Reclaim Your Brain
Being vulnerable makes me uncomfortable. I’m someone who lives in my thoughts. I analyze and think. I’m someone who will think instead of act. Think instead of feel. Thinking feels more controlled, like a safer option than actually living in the feeling, action or moment.
If I can think through something, I can find a neutral state. If I overthink about something I can find the good, bad, better, worse, chaotic neutral and true neutral states. Sometimes this is useful, other times it is annoying. Through my yoga practice, I have arrived at a place of pretty much existing in neutrality. My autopilot mode is one of observation, non-judgment and non-attachment. (Sound familiar?) To some people this makes me seem closed off and cold. To other people it makes me seem chill and easy going. To me it just feels normal, like how I am meant to operate. So here I am, attempting to write something vulnerable about my experience with my brain and landing in my thoughts. Thinking my way out of vulnerability under the guise of neutrality. Well played brain, well played indeed…
Here’s some personal stuff. Vulnerability 1.0. we’ll call it. Personally, I have felt like a victim of my own brain. I know the rage of wanting to open the top of my skull, pull out my brain and unplug it from my spinal cord to get a little peace. I have also felt the intense euphoria and joy that comes with developing and mastering a new skill. Loving my brain for the life it helps me to live. I have felt both ends of the love/hate spectrum for my brain. I have suffered from anxiety, depression, PTSD, and addiction. Receiving each diagnosis and finally exhaling. Ah, yes, there is a reason my brain feels like it is trying to ruin my life. How wonderful, now I can fix it!
Except, it’s never that simple. There is no medication that will immediately and permanently resolve anxiety. There are medications that can make life more manageable until you learn the skills to manage anxiety. There are SSRIs for depression, and SNRIs for PTSD. There are little pills you can pop to create an environment that feels safe to inhabit again, but then you have to work your fucking ass off to get off those medications and retrain your brain to work for you instead of against you. You have to reclaim your brain.
The brain is part of the nervous system. The nervous system is one of the primary systems we engage with during our yoga practice. We do this with our breath work, as well as through our asana practice. To regulate your nervous system is to reclaim your brain. To reclaim your brain is to reclaim your life. Sometimes, you are simply reclaiming it from yourself. Other times, you are reclaiming it from a lifestyle, a pattern, or a mode of living that no longer serves you. Maybe you come to the realization it never really served you. Of all the things our brain and nervous system allows us to do, reclaiming ourselves is one of the coolest. Maybe that sounds like a bit of woo-woo eccentric hippie dippie flower child nonsense. Maybe it is. But maybe it isn’t.
The most beautiful, majestic, interesting organ and system in the human body is our brain. Since the age of 15, I have been fascinated by the control center of humans. The squishy, swirly, mass of cells that lives in our skull. The connections, the neural networks, the structures, the chemical messengers, the patterns, the frequencies… the brain. It is, to me, incredibly beautiful and wildly majestic. Our human brain is what sets us apart from all other living things we share this earth with. It is our brain that allows us to have the awareness we are human. It gives us the ability to feel an emotion and then experience life in that emotional state. It gives us the gift of connection with others, and the gift of connection to ourselves. Our brains are more than just one organ. It is a complex structure with systems that activate and relax simply from breathing. The human brain is what keeps us alive, and at times what kills us too soon. A healthy brain functioning optimally can create the most beautiful melodies you have ever heard, compose a concert that would bring chills to even the most cynical human among us. A brain that is unhealthy, dysregulated, injured or sick can turn a human into something more akin to a horror creature from a Stephen King novel.
That is fascinating. All the other parts of a human can look and function and appear healthy and ‘correct’, but a faulty connection in part of the brain can create a human so opposite from healthy and well functioning. When our brain is sick, the rest of our body- though it may appear to be fine, will eventually follow suit. It may happen slowly, or it may happen quickly. We may begin to act out, or behave erratically. Or maybe we cease acting like anything at all. We attempt to imitate a bear in hibernation and spend more time horizontal than not. Spend more time in a dormant state than an active one. Our brain attempting to shut itself down, perhaps in an effort to heal, or just in an attempt to not feel the pain or problems present.
We do not live at the mercy of our brain, we have a shocking amount of control over it. However, when we experience an injury to the brain, we realize the control we thought we had is no longer accessible to us. We can no longer actively work with the brain, but rather we sense that the brain is working against us, or maybe we are working against it. We can feel a disconnect. Sometimes between body and mind, or between mind and matter. The things that used to matter no longer do, and the mind we used to have no longer works. A changing brain can be alarming, shocking, and downright terrifying. It can feel like you have lost yourself in a sea of unknown. In a new land with no map. People keep trying to give you directions, but they’re in a language you’ve never heard. You don’t have the ability to translate the street signs, and the direction you are headed is no longer very clear at all. Maybe you begin to forget a time when it was clear, and you feel a sense of loss that feels so overwhelming you can barely complete your morning routine. A messy brain results in a messy life, and a messy life is pretty hard for a messy brain to manage.
There are so many things that can alter our brain function. Faulty neural connections, chemical imbalances, lack of proper nutrition, injury or illness, stress, the list goes on. Despite the incredible strength and resilience of our brain, it is also a delicate system vulnerable to state changes happening throughout the rest of the body. Between my experience with the western medical system, and my education on eastern philosophy and medical practices, I find the best way to understand the brain is an overlap of both. East to West. This is how I have found a way to create a detailed picture and understanding of the brain, the nervous system, and life as a human.
Whether you want to understand the human experience in a deeper way, or simply want ways to feel better in your body, mind and life, it is my hope I help deepen your understanding of yourself. When we understand the pieces that make up the whole, it can allow the whole to feel more manageable. Like breaking up a larger goal into smaller pieces, when we break up the human body and human experience into smaller systems and pieces we may gain deeper insights. You don’t actually need to know the structures and functions of your brain in order to change it though. I thought you did, so I studied them. I memorized things about our hippocampus, the cerebellum, the temporal lobe, the prefrontal cortex and so much more. I could tell you a list of facts about your amygdala that might make your head spin. I still couldn’t seem to get mine to STFU and stop being anxious though. Deepening my own knowledge about the brain certainly gave me a deeper appreciation for it. However, deepening my practice of being present is what allowed me to actually change my brain. Creating the time and space to get on a yoga mat, connect with my breath and listen to what my body and mind had to say is what altered the way I exist.
