What is Neuroplasticity?
This, in very simple terms, is what neuroplasticity is. For a two-minute introduction to this topic, please watch the clip below.
Neuroplasticity is crucial to understand in order to realise the extent to which brain training can change our ability to thrive, recover, and gain back resilience.
This picture shows two neurons. Neurons are chemical messengers that, when passing the same message over and over, create a bond. As an example, when we think repetitive thoughts such as ‘I’m not going to get well’ or ‘I’m stressed,’ or 'I have pain,' the chemical messengers associated wire together so that these thoughts become stronger pathways in the brain.
Why Is It Relevant In Healing?
In each of our lives, we have wired and fired together pathways in the brain from symptoms, pain, thoughts, emotions and memories that have turned into a well-worn road ‘hardwired’ into our subconscious. Your subconscious is a combination of all your memories, bodily functions, emotional reactions, beliefs, and much more. You can also think of your body as an expression of your subconscious processes, which is why stress patterns affect our health so profoundly.
The field of psychoneuroimmunology has shown that your every thought and emotional experience produces a biochemical reaction in the brain. The brain then releases signals that are transmitted to the body, causing your body to feel exactly the way you were just thinking.
Stress is a potent example of this. Emotions trigger the autonomic nervous system and, in turn, trigger stress hormones that cause many harmful effects on the brain and body. Stressful feelings also lead to a chaotic pattern in the beat-to-beat changes in the heart’s rhythm–indicating that our nervous system is out of sync. When this happens, a cascade of over 1,400 biochemical changes are set in motion that have a wide range of effects on the body’s systems. Over time this creates a real obstruction to the body being able to repair.
Dr Karl Pribram, head of the Neurophsycholicgical lab at Stanford University, was the first to propose that the brain functions as a complex pattern-identification and matching system (Pribram and Melges 1969). In his model, past experience builds a set of familiar patterns, which become imprinted in our neural architecture. Recurring patterns form a reference pattern against which input patterns are compared. Our brain takes a snap shot of moments, emotions, situation and experiences and compares all incoming and internal stimuli to it. When the brain finds a pattern that matches the reference pattern, it processes the experience as familiar, and it then triggers thoughts, feelings, and physical responses to reinforce the familiar - even if the pattern is dysfunctional.
For example, if you worry a lot, then worrying can become so familiar to the body that when you’re not worrying or anxious, you feel uncomfortable. Once worry or anxiety becomes the familiar reference pattern, the brain keeps defaulting to anxious feelings and thoughts as the well worn path of least resistance. The body also gets used to the corresponding chemical and hormonal messages. This is how emotional habits are formed.
The brain considers the familiar to be more comfortable, no matter how irrational or unhelpful it might be. It will just strive to maintain a match with mental, emotional, and physical responses and habits - no matter how detrimental they might be to our health and happiness. Without us learning tools to intervene with these automatic processes, these maladaptive patterns can become self perpetuating and self-reinforcing. This is also why over time, patterns of worry, stress, anger and subconscious depleting emotional patterns can get in tighter loops, affecting us more deeply. Cue anxiety, depression, insomnia, digestive upset, and the rest. This is where our limbic system functionality is so important too.
The Limbic System
We all know it is sometimes not easy to change our thoughts. This is because many emotions, thoughts and beliefs are stored in our subconscious - away from our conscious awareness of them.
Emotion is a powerful driver of thought processes, hence why it can be challenging for us to ‘think positive’ when underneath there is a well-worn road of fear, pain, stress, anger, etc. driving these thoughts. In fact, thoughts are not filed in the brain under their content; they are actually filed under their corresponding feeling/emotion. Our emotional brain areas also process far faster than our thinking brain areas. This is why our emotional processing centre the Limbic System is so key to our healing.
The limbic system is the ‘feeling and reacting’ area of the brain. It is closely integrated with the autonomic nervous system (ANS) that maintains homeostasis (balance) within the body without our conscious direction. Examples of ANS functions are digestion, heart rate and pattern, blood vessel dilation. A classic example of the limbic system in action with the ANS is coordinating the 'fight-or-flight' response when we are in immediate danger.
In your subconscious brain there is a structure called the amygdala. It interprets stimuli obtained from your five senses and decides if there is a threat. It has the final say as to which emotions are brought to the fore, inhibited or exaggerated. Unfortunately, our conscientious amygdala can get overstimulated with the stress of modern day life, work, relationships, internal thoughts and emotional patterns until it perceives threat everywhere and becomes on chronic red alert.
When this occurs, it is constantly overstimulating the brain and nervous system. This can cause or exacerbate fatigue, muscle aches, allergic-type reactions, digestive issues (IBS), sensitivities, emotional issues and a whole multitude of symptoms in people with many types of illness - including stress, chronic illness and digestive illness.
The limbic system however is also responsible for us falling in love! And for a whole host of beautiful experiences in our life. It not only processes pain, but also pleasure. Thus we do not think of this work as correcting limbic ‘dysfunction’, or create the impression that anything is ‘wrong’, needing ‘fixing’. We are seeking to create a sense of balance within this system to restore system wide homeostasis.
How can neuroplasticity help me?
Due to our innate neuroplasticity ability (we can all do this we assure you!), new pathways in the brain and nervous system that impact the body can be created. The brain functions at its best when it is limber and rich with options. It has a very real desire to heal itself. Like all of nature, it knows what to do. It just needs some guidance in the right direction. This is where our work together comes into play.
Creating new pathways begins with an acknowledgment of our ability to change. In time, with focused attention and repetition, new positive pathways will eclipse the old negative ones. Self regulation of thoughts and emotions fosters a calming of the nervous system through a mixture of physiological (body) and psychological (brain) tools and techniques. With practice, these tools can help us increase an awareness of our emotional states and thought patterns. With guidance we can then learn to shift our attention to create productive thoughts and feelings that bring us to a baseline of rest and repair.
With practice comes the ability to face and re structure the automatic and ingrained patterns of thoughts and feelings.
This work may have a marked positive impact on the lives and experiences of people who suffer from:
unexplained illnesses
digestive disturbance
loss of resilience - ability to bounce back
stress and overwhelm
minor to moderate sleep challenges
chronic/auto-immune disorders and conditions (CFS, MCS, POTS, Lyme, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, and perhaps others)
mental health challenges (anxiety, depression, panic attacks)
a general sense of loss of joy or ease in one's life