a change instead of driving. Watch your basic level of fitness rise as you do.

Pain is more related to how much danger you think you are actually in, not how much danger you actually are in (Lorimer Moseley)

Thought for the day: did you ever consider that pain is just an alarm your body gives you to alert you to something that may be threatening your survival. In other words, pain has nothing to do with tissue pathology, it is simply a message of threat. that’s why an ingrown toenail, which is hardly very severe, can be agonizingly sore and a bullet wound recently sustained can be relatively painless.

This doesn’t suggest you should ignore pain. On the contrary, you should listen wisely to it and understand why your brain perceives threat.