[progressally_objectives]
“Each one of us is sovereign over the territory of our own being and the five elements (skandhas) we are made of. These elements are form (body), feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. Our practice is to look deeply into these five elements and discover the true nature of our being — the true nature of our suffering, our happiness, our peace, our fearlessness.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
In this lesson, we’re integrating much of what we’ve learned over the past few weeks, exploring the mind-body-brain connection.
If you remember from our talk about the nervous system last week, our body has many “feedback loops” connecting the brain, the peripheral nervous system, and the visceral organs. Sensations from the body enter the brain through the vagus nerve – they are first perceived in the right hemisphere of the brain, and then labeled by the more linguistically-oriented left hemisphere. (This is why the “name it to tame it” strategy works so well – left-hemisphere activation in the brain is associated with more positive mental states than right-hemisphere activation. The mere act of shifting awareness and processing of the emotion to the labeling part of the brain helps lessen the intensity and power of the emotion!)
As you are developing your mindfulness practice, YOU ARE CHANGING YOUR BRAIN. Meditation increases the thickness of your pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for reasoning, judgment, and emotional regulation. Mindfulness practice is also linked to a thicker insula, which helps us perceive emotions and internal sensations. Current research indicates meditation may even rehabilitate the deterioration of brain tissue that occurs with aging. Mindfulness is also associated with less activation of the amygdala (which processes fear and aggression).
We are USING OUR MINDS TO CHANGE OUR BRAINS!
And the changes aren’t just restricted to the brain — mindfulness can help lower blood pressure, and also boost the body’s immune system. One study even found that simply practicing mindfulness made subjects’ psoriasis heal faster! As Chade-Meng Tan writes, “when you talk about how meditation can help you heal in this context, it’s not just woo-woo talk by some New Age person; it’s something so tangible, you can see it and actually measure it with a ruler.”
We can’t put ourselves in the fMRI machine each day to see how our patterns of brain activation are changing, nor are we likely to have our brain’s gray matter weighed any time in the near future. But there are some ways we can investigate how mindfulness is transforming our mental and emotional experiences so far.
One way we can explore this mind-body-brain connection is by observing how we experience pleasant and unpleasant events. In the downloads for today, you will find two calendars — one for keeping track of unpleasant events, and another for keeping track of pleasant events over the course of a week (you can take Sunday off!). By paying attention to what happens in the body and mind as these events occur, you can start to more clearly identify your triggers. You can also see how your body and mind are affected by simply recalling an event from earlier in the day or week!
This short video gives you another fun little experiment for observing the mind-body-brain connection! (the “outtakes” on this video feature my daughter as film-director and mommy-distractor 
)
I’d also like to encourage you to return to the “Intentions and Stress Assessment” that you completed as part of the Bonus materials for the course. If you’ll recall, the stress assessment asked you to identify some of the biggest stressors in your life, and rate them 1-10. As we are approaching the midway point (!) of Brilliant Mindful YOU!, take some time to complete the third column on the second page. Has your rating or experience of that stressor changed at all after three weeks of practice? {It’s okay if it hasn’t! Remember our attitude of non-striving }
{While you’re at it, you may also want to reflect on your intentions for the course and what brought you to the course — has anything changed or shifted for you? Have new questions come up? Please share them for the weekly call!}
Finally, you can take some time to reflect on the questions below:
Questions for Reflection
What areas of your body do you notice stir up either positive or negative thoughts?
What is one thing you have noticed about your body this week that you hadn’t really noticed before?