Change Your Brain to Change Your Life
It’s no secret that the early 21st Century we live in can create stress in our lives. Just living under current world circumstances can throw us into stress and survival mode. Have you ever tried to change yourself or a habitual pattern and simply not been able to? Maybe you really wanted to leave that job/house/partner but you simply couldn’t make yourself look elsewhere. It’s highly likely that the stress in your life reshaped how your physical brain is hardwired so that it became impossible for you to make even desired changes. Science is now discovering that when we use the various tools of qigong and tai chi, we re-model our physical brains so that they work better, become more capable of change and we make better choices that fall in line with what we really want in our lives instead of following old habituated patterns.
When we enter a stress state, the brain moves from rational, analytical processing in low and mid-range Beta waves to survival high-Beta brain waves. If the brain remains in High Beta, bathing the brain and body in stress chemicals for an extended period of time, the body becomes addicted or conditioned to those chemicals and will begin to demand them. That’s right: we literally become addicted to stress and don’t even realize it. If you’ve ever had a stress-ful feeling arise from apparently nowhere, this is the body attempting to generate a stressful chemical reaction because it’s been habituated to live in these chemicals and when it doesn’t get them, just like a junkie, it creates the conditions to get the drug it needs. If the body can make you feel stressed for a even a moment, sometimes it’s enough to worry the mind and create stressful thoughts that trigger the stress hormones and chemicals of survival that serve us well when we have to run from danger but actually harm us when we are over-exposed to them on a continual daily basis.
If most days we are worried about paying bills, taking care of a sick family member, where we’re going to live, how we’re going to get to work, how we’re going to find work or a partner or buy groceries, if war is going to break out, if our water/food is safe, or even how we’re going to manage the in-laws, we constantly bathe ourselves in the fight or flight chemicals of survival. When these chemicals are turned on, the body doesn’t know the difference between a tiger chasing us, not being able to meet the work deadline, or being worried about war or even a general underlying state of anger and discontent with the world. All the body knows from the chemicals that are flooding in is that it’s time to run, fight or hide because that’s what a surge in adrenaline, epinephrine and cortisol signals to the biological self. So the body then does what the body does with these chemicals no matter if it’s a thought that generates them or actual danger: the body starts to turn off higher executive brain functions and sends more energy to muscles to run. We don’t need to create and make high-level decisions when we’re running from a tiger - or so says the body. So when the stressors are the boss in our face when we have to make high level decisions or the news outlets are confusing us when we go to vote, our brain is not receiving the energy it needs to make those decisions. Rather the brain is attempting to make creative/executive function decisions from a brain that’s switched into survival mode - and it will typically make choices that are familiar because the biological self feels safe in what’s familiar, even if it might be harmful in the long run. So in stress mode, the brain simply cannot create something new or choose something different if it has to put together information in a way it hasn’t done before because the base operating system of survival mode is switched on. It becomes impossible for us to change or make different choices. We become stuck in the high-Beta brainwave functions of stress and survival.
When we think about a subject, person, event, thing or emotion we are in Beta brainwaves. When we FEEL something with our body instead of thinking about a subject we eventually move into Alpha wave state, where the brain is no longer focused on one subject or compartmentalizing. When we feel into the body like we do practicing self-awareness in qigong and tai chi, the brain uses multiple pathways or neural connections and shifts into a slower Alpha brainwave that turns off stress chemicals produced in higher Beta brainwave activity. And when we feel into the unknown (the Wuji, the chi, the energy space just around the body) instead of feeling into the known (the body) we move ourselves into higher and more coherent brainwave patterns. When we reach the point in our tai chi or qigong practice that we can be aware of the entire body while feeling into the energy field and we get “lost in the chi of it,” we may then achieve Gamma brain wave function. In Gamma, the heartmind system is fully activated and our perception expands beyond only that which is known to include awareness of the unknown, the mystical, the potential or possibilities that cannot be accessed by a brain that’s become addicted to the chemicals or incoherence of stress. In expanded Gamma brain wave states, we experience magic, mystery and the mystical that are physically impossible to achieve with a brain stuck in high stress Beta brainwave patterns.
This is why practicing tai chi and qigong helps us break our own limiting patterns. When we first learn tai chi in particular, we focus the mind away from thinking and focus it on feeling the body and how the body is positioned in space. Thus, we remove the thinking mind from old habitual stress neural patterns into a more expansive or divergent awareness in Alpha state where the brain is firing through many neural pathways that are interconnecting instead of firing the same known neural pathway of thought in Beta states. Now the brain is no longer producing the chemicals of emotion that have become habitual because it has to utilize new and different resources and fire together more coherently.
Once we learn our tai chi routine so well that we no longer have to focus the mind on what the body is doing in order to accomplish the movements, NOW we can move the brain into an even more divergent and more cohesive state by focusing on the energy just outside the body, the chi field that we are moving through. Instead of using the grey matter of the brain to feel coordinating the body’s movements, when we focus on feeling chi, we turn-on the heartmind and connect our feeling hearts with our calm and open minds—shifting into Alpha and even Gamma functions, the realm of extra-ordinary senses, awareness and abilities.
When we attain this state of Oneness in our practice, we have moved ourselves out the analytical Beta brainwave patterns, through slower Alpha brainwave patterns and into Gamma brainwave patterns - which is where we find coherence in our physical, mental and emotional selves and Oneness with our world instead of separation from it. We become whole and live in our more natural state - a state of calm, observant awareness where we can make choices that go beyond the comprehension of a brain hardwired for survival. We become unstuck by breaking the neural habits and bio-chemicals we become addicted to simply by practicing tai chi a little every day, going deeper and deeper into a state of wholeness and harmony.
In the processof breaking our old brain patterns and bio-chemical addictions we will inevitably start to feel frustrated because the body is physically being forced to release old patterns it’s had often for decades. Just like it’s hard to get rid of a family heirloom that was once a treasure, but we need to let it go because now it’s just a thing from the past that keeps getting in the way. It’s not easy to break any addiction, which is why people often don’t. If we are content and fulfilled living every day the same, we can choose to stay in limited thinking, re-firing the same known neural pathways and further chaining our brains to the habitual patterns of our past for the rest of our lives. BUT if we want a different life, more for ourselves than we currently have, if we want to change ourselves and grow in new ways, we recognize the frustration that may present itself as just part of breaking old patterns and instead of quitting from frustration we keep doing it anyway. This is the breakthrough point, the choicepoint where the brain moves through the chaos of finding a new way, or using different resources than it has in the past and the brain actually reaches a better perceptive mode, physically hardwired through different neural connections to perceive the world differently than it ever has before.
As the saying goes, it’s always darkest just before the dawn and the same is true in remodeling your brain. Getting frustrated by tai chi or meditation is actually a sign of progress!! Brain scans prove this state of frustration is the state where we are breaking old neurological pathways so it’s a little chaotic for a bit. It doesn’t feel calm or good or comforting. . .yet. Once we are able to CHOOSE continuing forward in spite of the frustration, that's when the chaos and frustration become enlightening moments of self-awareness and we move out of being our old habitual selves into something greater than we ever were.
Continually shifting our focus throughout the day creates a less coherent brain.
It’s useful to undertstand that when we are shifting our focus throughout the day from one thing to the next to the next, we are actually creating a less coherent brain. When our focus continually shifts, from email to dishes to grocery lists to respond to messages to work a little on this project to check Facebook to eat a little to get the kids to text a friend to schedule with the dentist to pay the bill ——- different areas of the brain fire independently in these known, rational-thought pathways. And when we use pieces of the brain in independent clusters here then there over and over again, the brain loses its coherence and a low level state of frustration and incoherence can underlie our every waking hour.
When we focus the mind as we do in chi arts to feel into the Quantum Field or Sea of Chi or the energy outside the body, then the brain begins to synch up with heart which is where we feel from, this activates the heartmind. When we connect our hearts to this field by feeling into the chi from our heart center, our heart rhythms and cycles become measurably more orderly.
The heart sends out strong magnetic waves while the brain sends out strong electrical waves into the field. When the heart and brain are in a state of coherence with each other, our electromagnetic field is measurably amplified. And when our heart and mind are not in coherence with each other, our electromagnetic field is out of balance and so are we. “Heartmind” is a measurable state where the heart and brain are working in coherent waves, sometimes called heartrate variability. When the heartmind is active, it is not possible for stressful thoughts or oxidation of cells to take place. In states of coherent heartmind rhythms, it’s much more likely to feel connected to all of life, an infinite expanse of time and space and love for self and others that goes beyond limited rational thought which often keeps us separated from each other.
Once we are aware of how this process works, we can now choose to stay-in or leave habitual routines, thoughts and emotions that are familiar, easy and comfortable because we’ve known them so long we may even say “it’s just who I am.” Often because we don’t understand how the brain functions on this subconscious “operating system” level, it will take a traumatic event like a death, disease or “reaching rock bottom” before change is initiated. But when we understand that we have to go beyond the comfort zone of the known to change, then we can choose to live and act more like who we wish to be in the world instead of what our stress may have shaped us into. It is work and not easy to monitor and adjust where the focus of the mind goes, which is why it’s usually some kind of crisis that makes us change. But we can become smarter than that and recognize our patterns and choose to focus on something wider and more cohesive than our limited thought habits before trauma forces us to change and grow.
In our qigong and tai chi practices, we first become aware of and then practice focusing in on the energy field around the body. This Quantum or Zero-Point Field as physics sometimes calls it, is orderly in its vastness so when we connect our minds and hearts to sensing into empty space or as I often say “feel into the chi of it,” we connect our brains to an order beyond it’s own limited capacity and through repetitive learning, the brain becomes more coherent and orderly - like that which it is connecting to.
In this coherent state, the body heals itself, sometimes instantaneously. In this coherent state, thoughts are hopeful for the future instead of catastrophizing it. In this coherent state synchronicities happen, miracles and coincidence become normal and our lives go from feeling stressed and pressed for time to feeling happy, whole and fulfilled with infinite patience because time is not perceived when the brain is in Alpha and Gamma states. Our brains literally become connected to the timeless and infinite order of the Universe.
No crystal bowl, chant, prayer, amulet blessing or rock has been proven to shift brain wave patterns or create a stronger personal electromagnetic field. We’re in charge of doing that for ourselves.
Tai chi builds mindbody coherence and always has. More and more modern medical research is proving its efficacy in a world that now fuels stress and considers it a normal part of life instead of viewing stress as the abnormal, unhealthy survival state it actually is. It is up to each and every one of us to habitually practice finding the state of heartmind coherence required to lived peacefully in a stress-inducing world. Every day we are bombarded by stressors of a huge variety. If we are not consciously doing something every day that removes us from those stressors and focuses in on our natural state of centered calm, we will inevitably lead less-than-fulfilling lives. We simply MUST care for ourselves daily if we wish to be mentally and physically well. Going to the gym is not enough. Stressing the body with a hard workout does not bring calm or connect us with an elevated state of being that takes us out of the daily grind. And incidentally, numerous scientific studies have now shown that no crystal bowl, chant, prayer, amulet or device will shift your brain wave patterns or create better coherence within you. We control that from within - - whether we do so consciously or unconsciously is a choice.
Tai chi and qigong bridge the gap between seated meditation and physical exercise. When practicing tai chi and qigong, the mind focuses in on the larger Quantum Field while the body is upright and in motion. This training makes it more possible to stay connected to the meditative state, the centered, coherent heartmind state, while moving through our daily lives. Please, do yourself a favor and take time daily to tune-out of the world of appearances and into the unknown and intangible. You will be amazed how it will change your life when you consistently re-train your mind.
If you can’t find a live tai chi / qigong class that works with your schedule, check out the Beachside Qigong and Tai Chi Online Course library offering full courses in tai chi, qigong and breath work. In-person sessions are always best.
Beachside Qigong and Tai Chi posts and newsletters are written by the brilliant mind and hands of LeaJon Williamson, Shifu. Never Artifically generated.
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