Tag Archives: neuroplasticity

Book Review: Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess

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If ever there was a book that the world needs right now, this is it

Let me start by saying that I’m not fully on board with the title of this book: Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess (subtitle, 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking), by Dr. Caroline Leaf.

Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess by Caroline Leaf

The title suggests that the book is only for people who are struggling. That, IMO, is a mistake.

Back up a couple steps to how I learned about the book. It was a Dave Asprey podcast. Leaf was a guest, and during the interview she mentioned that she’s helped people with traumatic brain injury — people who other medical professionals had written off as permanently disabled — to not only recover from their injuries, but excel (in areas like academics, where highly functioning brain power is a prerequisite).

I thought, whoa. If her techniques are that powerful, imagine what people who aren’t recovering from physical injury could accomplish.

So I didn’t buy this book to deal with anxiety, stress, and toxic thinking. I mean, I’m not perfect and my life doesn’t always run smoothly, but I’ve been around for a while, I’ve done the work, I’ve cultivated coping skills that do the job for me.

In fact, that is kind of the point. I’m not trying to fix huge problems. I’m looking for ways to set and reach stretch goals.

What, exactly, can I accomplish in whatever time I have left on this planet? What seeming limits can I break?

You can grow brain cells — intentionally

What grabbed my attention in the Asprey interview is that Leaf (a neuroscientist and speech pathologist) was an early believer in neuroplasticity. “Early” as in back in the 1980s.

If you’re old enough, you probably know that there was a time when Science told us that the adult brain could not grow new cells. Once we hit a certain age (mid twenties, I guess, or maybe they thought it was late teens) we would supposedly hit our peak number of brain cells. From there, it was all downhill. Over time, our brain cells would start to die off, and since they could never be replaced, we’d lose cognitive function.

We were fated by nature, the Experts intoned, to a sad, lifelong slide toward mental and physical enfeeblement.

Leaf was a practicing neuroscientist during this period. She disagreed with the consensus.

She was right. She proved she was right in her practice.

Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess explains, in detail, the techniques Leaf teaches to help people stimulate their brains to grow new cells and form new neural connections.

How cool is that?

Now let me also say that, if you suffer from anxiety, stress, or similar issues (and if you do, you are far from alone) just go buy the book. (That’s an Amazon affiliate link but you can order it from any bookstore.)

But there is also a lot of material in the book people simply looking to enrich their personal development by integrating the principles of neuroplasticity.

There is some great lay material, for example, on neuroplasticity itself — how it works, what stimulates it, and how it can be detected via changes in brain waves, brain activity, and neurotransmitter levels.

First mind, then brain

There is some terrific insight into the relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain, Leaf explains, arises from the mind — not in any magical sense, but because our thoughts, feelings, and choices literally stimulate neurons to either emerge, grow, and branch or to prune, fade, and disappear.

And the book details the steps that Leaf has developed to help people use neuroplasticity to address a variety of challenges, including: replacing unwanted habits with desirable ones; something she calls “brain building,” which relates to what I referenced earlier about enhancing one’s cognitive abilities; and improving relationships and communications skills.

Writing, it turns out, plays a huge part in her approach. Leaf’s protocol is based on bringing existing thoughts, feelings, and choices into full conscious awareness, and then “re-conceptualizing” those thoughts/feelings/choices as a way to re-shape or replace associated neurons. Writing is useful during each step of the process by encouraging us to unlock suppressed thoughts, consider them, and find new ways to contextualize them. Interestingly, she states that “writing can even improve immune system function,” citing research she’s conducted that showed patients’ cortisol and homocysteine levels drop when they perform her Reflect step, which involves writing.

It makes me wonder what impact journaling has had on my life. I’ve kept a journal since I was a teenager, and while I instinctively turn to it during periods when I feel confused or stressed, or need to make some sort of major life decision. On the other hand, I’ve also thought of journaling as something of a writerly indulgence — a variety of navel-gazing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so self-deprecating? Perhaps my lifelong habit of journaling has had a major benefit to my overall well-being …?

One thing is for sure: I’ll be applying Leaf’s program to some of my life goals, and as part of that, I’ll be more deliberate in how I use my journal.

Bottom line? Great book. Highly recommend to anyone who is curious about tackling life’s challenges, whether that means healing from trauma or pushing personal limits.

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Pssst. You know who really needs to clean up her mental mess?

Once Upon a Flarey Tale by Kirsten Mortensen

Meet Marion Flarey.

She’s out of a job.

Buried in school loan debt. About to be homeless.

And she’s no Rapunzel.

She doesn’t even have long hair.

But she just found an apartment.

And it has a Tower…

Once Upon a Flarey Tale.

Available on Amazon for Kindle or print, or click here to select from other e-formats.

Book 1 of my Marion Flarey Series.

Winner, 2020 Incipere Award for Women’s Fiction, Clean.

Neuroplasticity strikes again

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about research that suggests the brains of some Buddhist monks generate more gamma waves than the brains of ordinary folks.

Science and Consciousness Review now has posted an interview with Dr. Sara Lazar. She and other researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have been comparing brain scans of meditators and non-meditators. The scans suggest

that longterm meditation may increase the thickness of the gray outer layer of cortex, where cortical cell bodies are located . . . An increase in the gray matter thickness could mean an increase in the number of neurons, but also, as the author points out, an increase in dendrites, glial cells or in the cerebral vasculature. Indeed, the finding may reflect a combination of these factors, all of which may contribute to a high-functioning cortex.

The article touches on mainstream implications of the research — might meditating help us stay sharper as we age, etc. But what intrigues me most is a theoretical question that I’ve not seen posed, as yet: might some sort of meditative practice enhance our ability to access different “states of consciousness” more readily? Mystics, like the Christian mystic/metaphysician Neville Goddard, seem to have an inherent ability to switch their attention to non-physical phenomena. Is this a skill that can be learned? And if so, what are the implications for Western spirituality?

Can meditating change your brain?

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In a Wired article titled Buddha on the Brain, John Geirland writes about some research that I’d read about before (in a Sharon Begley science column in the Wall Street Journal):

In June 2002, [University of Wisconsin researcher Richard] Davidson’s associate Antoine Lutz positioned 128 electrodes on the head of Mattieu Ricard. A French-born monk from the Shechen Monastery in Katmandu, Ricard had racked up more than of 10,000 hours of meditation.

Lutz asked Ricard to meditate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion.” He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity – brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second – indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see. Those emanating from Ricard were easily visible, even in the raw EEG output. Moreover, oscillations from various parts of the cortex were synchronized – a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in patients under anesthesia.

The researchers had never seen anything like it. Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation. The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students’. In addition, larger areas of the meditators’ brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.

This brings to mind something else I came across this weekend — an aside in a Weekly Standard article by Ralph Peters, quoted on Belmont Club:

What if Darwin was right conceptually, but failed to grasp that homo sapiens’ most powerful evolutionary strategy is faith?

In light of the fanaticism and violence that “faith” hath begot in some circles, it’s good to bear in mind that the malleability of the self can be harnessed for good, too.