Hypnotic Impact

View web version



Healing PTSD & Emotional Distress

Thanks to the recent discoveries in a new field known as Network Neuroscience, nearly all of our beliefs about post-traumatic stress and recovery from adverse childhood experiences have been shown to be wrong, and that the road to recovery and building resilience is fairly easy if you integrate meta-awareness strategies into your personal and professional life.

Mark Waldman

10 Ways to Nurture Your Body, Mind, and Brain

Optimal health: Everybody has their lists – with the standard exercise, diet, and sleep recommendations – but from a neuroscientific perspective, the #1 most important “exercise” can be summarized in three words: “Relaxed Mindful Awareness.”

Excessive stress is perhaps the key contributor to most of our problems – upsetting the balance of key brain networks – and if we are not aware of our stress, we won’t feel the negative effects on our body, mind, and brain. Too much physical stress leads to acute and chronic pain, and too much emotional stress is at the root of many psychological and work/performance problems.

We know that physical stress can be reduced by stretching out tense muscles, but how do you relax a stressed-out brain? The answer is surprisingly simple: You need to reduce excessive activity going on in the synapses of your Imagination/Default Network. Those overstimulated neurons literally generate too much metabolic heat which disrupts the way your brain networks are supposed to function and communicate with each other. Normally, when that happens in mammals, they begin to yawn. This increases cerebral blood flow, and like the radiator water in a car – assuming you still have one! – it cools down those busy neurons. But humans suppress yawning, believing that it is rude. Some ancient religions believed you could inhale evil spirits (fortunately, sneezing would expel them!) and medieval doctors even suspected that yawning was spreading the Black Plague. Others, like Hippocrates in 400 BC, promoted yawning to release the tainted “humours” causing mental illness, and disease, which turns out to come closer to current neuroscientific evidence.

But there’s a problem: most people, when they relax and stretch or yawn, do so mindlessly, bringing little relief or benefit. We’re too busy to take 60 seconds to mindfully do anything! We forget to slow down and give our full attention to how we feel, think, and react. We need to become aware of the experience of stress and the experience of relaxation, and we also need to become aware of present-moment experiences. That’s why I recommend three mindful yawns, pausing between each one to notice the subtle shifts in your mental state, mood, and body. Do the same when you stretch: do is super-slowly, taking a full 60 seconds to roll your head, lift your shoulders, or twist your torso. The slower you go, the more aware you become, and that allows your brain to send relaxation signals to your motor cortex and cerebellum which regulate the way you move. Here is my current summary of the 10 best ways to nurture your brain: A healthy diet is essential, but if you add one minute of mindful eating with each meal, taking one super-slow bite of food and savoring it, you’ll eat less and enjoy it more!

Practice doing 3 mindful yawns throughout the day, paying attention to how each one affects your mental state and mood.
Feeling minor body pain? Move gently and super-slowly in the most pleasurable way possible, and yawn “into” the pain. It often disappears!
Practice Relaxed Mindful Awareness at work by putting a mindfulness bell app on your phone. Set it to ring 1-3 times an hour. When you hear it, pause for 10-60 seconds to do any item on this list, and do it in the most pleasurable way possible because pleasure helps heal a stressed-out brain.
Anchor yourself by focusing on a deep inner value throughout the day – it stimulates the social and spiritual circuits in your brain.
Practice positivity, even if you don’t feel like it. Put your negative thoughts on a sheet of paper and mindfully gaze at your list. Your mind will discover that your negativity is not real, just a projection about the future.
Ask your intuition, not your conscious mind, for an insight whenever you are struggling. Your self-confidence will increase and you’ll make better decisions.
Bring ¬playfulness and curiosity into your work and relationships because it stimulates the motivation networks in your brain.
Build both economic and social wealth. These, according to the United Nations, are the top two criteria for happiness!
Learn how to mindfully listen and speak to others by slowing down your speech rate by 30%.
At the end of each day, right before falling asleep, write down three things you did well that day and three things you feel grateful for. Research shows that if you do this for just one week, your self-esteem will continue to grow over the next 6 months.
And one more thing: Don’t forget to laugh and smile throughout the day, even if you don't feel like it! It’s one of the best neurochemical cocktails to boost your happiness and social connections.



Copyright © 2023 NeuroWisdom LLC, All rights reserved.

Neuroplasticity vs Synaptic Plasticity: There’s a BIG Difference!

Today there are hundreds of books and workshops promising to help you improve your life by “rewiring your brain.” But there’s a problem: There are no “wires” in the brain; it’s simply a useful metaphor to describe how neurons – through their axons and dendrites – connect and communicate with each other. Even the words “connect” and “communicate” are metaphors, making it easier for us to talk about profoundly complicated neurochemical processes. That’s how the popular expression “neurons that fire together, wire together” came about.

The quote is attributed to Donald O. Hebb, the famous researcher who sought to integrate psychology and neuroscience. Everyone associates Hebb’s Law with the expression “cells that fire together, wire together, but in fact, he never made that statement! In his book "The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory," published in 1949, Hebb discussed the relationship between neural activity and learning. He proposed that when two neurons are repeatedly and persistently activated in close temporal proximity, the synaptic connection between them is strengthened. Here’s what Hebb actually wrote:

"When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased."

The continued reactivation of that synapse is the foundation from which memory traces are formed. Repetitive learning strengthens synaptic connections and stabilizes memories, but when we learn something new, older neural connections are weakened, new ones are formed, and the older memory can be weakened or extinguished.

The expression that “cells that fire together, wire together” was first introduced by Carla Shatz in an article she wrote in 2012 (sixty-three years after Hebb!) for Scientific American, and unfortunately, it has led to many serious misinterpretations about the nature of learning, memory formation, and change. In 2023, research professors Tamar Makin and Krakauer published a new article in Scientific American – “The Brain Isn’t as Adaptable as Some Neuroscientists Claim” – to help clear up some of the confusion. They wrote:

“Rather than completely repurposing regions for new tasks, the brain is more likely to enhance or modify its preexisting architecture. This redefinition of neuroplasticity implies that the brain’s adaptability is marked not by an infinite potential for change but by a strategic and efficient use of its existing resources and capacities. While neuroplasticity is indeed a real and powerful attribute of our brain, its true nature and extent are more constrained and specific than the broad, sweeping changes that are often depicted in popular narratives …. Far from being a realm of magical transformations, the path to neuroplasticity is one of dedication, resilience and gradual progress.”

Most of the changes in our brain take place in the synapses between neurons and the molecular changes that take place within the synaptic clefts. It’s the dendritic spines and axonal tips that extend from the neuron’s body that can grow and retreat, making new synaptic connections and breaking old ones. And every time we learn something new, un-useful and unwanted memory traces begin to decay, and we can strengthen or weaken the synaptic communication bridges between neurons by focusing our attention on rewarding activities and relationships.

We’re not really changing the landscape of the brain.

What about neurogenesis? Again, popular authors and workshop leaders over-exaggerate its importance in making changes to our psychological and neurological health. As reported in a 2018 article in Nature, “neurogenesis does not continue, or is extremely rare, in the adult human.” [1]

So, what can we actually do to improve brain functioning? The newest research in the field of Network Neuroscience strongly suggests that we don’t need to “do” anything! Instead, if we learn how to simply observe, without judgment, how our brain is playing with positive and negative thoughts – the imagination processes of the Default Network – this awareness, in and of itself, of our inner speech and mind-wandering processes is all we need to do to improve the communication processes between other key networks in the brain. And when we bring our attention fully into the present moment, savoring every brief moment of curiosity, pleasure, serenity, and social playfulness, we improve the synaptic plasticity throughout every part of the brain.

Try it right now: Close your eyes, yawn and stretch, and focus your awareness on the constant flow of thoughts and feelings going on in the back of your mind. It doesn’t matter if they are positive or negative; just let these natural processes unfold and you’ll see how quickly they change and fade away. But if you try to change them, you’ll actually make them feel more real by strengthening the synaptic connections that created them! Now open your eyes and become aware of all the different shapes and colors surrounding you. As you notice the growing calmness, I want you to do one more thing: Stand up in super-slow motion, slowly bend forward and backward without causing any pain. Now mindfully walk across the room, being aware of the muscles in your legs and how your feet are moving as you take ten slow deliberate steps. Do this exercise every 20-30 minutes and you’ll quickly feel brief moments of optimal psychological health.

Here's a new mantra to share with others: Brain networks that flow together, grow together.

----SOURCE---

Sorrells, Shawn F et al. “Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults.” Nature vol. 555,7696 (2018): 377-381.

View web version



Mutual Empathic Rapport is Essential for Psychological Growth

Hi Everyone,

Research shows that, after a 6-month follow-up, people who received therapy showed the same amount of improvement as those who were put on a wait-list. Now remember: These are statistics, and statistics can never predict for a single individual – I mean you! – how much value might be gained. I’ve had therapists who have enlightened me in a single session, and I have had therapists who have traumatized me in a single session (usually by insisting that I had some problem I didn’t think I had).

But when you look at the substantial research of Norcross and many others, the #1 criterion for predicting therapeutic or coaching success is MUTUAL EMPATHIC RAPPORT, followed up by the client’s evaluation (not the therapist’s) of the amount of progress they are making toward their desired goals. This highlights the second most important quality for success: The client’s willingness to follow their own curiosity and creativity to SELF-INITIATE action for goal achievement.

I, however, was unfortunate because I was encouraged by the “experts” to stay in counseling for far longer than I wanted to. I was literally trained to look for hidden problems that I could never uncover, something that most trauma coaches and therapists tend to do, even though there is overwhelming neuroscientific research showing that trying to reconstruct a painful past event – or attempting to understand a childhood family dynamic – is one of the worst strategies to pursue.

If you’ve been following my prior posts and free eBooks, I’ve included all of the recent studies to support the fact that psychodynamic and trauma therapies create FALSE MEMORIES that become very difficult to erase. The new neuroscience research is now emphasizing the importance of “active forgetting” and creative problem-solving skills that focus on the present moment, not the past nor the future.

Let’s return for a moment to the importance of consciously building mutual empathic rapport with others, because there’s a catch: Very few therapists, coaches, or teachers, will discuss this with their clients and students because there has been nearly a hundred years of professional opinion advising therapists to not share intimate, vulnerable details about their lives. To do so would require enormous trust and friendship. But most states now make it illegal – for very good reasons, by the way – to have any relationship with clients after counseling has concluded. This guarantees the loss for what many clients consider to be the most valuable relationship in life.

There is a rather simple solution: Teach others how to form meaningful bonds with trustworthy people, in both personal and business relationships. Teach them how to mindfully observe the imaginative fears and fantasies that are constantly flowing through the brain’s Default Network. Show them how to become fully immersed in present-moment experiences. Encourage your clients to practice these neurologically enhancing skills on a daily basis, and to leave counseling as soon as possible when they feel the desire to explore their inner processes with a colleague or friend.

And don’t go digging around in the past searching for some secret reason why you are suffering, because the answer is here in the present, not the past. Savor every brief moment of serenity and increase your curiosity and playfulness with others who are also exploring this mysterious thing called life!

Mindfully Yours,

Mark

What are Memories Good For?

Hi Everyone,

One of the most important neuroscience discoveries took place in the 1990s when researchers discovered how unstable most memories are.

As Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel stated in his book In Search of Memory, “The recall of memory is a creative process [filled] with subtractions, additions, elaborations, and distortions.”” They are tiny snippets of prior learned experiences that are being used, in the present moment, to help you to do what is needed to achieve specific goals.

This has profound consequences when it comes to working with emotional distress caused by painful events, because it means that there is little value in examining our past experiences and childhood family dynamics. The recollections do not help us deal with our current problems, and the memory recall strategies used by coaches and therapists can actually create false memories that are difficult to dispel.

Nearly all of our personal, emotional, autobiographical and social memories are temporarily stored in parts of our huge Imagination/Default Network and they are used to help us solve problems that we are wrestling with in the present moment, and every time they are recalled, they are slightly changed and sometimes entirely extinguished. But ruminating on them strengthens the neural connections that are holding those creative reconstructions of the past, making those snippets of remembrances feel more real and more difficult to get rid of. In fact, the newest research shows that “active forgetting” of painful memories has more value than deliberately recalling them.

Here's what the renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux says about the impermanence of memories: “Each time you retrieve a memory you have to put it back in, because it is now a new memory … New information gets incorporated in the memory and is stored as part of the new memory, and that’s what the person remembers. The bottom line is that our memory is only as good as our last memory.”

If you haven’t read my new eBook Memory, Trauma & the Brain, download it here; it’s free HERE



Mindfully yours,
Mark Waldman

Executive MBA Faculty, Loyola Marymount University
[FREE Book] Winning The “Inner Game” of Success

I

Dyslexia: The Learning Disorder You WANT to Have!

Hi Everyone,

I taught a master’s level course called “Spirituality and the Brain” at Holmes Institute and my students are given the assignment to look up neuroscience research in peer-reviewed journals.

The task can feel overwhelming at first, especially when a student is trying to make sense of an important discovery of how meditation affects the brain. This is a typical paragraph students might need to decipher:

“Here, we examined the brain changes underlying the state-to-trait experience and training of meditation. We focused on the activity and connectivity of the default mode (DMN) and executive networks (EN) given their respective roles in internal cognition, self-regulation, and awareness. The findings presented reveal that active meditation practice deliberately engages networks related to cognitive and attentional control that effectively directs the focus of attention and curbs our usual mode of getting carried away by the endless stream of internal and external distractions. The trait effects of meditation suggest a recalibration and reconfiguration of network structure, or homeostatic plasticity (Davis, 2013; Hellyer et al., 2017), that produces in particular reductions in DMN activity and connectivity.”

If your eyes and mind glaze over, that’s normal, but for a person with dyslexia - whose brain may have trouble tying words to specific meanings – the process can be a nightmare. But the problem is not just the student; it’s the educational system that doesn’t recognize that the dyslexic brain is actually processing the information in a different and more creative way. That brain is using a different learning system that neuroscience has just begun to illuminate. If you encourage such a person to follow their intuition as they slowly and creatively discover something new and interesting, they can turn in a brilliant paper, with discoveries that the teacher had not intended to convey.

To some degree we all have dyslexic brains, and here’s an example of how it works. Go back to the paragraph above, put yourself into a state of “relaxed mindful awareness” and let your imagination play with the words and the daydream-like thoughts going on inside. Now close your eyes and ask your intuition for an insight. Maybe nothing will come to mind. Maybe you’ll discover an innate fear of big words. Or you might discern this: Meditators can alter brain activity in a way that stops them from getting lost in their worrisome imagination. But if you try to find the “right” answer, you’ll probably give yourself a migraine!

I encourage my students to let their minds wander into all kinds of daydream-like states and to simply share what intuitively comes to their mind. In a matter of a couple of weeks, nearly every single student turns in an A+ paper telling me how much fun they had when they stopped trying to make “sense” of the words – what they think the teacher wants them to learn – and let their imagination play with whatever they found interesting. They even opened the doorway for me to study the brain in a new and exciting way: Network NeuroScience. Encourage your own mind to be “dyslexic” and jump around all over the reading material and you too can have an “aha” experience that adds personal meaning to your life!

When someone asks me how to help someone with dyslexia, I give them this list of research documenting the benefits of being dyslexic. So, if you have it, keep it! It’s a “problem” that most geniuses and creative people have!

Dyslexics show superior mental reasoning, interconnected reasoning, narrative reasoning and dynamic reasoning.
They are more perceptive, and have unique memory skills
They make “big picture connections” as opposed to remembering finer details.
They have a heightened capability to identify distant and unusual connections.
They can be exceedingly more creative, producing more alternative possibilities.
They’re more talented at networking and team work.
They show greater resiliency than non-dyslexics.
And teachers with dyslexia show greater empathy and understanding!
PS: While we are on the topic of learning “disabilities,” let me dispel two urban myths:

1. There is no such thing as different learning styles. Every human brain has its own unique way of gathering and storing valuable information.

2. There’s no such thing as multiple “intelligences.” That was an idea promoted by Howard Gardner in the 1980s.

So, remember: Unless you have a severely malfunctioning brain – injury, disease, poor network functioning, autism, etc., – there’s only one cognitive learning “disability” that neuroscience has identified: dyslexia

WOOP

Developed by research psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen, WOOP stands for: wish, outcome, obstacle, plan. It's one of the most effective and proven ways to achieve any goal you genuinely desire. Her work is important because she shows, through psychological and neuroscientific research, how important visualization is. But many people make two mistakes: They think that just visualizing a goal (the vision board) will make one's wishes come true. It's the first step, but if you don't do 3 more things, your dreams will remain fantasies.

Let's practice it now. Close your eyes and yawn, stretch, and relax. Bring your attention to the experience you are having in this present moment, and when your mind feels calm and clear, ask your intuition: “What is one SIMPLE goal that I would like to accomplish today (or this week)?” Now explore the following four strategies:

1. First visualize your WISH, goal, or desire in great detail.

2. Then visualize all of the benefits – the OUTCOME – you’d get if you achieved that wish/desire/goal.

3. Next – and some people balk at this essential step - visualize all of the OBSTACLES that are stopping you from attaining that goal. After all, if you can't see the problem you can't find a solution, and some wishes are just plain unrealistic (outrageous example: you wish for a million dollars to be delivered to you tomorrow). Now you can do Step 4:

4. Create a step-by-step plan that will move you toward your goal, and write it down (it increases your success rate by 50%!).

Oettingen's research showed that you have to do WOOP in the exact order stated above. You have to deeply visualize your wish/desire/goal, taking several minutes to do so. Same with visualizing the outcome. Take your fantasy as far as you can. Then, when you visualize your obstacles, write down as many as you can envision. If the obstacles are real, and you don't have an effective plan to overcome them, Oettingen suggests you take that wish/desire off your list and pick a more realistic one.

NOTE: A small percentage of people do not visualize! It’s a neurological phenomenon but there’s nothing bad about it. Some people simply use a more abstract cognitive process to orchestrate themselves in the world!

Mark Waldman

Are Smartphones Making Us Dumber?


The smartphone is a remarkable invention. Never before have we been so connected to our friends and family. Vast stores of knowledge and answers to even the most obscure questions are instantly available with just a few swipes of our fingers. But new research shows that far from enhancing our minds, these devices are actually causing damage to our attention, memory, and ability to learn new concepts.



The problem lies in how smartphones change the way our minds allocate cognitive resources. When you concentrate intently on one specific task for a long period of time, a phenomenon informally known as being "in the zone," you devote all of your brain power to completing the task at hand. This mental state is associated with high productivity, creativity, and logical reasoning. However, when we split our attention between two different tasks at the same time, our minds are never fully focused on either one. Each task occupies a portion of our working memory, limiting the cognitive resources that can be applied.

A study in 2017 at the University of Texas at Austin used smartphones to illustrate this concept. The researchers designed the experiment to measure how the presence of a smartphone affected the subjects' scores on computer-based cognitive tests. One group was instructed to keep their phones on the table during the test, while another group kept their phones in a pocket or bag. The control group kept their phone out of reach in a different room. Even though all phones were kept on silent during the test, the group that kept their phones on the table earned the poorest test scores. The researchers concluded that our phones take up cognitive capacity when they are in close proximity to us, even when they are not being used.

While this study proves that smartphones negatively impact our cognitive abilities when they are within arm's reach, it does not indicate any lasting damage to our memory. However, scientists are beginning to understand how this recent technology is rewiring the way that our brains seek and retrieve information.

Before smartphones, if we were asked a question that we did not immediately know the answer to, we would search deep into the farthest reaches of our minds to retrieve the information. This mental activity both stimulates existing neural pathways in the brain and forges new ones, allowing for fast recall of that information in the future.

However, the advent of smartphones has allowed our minds to become lazy. Why memorize dates, names, and facts when we can shift this mental burden to our digital companion? As a result, the information sharing network of neural connections in our brains becomes underused and understimulated, negatively affecting our cognitive performance when our phones cannot provide the answers we are looking for.

For this reason, we highly recommend that you make an effort to limit your use of your smartphone. Consider keeping it on silent most of the day or only checking it at designated intervals, relying instead on your brain and your senses to provide any answers or entertainment you might desire. This small change, will provide the optimal environment for a clear and confident mind.

One of my New Year’s Eve resolutions is to commit to a daily practice of “conscious hedonism,” which means that I will deeply savor every tiny success and pleasurable experience I have throughout the day. We’ve been taught, in Western society, that seeking pleasure is bad, but neuroscience shows us that pleasure is secondary only to survival when it comes to motivating ourselves to take action and achieve goals. So I ask you: how many minutes per day are you willing to commit to being consciously hedonic? If you do so for just a few minutes – ideally every hour throughout the day – you’ll neurologically reduce depression, anxiety, and stress.

My colleague, Chris Manning (we created the first NeuroLeadership course in the world at Loyola Marymount University), wakes up each morning doing an Inner Values exercise, and then he identifies those daily goals that feel good and right and true for him. He imagines and visualizes the pleasure he’ll feel when he has accomplished those goals, and with each one he completes, he celebrates his success. This is what he calls “enlightened hedonism”. It’s the best way to get that “dopamine fix” that is so essential for stimulating the Motivation Network in your brain and for building inner and outer wealth.

Chris says, “Enlightened hedonism, for me, takes me beyond selfishness to enjoying selflessness, where my sense of pleasure demands of me that others achieve similar levels of happiness and success. It’s not enough for me to just wish others well; I want to practice social mindfulness in a way where I can effectively help others achieve the goals they desire. This is what brings me the greatest joy: To integrate each of the four pillars of wealth – motivation, decision-making, creativity, and social awareness – in a way that brings happiness and success to others in the world, as well as to myself.” This is what our book NeuroWisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness, & Success is all about.

Two NeuroTips for Enlightened Hedonism:

Mindfully and playfully observe negative thinking, worries, fears, and doubts. Notice them, evaluate them, and then turn them off – like a light switch – as you shift my attention to all the positive ways you can approach the obstacles that stand between you and your goal. Avoid negative thought patterns by substituting positive feelings and innovative ideas. Anticipate future accomplishments.
Take advantage of the power of focus by turning big problems into a series of smaller obstacles and goals. Many people allow themselves to become overwhelmed by the “big problem.” This assumes that there is one huge barrier stopping them from reaching their goal, never realizing that big problems are really made up of many separate issues. By using the power of focus, you can break apart any big problem into its smaller components. Then you can use your creative intuition to resolve each small obstacle, beginning with the easiest ones and progressing toward the more complicated ones.

Mark Waldman