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How Your Brain Can Turn Anxiety into Calmness

Jun 06, 2021
(whistle) - This program is a UCTV presentation for educational and non-commercial use only. (upbeat music) - It's a pleasure to have Marty here and a pleasure to introduce him, especially to a room full of people interested in learning about mind-body medicine. Marty Rossman has probably done more to bring integrative medicine to where he is, especially as it relates to mind-body medicine, than anyone else he can introduce you to or maybe even shake hands with. Marty was an early proponent of medical acupuncture. He was a founding member of the board of directors of American something. American Board of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, he tells me he.
how your brain can turn anxiety into calmness
He has been instrumental in developing guided imagery into the robust field it is today. He also works a lot with hypnosis, with many different techniques to help us calm down and help us get to a point of relaxation. Using hypnosis, health hypnosis, biofeedback, body work, but especially guided imagery. He is a member of the advisory board of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and I was interested to learn that he is also a member of the advisory board of the Rosenthal Center for Complementary Medicine at Columbia University in New York. I have known Marty for several years.
how your brain can turn anxiety into calmness

More Interesting Facts About,

how your brain can turn anxiety into calmness...

I have had the privilege of attending several talks he has given. I know he is a great speaker. - Well thank you very much. That was very nice of you to say. Good afternoon everyone. How many of you have ever worried about something? (Audience laughs) Has anyone here ever worried about anything? Okay, well, that's our topic tonight. And of course, everyone worries sometimes and some people worry all the time. And if you're one of those people who is worried all the time, I think you could get something very useful. I hope you get something very useful from tonight's talk.
how your brain can turn anxiety into calmness
If you only worry intermittently, I hope you still get something useful, but you probably don't need it as much. So tonight I'm calling my topic Worrying Well, and I'm still looking for a subtitle, but tonight we're calling it how to use

your

brain

to relieve

anxiety

and stress and

turn

them into more desirable things like

calmness

and confidence. I think worry gets a lot of bad press because we don't use it very well, so when I call it Worry, is it really about what worry is? How do we do it? What is the purpose of this?
how your brain can turn anxiety into calmness
Is it possible that worrying has a positive function, and it does? Worry is basically an adaptive function. It's something that allows us to go over something over and over in our mind in an attempt to solve a problem or a situation, so I think that's what's adaptive. We humans have been born with faculties in our

brain

s that, as far as we know, do not belong to any other creature on Earth, and that has allowed us to go from being a rather vulnerable prey animal on the African savannah to becoming the dominant creature. on earth. We don't have many tools to survive if you look at a human as an animal.
We are quite vulnerable. We don't run very fast. We don't have big teeth. We don't have big claws. We can swim a little but not very well. We can't fly very well. So out there, without much technology and in the African savannah, we are basically meat. And we have systems built into our system that we inherited from the development of other prey animals that lead to things like the fight-flight response, which are adaptive in some situations and maladaptive in others. But one of the things we have, one of the qualities we have developed, or one of the mental abilities and functions, is imagination.
You could actually make a strong case that imagination is one of the key things, and perhaps the key mental faculty that separates the human being from all other forms of life. Imagination allows us to remember things from the past. It allows us to project things into the future and think about what things would be like in the future if you did something this way or that way. And everything that exists on Earth that was not created by God or nature, choose, or some combination of the two. Everything else that exists, everything that humanity has created began in someone's imagination.
That's where he made his first appearance on Earth, as someone's imagination. "Ooh, we could do that. "We could make it round, it will roll. "We could chip them." They realized that two rocks colliding cause fire and discovered a way to do it. So with imagination, one could argue that, outside of God or nature, the human imagination is the most powerful force on Earth. And very few of us have ever been taught how to use it. Most of our education, especially up to higher education, is based on the use of other mental faculties, which have also made us very powerful.
The ability to analyze. The ability to calculate. Linear, logical, rational, and scientific ways of thinking have also made us very powerful because they allow us to take the things we imagine and make them real in a certain way, but a lot of it starts in the imagination. Worry is a function of the imagination. If you had no imagination, you wouldn't be worried. That's what lobotomies are all about. (Audience laughs) And that's what a lot of certain medications are about. So we used to joke at our guided imagery academy that if we could find a simple, non-toxic way to perform an imagetomy, we could solve everyone's worry and stress problems.
You just wouldn't be too worried. You wouldn't do much either. You wouldn't be creative, but you wouldn't worry if we could do that. So I think instead of taking away our imagination, what we want to do is learn to use it better, and a lot of what I'm going to share with you about Worrying Well or Worrying More Effectively has to do with how you use

your

imagination. So worry and stress overlap a lot, right? And many times we use them interchangeably. I'm going to spend a little time differentiating these things a little, but they overlap quite a bit.
And then

anxiety

also overlaps with worry and stress. They are all a little different and very interrelated. They share in many different ways. The reason this is important is because our awareness and our ability to become self-aware is potentially the best tool we have to improve our lives. And also, if we don't know how to use it, it can be something that can make our lives miserable. So I like this quote from Ashleigh Brilliant. "Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am the master of my destiny and the captain of my soul." So you are. If you want to do something with your anxiety, your stress, your way of thinking, your way of thinking, Create your life.
You are the captain, whether you like it or not. So we might as well learn to use these capabilities because there really is no

turn

ing back. I think sometimes we unconsciously try to go back with other ways of managing anxiety and stress like drinking too much or taking drugs, medication or eating too much. All the million ways we can go unconscious and try to just bury our heads in the sand and maybe it will go away, which happens a lot. . So it's not that it's not a good short-term strategy, but as a total life plan, it's a little lacking, okay?
It won't get you where you want to go. So what do worry, stress and anxiety look like? So worry is kind of, that's how I think about it, and you can argue with me. I'm not sure any of this is really true. I'm kind of throwing it out there. I'm writing a book about it. So if I'm wrong, tell me before I write the book. But it seems to me that worry is a type of thinking, okay? And our friend Ziggy says, "The products of my imagination haunt me." That's the most common use of imagination: just letting your imagination go to worst-case scenarios, getting entranced or hypnotized by your worries, and letting your imagination scare you.
Because I think that, in a sense, the most common unconscious use of the imagination is to drive ourselves crazy or worry a lot. So the bar is pretty low. That's the good news. We can learn to use it more purposefully and do better than that. So worry is a type of thinking. It is a type of repetitive thinking. Sometimes it is a reflection, usually it is worrying. It often has to do with things that are in the past or in the future, okay? It's the opposite of being here now. It is the opposite of the current center.
That doesn't mean it's bad, and that doesn't mean it doesn't have a function. But we are in our brain, we are thinking about something. We go over it again and again. And again, I think that's because of the adaptive function of worry, I always assume that something is there, it's an attempt by nature or life to solve a problem or give us an advantage. So if you think about it, what could be the advantage of being able to mentally go over a problem over and over again? Well, I think it's like you have a big, tangled ball of wool or thread.
And you're trying to untangle it and you find a place that's loose and you pull on it for a while and it loosens a little bit, and then it gets stuck again so you turn the ball over and you find another loose place and you free it. a few more things, you turn it over again and release more things. And if you keep doing that, turning it over and over, looking at it from different angles, finding the loose places, finding where things are knotted. Sorry, if you persevere, most of the time you'll untangle that whole thing and then move on to the next mess you find, okay?
But you're likely to untangle it, and I think that's the function of worry. It allows us, it makes our concerns transportable so that you can think about it at any time, and that can be an advantage or a disadvantage. And I think that depends on whether you're using your brain or being controlled by it. That your brain is an incredible organ. Your mind has something to do with it. And at least in certain circumstances, your mind can learn to use your brain in better ways. That's what it's about. So it's very easy for this adaptive function of problem-solving and thinking things through to become a habit or to become repetitive and reflexive and become its own thing.
And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that worry can serve a kind of magical function. Worry has a magical and unconscious function. Actually, a couple of them. One is that most of the things you worry about never happen. Most of the things you worry about never happen, and if so, that's an old rubric we've all heard and I found myself wondering, "Well, is that really true?" So I've been teaching this for six weeks, this Caring for Wellness class. I've taught it several times and at the beginning of class I asked people to list all the things they repeatedly worry about.
And then some time later we reached out to the first class, which was about nine months ago, to see how many of those things happened and not many of them. So I don't know if anyone has studied that before, but you can do it yourself by writing them down and then revising them in about six months or a year. Now, the interesting thing about that, the way the brain works is that at some unconscious level of the brain, the brain might conclude that something didn't happen because you worried, right? (Audience laughs) That's the show, and there's an old story about a woman walking through her house.
She is an old woman. She walks by her house every day. Mumbling, walking around her house. She walks around her house all day until she forms a curve around her house, reaching about halfway up her thighs. And finally one of her neighbors can't take it anymore. He walks over and says, "I hope you don't mind if I ask you why you walk around your house all day, every day." And she says, "Well, I'm keeping her safe from the tigers." " And he says, "Well, we're in Indiana." "There are no tigers here." And she says, "See?" (audience laughs) (laughter) So we might be rewarded for caring because many of those things don't happen, and at some level of primitive, magical, unconscious thought, those two things could possibly be connected.
The other thing that has been researched is that sometimes worrying about things distracts us from the things that really matter. They bother us. So worrying about little things and to-do lists and so on, always complaining and worrying and always having something to worry about and worry about actually distracts us from something that could be deeper and more emotional and actually more difficult. for us to take it. So, we know that that is a function. In fact, that has been studied. So that worry prevents deeper, richer, more emotionally charged thinking, which is normally presented in images and in quiet moments.
So if there are a lot of feelings that are difficult to process or to feel or that are unprocessed and that we have never dealt with, in a sense it is helpful to keep the mind very busy. Because if you stay silent, your emotions will arise. And ultimately, we think that's a good thing. Emotions are natural, they are healthy. They have a wisdom that most of us have not beeneducated. But it can be difficult to feel them. No one, very few people find it very difficult to feel joy. Although many times we are blocked from feeling joy because we cannot or do not want to feel other emotions.
When you start to feel an emotion, others say, "Hey, the door is open." And they may want to get closer and be felt. So there are functions of worry, and again, some of them are unconscious, magical, and maybe not the best for us over time. Others, adaptive, decisive, review the problem. So it's up to us to learn what we're doing with the worry, and that gives us options in terms of what we're doing with the rest, okay? So worry is a function of thinking, while anxiety is an uncomfortable feeling. It is usually in the chest or upper abdomen.
Not always, but more often it occurs in this area or in this area. It is an uncomfortable feeling of fear, apprehension or dread. Fear is that feeling: "My God, something bad is going to happen, I know it. "Something bad is going to happen." You don't know. You may be attached to something or you may be free. Floating and not attached to anything. And the Anxiety often comes with physical symptoms such as tachycardia, chest pain, sweating, shortness of breath. There is often a feeling with anxiety if the anxiety is very strong, such as panic attacks. There is often a very characteristic feeling that comes with panic attacks and the feeling is of imminent death.
People with panic attacks feel like they are about to die. And it is common, again, since the symptoms are usually in the chest or abdomen, we see these things in medicine all the time. And you could really make a case that one of the primary roles of a primary care doctor is to see if there's more to it than just anxiety, because anxiety can cause so many symptoms in so many body systems and make us afraid, a feeling that something bad is going to happen. Anxiety is a function of a part of the brain that is the emotional part of the brain.
It's called the limbic system or emotional brain, so worry belongs to the thinking part of the brain. And there is a lot of interaction, but the worry belongs to the thinking part of the brain, the cortex. Anxiety usually comes from the limbic or emotional part of the brain, and I'll show you what it looks like. And stress, which is the third leg of our uncomfortable stool here, is actually a physical response to a threat, real or imagined. And in modern life, most threats are perceived or imagined, but they are not. Someone has probably told you the story of the saber-toothed tiger and the fight or flight response, etc.
That this was a response that we believe was designed by nature. So when you come out of the cave and you run into a big predator like a saber-toothed tiger, part of your nervous system fires up and you get a big shot of adrenaline and your heart beats faster and your blood clots faster and your Blood pressure increases and your muscles become super charged and you are ready to run, or run the fastest two miles you have ever run in your life or fight to the death against the tiger. And then he charges you super. It's the kind of thing we hear when a mother moves a car to save the baby.
The fact is that this response can explode in the face of threats that are not predators. That they are not, can flare up in response to stock market movements, to economic changes, to thinking about getting older, to thinking about whether you can meet your responsibilities. All kinds of things, and all kinds of things that, unless you know where the off button is on your TV, radio or computer, you can literally pump into your brain 24/7 if you want to. you stay awake All the bad news about everything bad that has happened to someone in the world, or if it's a day with no news, what could happen, okay?
Like the H1N1 flu, because it's not terrible, it doesn't seem like a terribly dangerous flu right now, but it could become really dangerous. And that's what has everyone scared and everyone scared and lining up. What could happen, then. And yes, there is a balance between, again, being able to predict the future and take steps to prevent things from happening that don't need to happen, and freaking out for months over something that will probably never happen. It is a yin-yang type relationship. So stress is, the important thing here is that stress is a physical response. They are not things that happen to you.
It is a physical response that your body has to survive short-term stress. And if you survive that short-term stress like fighting like the saber-toothed tiger, you either kill it or run away from it. And run as fast as you can, climb the highest tree you can. You've burned off all these stress chemicals, and when the tiger leaves, you limp back to the cave and breathe a big sigh of relief and tell everyone how you killed the tiger or escaped from the tiger. And your body rested, compensated, recharged, and replaced all the chemicals it used during that intense 20-30 minute fight.
Or the tiger has eaten you and you no longer have stress. (Audience laughs) But one way or another, it's all over in about 20 or 30 minutes. (audience laughing) Okay? So there aren't any of these years of stress that happen if you're a good worrier, where you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is, "Oh my God, what's going to happen with this?" be able to do this? "Will I be able to overcome that?" And so on and so on. And of course, the really good worriers don't just do it during the day. You are also awake at night because you can't sleep, right?
And then it's taking away your resilience, and it becomes a real vicious, negative cycle. Well, let's review. Worry is a type of circular and repetitive thinking. Anxiety is an uncomfortable feeling of fear or dread. Stress is a physical response that prepares you to face challenges and that is why it is interesting to observe it. This is kind of an outdated model of the brain. It's called the Triune Brain, but it's good enough for government work. We can work with this model, okay? This is what is called the cortical brain or neocortex. The gray matter, the big, wrinkled brain that we are so proud of and that allows us to speak, add, calculate, reason, etc., etc.
And imagine and do all these things that, as far as we know, no other creature on Earth does, and that's really the most adaptive thing that has helped us survive and dominate. Further down, limbic system, midbrain, okay. The basic brain, we call it the reptilian brain. That's the brain we share with lizards, reptiles and amphibians. That is the oldest part of the brain. That part of the brain that is basically concerned with survival. It basically classifies things into two or three categories. "Can I eat this? "Can it eat me? "Can I mate with him?" That's basically what you're worried about, okay? (Audience laughs) Categorize all the information you receive into those three things, okay?
And act like this. Act thoughtfully and instantly. Just like if you meet a lizard on the road and approach it, it will leave like this. It doesn't come in. He doesn't do anything like Woody Allen. "Should I move? "Shouldn't I move? "Would it be better for me? "Is this dangerous? "Isn't it dangerous? "How dangerous is it?" It doesn't do any of that, it just goes away, okay? If there's any indication that there's a threat, it triggers the stress response and goes away. The thing is, "This It evolved evolutionarily from the bottom up, okay? This was, this part of the brain developed first.
And then as animals developed, the limbic system pretty much developed in mammals and other warm, furry creatures, which characteristically have social relationships. And for mammals, for most mammals, they don't. All mammals, social relationships like lion packs and wolf packs and families of people and things like that have adaptive value. We do better when we are connected to groups. We have more Strength. We have more ability to solve problems. We have emotional support. We are social creatures, and our social positions mean a lot to us. And all that emotional processing happens primarily in this limbic system, and then, above it, the big, intelligent, intellectual brain.
Each layer added new possibilities and new complexity to our ability to understand our world and navigate it. And part of the problem when we look at this whole thing is that the new kid is very fascinated with himself, okay? The thinking brain thinks that nothing was important before he appeared. And I saw it somewhat deliberately. It could be her too, but it's a kind of, not that there aren't tremendously brilliant and intellectual women, but it's a kind of thought analysis, logic, that kind of thinking on a yin-yang scale that we normally characterize as kind of of a masculine thought.
It's not that it doesn't also belong to women. While the feeling, the intuitive, tends to be more receptive, softer. It has its own logic, but it's not the same as the logic of mathematics and science, okay? So this brain is very good, especially in the part of the brain, the part suitable for verbal and mathematical skills, which is normally in the left hemisphere of the brain. And there is some variation, but it usually occurs in the left brain, which is called the dominant hemisphere. Speaking ability, mathematical ability, etc. While on the right side of the brain, in the same area, there are areas of the brain that have to do with body image, with emotional recognition and facial expressions, tone of voice and those types of skills.
So everyone has their place. I mean, logical skills have to do with building buildings like this and doing MRIs and doing the kind of amazing science that happens in a university environment like UCSF and looking through electron microscopes and doing chemical analysis. And these are tremendous feats, don't get me wrong. They are completely useless in a relationship, okay? It doesn't matter how many Nobel Prizes you have. You may not be able to maintain a marriage. It would be if that was the only kind of intelligence you had, right? And you may not be able to maintain good relationships with people.
Whereas someone who emotionally, and in terms of social networks, understanding, compassion and empathy, may have a different type of intelligence, as well as an intellectual type of intelligence. So my point is that these are different types of intelligences that are useful in different situations. What has happened since the advent of the age of reason and the advent of the discovery of the immense power of our intellectual capacities, I believe, has been a devaluation and ignorance of the earlier type of intelligence that has to do with our relationships with each other and with other living beings and with our environment.
And I think a big part of the crisis that we're seeing is that we're trying to get back to that and take ownership of those relationships while maintaining our ability to be technically creative and help solve those problems in that way. I think these have been around for much longer. This guy is really fascinated with himself and sometimes thinks he's the only game in town. So the reason we used to say, when we talk about the left and right hemispheres, and I don't want to go into it too much tonight, is the reason the left hemisphere is called the dominant hemisphere...
Can anyone guess? ? It dominates, but the main reason it is called the dominant hemisphere is that it is the one that names things. It is the verbal hemisphere. It's what makes people think, "I'm the dominant hemisphere" and you're the subdominant hemisphere. "I am the greater hemisphere, you are the lesser hemisphere." And it's kind of a joke, but I think it's also true, and we've appreciated that. Think about your education. How many hours of emotional education did you receive? How many hours of education on using your imagination did you receive? Or your intuition? So your education, and I'm not saying it was, hopefully, at least when I went to school, was reading, writing, arithmetic.
It was those left-brain logical and analytical skills. Tremendously useful, but not for everyone. And I think we need much more educational experience with this other type of intelligence. Learn to communicate with it, and that's why in a moment I'll talk about imagery, which is your coding language in the sense of this more emotional, intuitive brain. So here's kind of an image of a real brain cut in half like this. And I don't know how well you can see this, but there is the wrinkled cortex, the neocortex. Go all the way around. And then at the center, this area is more or less the limbic or emotional brain.
And you can see that there is a survival, reflective, reptilian brain. And you can see that there are many connections between the two, so this brain could send messages to this brain and create an emotional reaction, which would send messages to this part of the brain and send them to the body and vice versa. Like for this guy. So this guy is not having a good day. He's having an angry reaction, and without going through all these things, just if you want to study this, you can, but something didn't meet his expectations, okay? That's where most of it comes from.Of anger.
She had an expectation. Something wasn't up to par. She sent some kind of message of danger or threat to this emotional brain. It tells your lower brain to prepare for a fight, and this thing sends, through all the cranial nerves and spinal cord, etc., messages to every organ in your body and your physiology changes very dramatically. When you're angry, when you're scared, when you're sad, when you're happy, when you're calm, you're physiologically different than, okay. There are a lot of connections and this is basically to show that yes, there is a real wiring diagram and a real chemical messaging system.
So anxiety, stress and worry are interactive, they are bidirectional. If you tend to be anxious, that emotional brain will emit more "Be careful" messages. You may not know what you are looking for, but you will be more alert. It will raise the, it will send more messages to the cortex so that it is on guard against problems. And then the cortex will be able to imagine all the problems that could be out there, and it will send messages back and they will be able to enter into a real sort of reverberant circuit. All of these parts of the brain are chemically sensitive, and of course in medicine, we typically try to chemically manipulate these things if someone has an actual anxiety disorder.
We are not talking about anxiety disorders where the anxiety level simply increases despite what is thought here. But we try to manipulate that with medications. Those of us who have studied nutritional medicine know that there are molecules of natural origin. That there are molecules in our foods that can be used as nutraceuticals to modify how active or regulated the nervous system is, so we try to do that through more natural molecules, but the other thing we need to know about this is that they are also sensitive to thought. That thoughts become chemicals at a certain level and those chemicals stimulate the physical mechanisms that underlie our reactions, then.
And that will be our focus tonight, to think. For any of you who have any doubt that the mind and body are truly connected and create physiology, briefly, this is biofeedback data. And to simplify it, this is muscle tension. This is an electrical response in the skin. This is the temperature of your fingertips, which is a sign of stress or relaxation. This nice, uniform white line is breathing. So this guy is sitting in a biofeedback therapist's office with a bunch of sensors attached to his muscles and fingers to measure how his circulation responds to stress. And he has a belt around his chest, and he breathes nicely around his abdomen, this is actually his abdomen.
And breathe nice and normally, even. He's just sitting there relaxing. Not much going on, then. You won't be able to read all of this. He just watches what happens here. So he's a boy. This is a real patient who has a phobia of driving over bridges and lives here. (audience laughs) he's fine. Bad combination, right? He is sitting and going to the biofeedback therapist. Here he is just sitting relaxing. The biofeedback therapist then asks him to think, to imagine himself approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. And all this is going in the same direction. There is an immediate fight or flight response.
He simply gets distracted by imagining himself driving across the bridge. You can see it better here, what happens to his breathing. He just goes to the pod. It's just very superficial, very irregular. He stops breathing towards his abdomen. His skin temperature was actually backwards. He should be decreasing. His muscle tension increases. He is physiologically prepared to defend his life by imagining himself going to the bridge. Now if he can learn to control his breathing again and his therapist can guide him to think about other things that are more relaxing. They usually break it down. "Just think about walking down the stairs "and seeing your car keys." In a person who has developed a phobia, that would be enough to stimulate a big reaction.
Now, if the person can learn to breathe more deeply and induce a relaxation response, which most people can, as he imagines that, return to the physiology of calm. By the time he gets to the place where he can actually imagine driving across the bridge and staying calm, he will be able to cross that bridge. It could take months to get to that. There's a lot of practice here, but it's a good example of a mind-body connection and how much we respond just by thinking about things. So there's a lot of, how many have heard the term neuroplasticity?
Has it been used? talked about that here? So it doesn't mean that your brain is made of plastic. It means that your brain is changeable, and lately there has been a lot of literature about how changeable the adult human brain is. Very recently, the maxim was that we have an adult brain, that's all. Your cells die, but that's it. And you can't teach an old dog new tricks and all that kind of stuff. And now we know how many of you have read this book by Norman Doidge, "The Brain That Changes Itself." It is an amazing book about brain science.
A couple of, for example, there are researchers who have now developed techniques, sending and taking people who have been blind from birth. Connect a small video camera to an electrical device that makes a drawing on their backs by pushing them. Some kind of thing that gives them multiple jabs and gives them an image on their back, and they start to see. Well, they can see so they can walk. Now they have it where a little video camera and a glass go to a little wafer on the tongue that sends out little electrical signals. And they start and they can see.
Probably not like most of us, who can see naturally and normally, but they can see. They can walk around the room and not bump into objects and stuff, okay? And what happens over time, what they found was, in these people, that by looking at a device called fMRI, which can show us what parts of the brain are active while people are thinking, it was the part of the brain where the cortex occipital that processes visual information, which took all this data from your back or your tongue and started putting images together. Then the brain takes this data and puts images together because that's what it does.
Normally you get the information from the eye, but if we can get the information another way, it can create new pathways that create these abilities. It is not surprising? So, part of Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA, his research has been done with people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which has traditionally been a very difficult condition to treat, and he has found very structured and repetitive exercises, in which fortunately people obsessive-compulsive compulsive are very good. . (laughs) (audience laughing) By focusing your mind in a certain way, you can literally change, not only your behavioral patterns, but your brains change after a decent period of time.
We're talking months of practice so you can install new wiring, plus change your mind. You can change your mind in a nanosecond, but it seems to take weeks or months to change your brain. But when you change your brain, you now have a new default position installed and you don't have to be the same as before. Louann Brizendine, professor of psychiatry here at UCSF, wrote this, how many have read this book, "The Female Brain?" If you've never read another book in your life, and if you're a man or a woman (audience laughs), you should read this book.
This is an amazing book. A truly amazing book about the brain and how it is organized and the different abilities that exist. Both genders have similar capabilities, but it's a bit of a digression, but it was tremendously helpful for me to learn from this book that all fetuses as they grow in the womb are female, at first they are male. And at eight weeks, yes, they are all women. They are all women. At eight weeks, the fetus with the Y chromosome receives a dose of testosterone, and do you know what that testosterone does to the brain?
You are going to love this. (Audience laughs) It explains a lot of things. (Audience laughs) It kills 80% of the neurons in the male brain that process emotional communication. (Audience laughs) This is apparently brain science. And when it hits you again when you are 14 or 15 years old, I don't know how many of you remember being 14 or 15 years old, or if you have a 14 or 15 year old son who sits like that at the table and looks like a jerk and spends the whole day time in his room and is barely human, and he was a bright and loving child.
He has testosterone poisoning, which again, seriously (audience laughs), is again killing neurons in his brain that have to do with emotional communication. And increasing the parts of your brain that have to do with sexuality and aggression, okay? While the woman's brain still maintains this large part, approximately four to five times more brain area dedicated to emotional communication. To talk about feeling emotional nuances. That's why, in general, you ladies are much better at it than us and like to talk to each other about all those things. You like to talk to us about it. You don't understand why we don't understand it.
Well, this would be so, and it is no offense. I need a better archetype, but this would be like my dog, who has 20,000 times more olfactory neurons in his nose than I do. This would be like my dog ​​asking me, "Why don't you smell that Jake was here before?" I'm smelling his book. "Why not? I'm living in a world of smells. "The smell is all around us." It's a world of smells for the dog, right? I don't smell any of that. I don't hear any of that. high-pitched sounds because your brain is tuned differently, so this has saved my marriage. (Audience laughs) This discovery.
And when you wonder, and when you guys, these are all overgeneralizations and I'm exaggerating. a little bit, but it's Your guy may not be able to say what you're feeling as easily as you can say what he feels. It's a different world. He just may not, that's just how it is, and this is what guys always tell him. to the other. "Why are you angry? (Audience laughs) "I don't understand. "Why is she angry? "I invited her to lunch on Tuesday. "She got mad at me. "I do not know why". So one mystery isn't exactly solved, but brains are organized differently.
It's really fascinating. That's a great read. Alright, I'm going to move on before they drug me here. The brain changes throughout life and this is the basis of my interest in thinking about how we think. Thinking about how we care. That if the blind can learn to see, then the anxious should be able to learn to relax. I think it's much easier to learn to relax than to see when you've never seen it before. I may be wrong, but this is the heart of it all. If our brain is capable of that type of learning, what should we do to teach it?
And this is a great term that comes from Jeffrey Schwartz's self-directed neuroplasticity, which is fascinating because you're using your own mind to change your own brain. Really an interesting concept. Like one of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons that deals with this, this is the ultimate self-help technique. And the kids here are reading these books, like "Do It By Instinct" and "Dare To Be Nocturnal." (Audience laughs) "Predator-prey relationships." And the best, of course, is "How to Avoid Natural Selection," which is (mumbles). (Audience laughs) So, ultimately, this is our best self-care tool. So let's talk about how we can think about this, and this is how I think about it now.
I'm thinking there are good worries and bad worries. And by this I mean that a good worry is a functional worry. It is a concern that tries to solve a problem and that has some potential to solve it. And that, and if we separate our worries into good and bad or useless, okay, we can treat each of them in a different way. We can use our brain in a different way. A good worry is, "I'm worried about this project." "I'm worried about where to go to school." "I'm worried about whether I'll be able to "afford my child's education." Real things to worry about.
It's not that there's a lack of real things to worry about, but things that, if you ask yourself, "Am I likely to be able to do anything about it?" That you would say yes or maybe? Unlike when you write down the things that worry you, a lot of times you find out, you look at things and you say, "Well, I can't do much about that, '2012.'" "Wow, I worry that the world will end in 2012." What are you going to do about it? Well, is there anything you can probably do about it? You might want to put that on your worry list, okay?
And just enjoy the movie as if it were a big roller coaster. Good worry anticipates and solves problems. Bad worry, circular, habitual, magical. It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't lead to solutions, it scares you. In a sense, it starts to become a kind of autosuggestion, right? Because you're thinking about this all the time, you're scaring yourself. You're sending out those fear pathways and that makes it harder to use your brain when you're feeling like that. So how many of you are familiar with theSerenity Prayer? How many of you have heard of it before? Ok, now I want to ask how many of you are in 12 step programs? (Audience laughs) 12-step programs adopted the Serenity Prayer.
The Serenity Prayer probably dates back to Roman times, and then in modern times it was attributed to a theologian in World War II, but 12-step programs have adopted it. It is a brilliant prayerful thought. If you don't like prayer, just take away the word of God, okay? But the Serenity Prayer says, "God," or whatever, "grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," the courage to change the things I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference. So if we use the Serenity Prayer as a kind of skeleton for our Worrying practice, we want to think about separating the things that worry us about things that you can change, things that you probably can't change.
And then, if there are any left some things that you're not sure about and you need the wisdom to know the difference, I'll at least talk to you about ways that you can use images to help you with all three of those things. So the first question is if you're not sure about something and you need more wisdom, how do you get more wisdom? Besides living another 30 or 40 years, okay? By which I mean it's not that useful when you have an immediate problem. So there are ways, ordinary ways to access more wisdom. Talk to people you think are wise.
If you have wise friends, if you have wise teachers, try to talk to you and you can share your problem, listen to them, consider what they say. That is a good source of wisdom. Does this mean what would Jesus, Buddha, the Dalai Lama or Yoda do? (Audience laughs) So if you don't have access to a wise friend or teacher, this is a type of visualization technique. Think about what someone you imagine to be genuinely wise would say, what would they say in that situation? Remember Hillary Clinton got all kinds of criticism from people when she was First Lady because she said she was in a circumstance where she wasn't sure what to do and she thought a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt and what Eleanor Roosevelt would have done in that situation and Of course, all the crackpots rose up against her. "She likes spiritualism," and so on.
She was conjuring the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was imagining what a wise and ethical role model would do in that situation. It is something perfectly natural and very intelligent. What would someone with class, wisdom, caring and morals do in this situation? And if you take it a step further and do it with a guided visualization where you really relax, you go into a meditative or relaxed state, just relaxed, and you sort of daydream that you're walking in the garden with Eleanor Roosevelt, and you told her. what was happening and you imagined her responding to you.
That's not creepy. As long as you know that she is not really Eleanor Roosevelt, or if she is, that she is, you are not identifying with her. You're not the person in the asylum who thinks he's Jesus, but you can imagine what Jesus would say. What Jesus would do, if Jesus is important and meaningful to you. Or what the Dalai Lama would do or what your wise grandmother would do, or what your wise grandmother would do if you had a wise grandmother, right? Then you begin to access, what would it be like if I approached this from a wise place and you took the time to calm down and to go deeper within yourself?
And that's what we do with an image that we sometimes call an image of inner wisdom or inner advisor, inner guide, inner ally, whatever inner. You can have your higher power, guardian angel. People have called this by different names throughout history, and some people feel, "Well, you're summoning a spirit." And other people think, "It's just a way to get to the part of my brain that has this wisdom." Because there is a part of all of us that has a lot of wisdom. Do you know when it comes out? comes out when your friend is in trouble.
When your friend comes to you asking for advice because he can't understand it, right? And have you ever noticed how easy it is to give advice to your friends? Good advice, generally. And if it's something serious, you take the time to think about it. You don't just give them a simplistic answer. You take some time and think about it. You go as deep inside yourself as you can and give them that. Wise advice. The thing is, it's probably easier for you to come to your wisdom than to your friend if your friend is really scared. Because when we are scared, when we are anxious, when we are worried, there is a psychological phenomenon called Regression.
We tend to go backwards. We tend to feel that we are too small, that we are too weak, that we don't have the resources, that we don't know what to do. We wish someone bigger, wiser, and stronger were there to tell us what to do. And we feel more childish and that blocks our access to our own wisdom. And that is why take the time to go do a relaxation practice, relax your body, change your mind, imagine that you are going to a beautiful, calm and safe place, to get out of that cycle of fear. You imagine, or invite an image, of someone or something that is wise and loving and cares about you, whether it is someone or something you have met or something you just made up.
Just imagine, imagine what he would say to you, show you, or do with you, and it is quite remarkable what can come from a meditation like this. Does that make sense to people? And then it's easier to do that for your friend because as much as you love him, you probably won't be as scared as he is if it's a serious situation. We see this all the time. The most common place I see this in my practice is with people who have just been diagnosed with cancer and are shocked and scared like most people. And in the meantime, they go to all these different doctors and oncologists and try to become an oncologist in two weeks, learn the whole field of oncology, and figure out what the best fit is.
While emotionally they feel like a three year old child. So, it's very difficult for them to make decisions that way. These types of techniques, if started early and help them connect on a deep enough level that a scared child can really make a difference in terms of making good decisions. So sometimes they give in, your internal advisor will say something like this. "The secret to living without frustration and worry" is to avoid getting personally involved in your own life. This is definitely a good treatment for worry, okay? But usually, and that's not bad advice. That's how I think that this kind of thing works.
So if we go through this process of thinking about worries, I actually have people in class write them down and then go through them and separate them. I mean, it sounds mechanical. It's just using our ordinary intelligence "Separate them into three columns. Things you think you could change if you wanted to, things you think you couldn't change if you wanted to, and things you're not sure about. And people rarely do this, so we carry it around in our heads." Just writing it down is often very helpful for people to figure it out. And then where we want to get to is down here, whether it's something that you can't change, basically what you want to do is get to a place where O come to some kind of acceptance, some kind of coming to terms.
You either turn it into an intention or a prayer. In other words, you are worried about something. That something is going to happen, but it's not something you can physically do about. It's interesting to see what happens if you take it, turn it around, and put it into a positive visualization of what you would prefer to happen, okay? So I'll skip the whole argument here about whether or not that has a physical effect and the secret. If we simply make something happen by changing our intention, and sometimes it seems like we do and sometimes we don't.
But what happens when people, in other words, a friend is diagnosed with cancer and you're overwhelmed with worry because you're just worried that she's going to die? Or get sick or go through something horrible because you care about your friend. That's a typically normal reaction. But you find yourself losing sleep and you're thinking and obsessing about it and so on. Well, and there's nothing else you can do. You're bringing him food and you're a source of support and so on, but you personally won't be able to cure that cancer, okay? But now you start saying, "Okay, instead of constantly imagining 'what I don't want to happen,' I'm going to think about what I would rather have happen," so I'll start imagining that she gets great treatment "and that her cancer responds "and that she overcomes that treatment" and survives and comes out an "even stronger and healthier person." "That if it were up to me, if it were God, that's what would happen." And I don't know if that will make any difference But that's where I'm going to put my energy, instead of putting my energy here.
And whether that changes the outcome or not is way beyond me, but what it does is that when people start focusing on that image, they become less anxious. You become less anxious because you feel like, 'I'm doing what I can do,' and I'm putting my energy into what I want to happen." Makes sense? And there are many principles of suggestion at work there. There are a couple of analogies I use for people. One is that I am not a skier. A mountain biker and I were skiing. I don't know how many of you there are, but you can imagine yourself being skiers.
So imagine you are at the top of a very steep and challenging ski slope. What you want to do when you're at the top, before you start, before you push yourself, is check everything out. You want to see, "Hey, there's a big rock over here. "I don't want to hit it, hit that. "There are big trees around here. "I don't want to hit them." So what you want to do, and any skier will tell you, you want to see what line is that takes you through those things safely. And once you start skiing and you're going fast or you're cycling downhill or anything else like that, what you need to focus on is where you want to go, not where you don't want to go, because if you focus on that rock, you're going to crash into it.
Because That's how your body-mind is made up. It tends to go where you look. The other example I use for people is that if you want to hit a bullseye on a bullseye, it helps if you look at it, okay? If you look at it, You're not guaranteed to get it right, but you're much more likely to get it right than if you close your eyes or if your attention is all over the place. And if you keep looking at it, even if you keep missing, your entire nervous system is programmed to recruit resources and control your body so that you get closer and closer to it and hit it more and more frequently.
So it's about setting goals, focusing your intention on what you want to happen. Makes sense? Without doing that, the other day I was talking to a psychiatrist friend of mine about this and he said to me, "I think you're talking about intention deficit disorder." (Audience laughs) Because a lot of this comes down to how much control we can have over where we put our attention. So in this case we put our attention on, if you are a religious person and you have a way of praying, then you pray for the outcome that you want. If you are not a religious person, if you don't pray, visualize it or try it.
You say, "If it's up to me," I'm worried my friend will succumb. "I don't want that to happen." "But the way I'm going to put my energy into her getting better, into imagining her getting better." And at least she will help you. It will help reduce your anxiety level. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. So the other thing is, on the other hand, if there's something you can change, there's a couple of processes to do it. One of the questions is that sometimes people don't act on things they can change because they feel like they don't have enough creativity.
They have not been able to solve any problem. They don't have the guts or courage to act on it. They don't have the assertiveness. They don't have the confidence. So imagery, and I hope to share with you an image that you can experience with yourself, is a fantastic way to access and develop these kinds of personal qualities in yourself so that you can be more effective in making the changes that you want. , Well. And lead to action that can really solve these problems. So images are a type of thinking, people often say that it involves the senses.
Thoughts you can see, hear, smell, feel, daydream. It is a language, it is an emotional language. It is a synthetic language, only of thought. It is a language of the arts. They are all the visual arts, theater, poetry, painting. Even music, dance, the images they bring, transmit a lot of information, but not in the same way that an equation transmits information. It makes sense. It's the difference between listening. I think Einstein once said, "You could decompose a Beethoven sonata" into wavelengths and frequencies, "but you'd miss the point." Then there is that linear and scientific part. There is that experiential part.
We are behind that. So images are a natural way of thinking. It is very linked to emotions. It's natural, if you think of it as a coding language, it's a coding language of the emotional and intuitive gray. And we have not had much education in its use, and unbridled imagination is probably the main source of modern stress. It's not just what it ishappening, but what you think will happen to you and how it will affect you which sends the signals to your body. On the other hand, develop a skillful imagination, which you can use to send messages of calm, confidence, creativity, in many different ways of using it.
Your most powerful stress relief tool, but you need to learn some skills to be able to use it purposefully. So imagery, what imagery does is if we're having a problem that we can't solve in that cortex, imagery appeals to the limbic brain. It brings emotional and intuitive intelligence to that issue or problem, so it simply brings another large area of ​​the brain to influence any problem. So it doesn't take anything away from you. Adds intelligence to your problem solving. So you can calm your brain with images, just as you can make it anxious. I could show you some pictures, just ask you to imagine the scariest thing you've ever been through.
Don't do that now. If we went through this and had you really, "What do you see? "What do you hear? "What do you smell? "Imagine you are there again." It could create quite a bit of anxiety. If instead I asked you to imagine going to a place that you find peaceful and beautiful and that you love to be in, we don't have nothing to do and it's safe and it's the right temperature and notice what you see and hear and smell and sink into that dream. Your brain will send messages through the limbic system, all the way to the lizard's brain. say, "It looks beautiful and peaceful and safe." "Sounds beautiful, calm and secure. "It smells good. "It's peaceful here, it's safe. "Press the All Clear button." And your body will change to that.
So that place is: "Where do I want to focus my attention right now? "What line of thought do I want to focus my attention on?" And again, few people have been taught this, so we have... I'll get to the aspect. commercial later, but it's one of the reasons I've spent all the time I have writing books and making audio CDs and downloads to teach people these skills. They're very simple skills. Your imagination is your birthright. It's built into you. No one has ever really taught you how to do some pretty simple, but potentially profound moves that can literally change your life depending on what you're doing.
It can certainly improve your life. So instead of talking more with you, I want to offer you a chance. Come on, would you like to do some imagery? Some guided imagery instead. We will rest your left brain. We will ventilate it, we will cool it down. That's why I want to share with you some fairly simple images that we call evocative images . How many of you have used guided imagery on purpose before? So a good number. Maybe half or a little more than half. This is a way of using images to help you access a particular quality that you may want more of.
Okay, and that could be courage, that could be confidence, that could be creativity, that could be patience, that could be humor, that could be assertiveness. Any quality you want to think about. And the way we usually use this, and you might, is to think about the situation that you're going through, that you've had difficulty resolving or resolving. And you just feel like you haven't been able to figure it out and it seems like something you could potentially fix or figure out. Well, you just feel like you don't have enough white space to do this. You need a little more, again, courage, assertiveness, patience, humor, whatever, okay?
If you can't think of any right off the bat, think of a quality you'd like to experience more of in yourself. Joy, tranquility, again, confidence, self-love. Whatever suits you. Just some quality you would like to experience more. And give it a name. Think about what it's called and you might come up with a couple of qualities. I wouldn't do anything more than, sometimes it's not clear what you need more. I feel like I need more, I don't know if it's courage or I need more strength, so you could do both together. I know a little about what you're looking for.
But think about a specific quality or a couple of qualities that you would like to feel more of in yourself, okay? And then make yourself as comfortable as possible in your seats. You can close your eyes. There's no need. But it's usually easier to pay attention to your imagination and your inner world if you do. And then just allow yourself to take a few deep breaths. Let your breath go a little deeper into your abdomen and (exhaling) let your exhale be a kind of release breath. Not forcing anything or forcing anything, just, again, breathing deeper into the abdomen and belly, letting the exhale be a kind of breath.
Simply inviting your body to begin to soften or relax. And just one or two more times as you welcome the breath into your body. Just notice that you are literally bringing fresh energy and oxygen to your body. You can invite it to circulate and flow through your body in the bloodstream to every cell in your body. Provides fresh energy. And as you exhale, if you wish, let it be an invitation to your body, your mind and even your spirit, to let go of any tension or discomfort that you do not have to contain at this moment.
And you don't even have to worry about whether you need to retain or what you can let go. It simply invites the body to soften. The mind begins to quiet down. And invite your body to continue softening and relaxing. Maybe to become a little more spacious without worrying about how it does it. Feel free to change or move around to be even more comfortable. And if you haven't yet let yourself into a place that is very beautiful to you, let yourself daydream about a place that is very beautiful, calm, safe. And that could be a place you've actually been in your life.
Whether in your outer life or even in your inner life. Or it could be a place that comes to mind right now, an imaginary place, or some combination. It doesn't really matter, as long as it's a beautiful place for you, quiet and safe. And if more than one place comes to mind, choose the one that most appeals to you at the moment. And imagine in your own way that you are really there. And take a few moments to look around and notice what you imagine seeing in this beautiful, peaceful place. Notice the colors and shapes and things that are there, and don't worry if it's very vivid and clear like your usual view or if it's a little vague or comes and goes, but just notice what you imagine is there. this quiet, beautiful and safe place.
And notice what you imagine hearing in that place, or if it's just too quiet. Notice any sounds you imagine hearing. Notice if there is a scent, fragrance, or air quality. And notice what time of day or night it appears to be. And I wonder if you can tell what season of the year it is. Just look, find the place where you feel most comfortable and at ease. And just trusting your instincts, like a dog or a cat, it will go around and find the most comfortable place to be and allow you to feel comfortable there. And then think of a quality that you think you would like to feel more of.
The name of a quality, a particular quality, or a feeling state that you would like to feel more of. And then allow yourself to go back in your memory to a time when you experienced that you had that quality in yourself. Simply let your memory go back to a time when you felt that quality in yourself. And some of you may not remember having that quality, so allow yourself to go back to a time when you witnessed someone else expressing that quality or embodying that quality. It could be a real person, a fictional person, or a historical person.
And if you found a time when you yourself had this quality, imagine that now you are there again. And notice what you see, what you hear, what you feel as you feel that particular quality within you. And if you imagine someone else embodying that quality, imagine bringing them inside you so you can feel what it feels like to have that quality inside you. And then notice where in your body you feel that quality most strongly. You may want to just gently scan your body with your attention from head to toe and up, as if your attention were a sonar beam or a radar beam, and simply see if you feel that particular quality more strongly in you. . your body?
Stronger in your feet or your legs? Your pelvis? Abdomen? Chest? Your neck and shoulders? Arms and hands? In his face? Just notice where it seems to be strongest. And let it grow a little more. Imagine that you can allow it to grow a little more and get stronger, just a little bit. And notice how it feels to feel that quality in yourself. And notice what your posture wants to be like as you feel that quality more strongly in yourself. And if you feel comfortable with it, imagine turning up the volume of that quality as if you had a control, like the volume control on a radio or television, and turning it up so that it radiates from where it is centered. all directions.
Radiate and fill your body with that particular quality. And when you feel that on your face, notice how your face feels. And as you feel that quality, notice what you imagine your voice would be like if you were in touch with that quality when you spoke. And if you like the feel of this quality, go ahead and turn it up even higher so that it overflows the space of your body and fills the space around your body by a foot in each direction. And imagine that it radiates inside your body and touches every cell of your body with that quality.
From the depths of your bone marrow to your bones. To your connective tissues, to your muscles. The organs and your pelvis. In your abdomen. In your chest. Especially in your brain. Your spinal cord and your nervous system. As if every cell in your body was touched by a ray of this quality. As if you were a sponge and you bathed in this quality and could absorb anything you wanted. And if you want, you can make it even stronger and bigger, filling the space around your body several meters in each direction. You can experiment with that. Never turn it up so hard that you feel uncomfortable, but if you like the way it feels, imagine turning it up.
That there is an abundant source of this quality, and that you can increase it to fill the space around your body for 12, 15, 20 feet around. Fill the room with it. Fill the bay area with it. Fill the world with it. Just experiment and then allow yourself to change the volume to whatever feels most comfortable for you at the moment. No matter how strong or weak, how big or small, just give yourself permission to make it like listening to music when you are alone. Whatever volume is most comfortable for you at the moment is exactly the right volume.
And let yourself rest in that for a few more minutes. And take a moment before bringing your awareness back into the room. Take a moment to review what happened in this brief viewing experience. What quality were you looking to experience more? Whether you have it or not. How was it. And if there is anything in particular that you want to take back from this experience and remember when you return to the outside world. And before you return to the outside world, take a moment. If there is a particular situation for which you want to address more of this quality, imagine addressing that situation while being in touch with this quality.
And just notice whatever you notice. Notice if it looks the same or different in any way. If bringing more of this quality into the situation seems to change something about it or your relationship with it. And before you return to the outside world, remember that you can remember this quality, access it, feel it, build it stronger in yourself any time you want, simply by going through this process again. And when you are ready, let the images return to where they came from and become aware of the room we are in together. And just begin to gently bring your awareness from your inner world to the outer world.
Us in this room here together. And if you want, just stretch your body very gently and feel your fingers and toes and everything in between. I want to give you just a few minutes to write or draw anything you want to remember about this experience. This is just for you. I'll give you about three or four minutes just to write or draw anything, and I would recommend that you do it, no matter what. Even if nothing happened. Let's take three or four minutes and write about the experience, especially anything that you want to remember and that you thought was important or that you found interesting about this experience.
Let's have a little discussion. Comments, questions? Did everyone hear that? Sometimes you get into such a stressful and anxious state, it's just. You have had experiences where relaxation and guided imagery have been very helpful. And other times, when she was so stressed and so anxious and upset that she couldn't even get in, or if she did, she just didn't even touch him. And yes, that can happen. This is not a magic bullet. So sometimes that's a place where you can use someone else to help you or to take enough time, or to do some things like, get a massage, take a hot tub.
Talk to a friend. This is a place where medications can come into play. I think a double dose of Jack Daniels works very well. I wouldn't recommend it as a daily diet, but it certainly helps lower your anxiety level and you may then be able to relieve your anxiety enough to be able to pay attention to these things.So there are a lot of other things we can do, from medications to nutrients to other relaxants, to doing whatever it takes to get to that place where you can focus. One of the qualities of imagery thinking is that it can help you connect to the bigger picture and how things connect in kind of the bigger picture, so that can include your faith.
Or you may think, "Well, if that happens, 'I don't want that to happen.' 'But maybe there's a good part of it,' or maybe you'll just deal with it as best you can." So that's just to broaden the picture and allow yourself to go out and see what the consequences might be. Because that's part of really sorting it out into things that you might be able to do, something about things that you can't do anything about, is letting yourself go. Does that make sense to you? Yeah? So sometimes when people make treatment decisions that are very difficult, I invite them to imagine that there is nothing they can do.
We are at a crossroads. Again, this happens when and if you go down this path, you choose this type of treatment, and you imagine walking down that path and imagine it goes as far as you can and you see what you imagine happens. this path or go down to where you can see what you imagine. Along the way, you'll just develop the image, and part of that you'll be able to see, "Is there something I can do about this?" "Isn't there something I can do about this?" "Which do I imagine will ultimately be best for me?" And make that decision.
What is the difference between imagining going to the beach and being on the beach? So, imagining being somewhere quiet, peaceful, and safe is best option after actually being there. And it has certain advantages because you can go whenever you want. And the thing is that you can get there very quickly and it's very cheap. So you can go, so I would like to go to the beach in Hawaii a lot. But I can't go every day because I work and have responsibilities and stuff, and I'm lucky if I can go every two years. But I can do it when I decide, "I've had enough, I need a break." I can take a few deep breaths and I can close my eyes and I can be back in a particular place, floating in the water right next to a beach.
And I can go under, when I go under and take the time to notice the different sensory qualities. What we know now by looking at brains in the fMRI is that if I make an effort to notice what I imagine seeing, hearing and feeling in the weightlessness of my body while I'm floating and the splash of the waves on the waves and the smell of the plumerias and the humidity in the air, and I go through all that sensory stuff, that when I notice what I see, the part of my brain that processes vision is active.
When I notice the sounds I hear, the parts of my brain that process sound activate. When I notice sensory details, that part of the sensory cortex of my brain is active. So what you have is you have more and more parts of your cortex sending messages to those lower, more reflective parts of your brain, and they say, "It sounds like I'm in Hawaii, it sounds like I'm in Hawaii." "I feel like I'm in Hawaii. "It smells like I'm in Hawaii." And that part of your brain just says, "Okay, everything is clear." It sends the signal that everything is okay and many things in your body They begin to work more effectively than they have been able to work as well when you constantly react to the "Be careful" messages.
What's next? "How am I going to do it? "Danger, threat, problem." And so on. Which is where we spend a lot of our time, and that's why this little lizard brain is there, "Careful." Right? And the body is constantly preparing for that and that is exhausting. So if we spend 98% of our waking time and half of our sleeping time dealing with that kind of thing, we understand why we burn out. We connect and tired. We have trouble sleeping. The body begins to indicate that it needs something. So finding a way to get to those deeper levels and connecting a couple of those relaxation places as a basic tool is, I think, one of the real fundamental measures. benefits of guided imagery, which is a type of meditation at that level.
And I really appreciate your attention. Thank you so much. I hope you have been helpful. (audience applauding) (upbeat music)

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