Healthwise

Columnist Larry R. Miller (Photo: Courtesy Photo)

When the neural pathways in the brain became stronger, deeper ruts, we began to think, feel, act, and believe in automatic ways. When that's the case we begin to operate more and more within the boundaries of those ruts in your brain. Then we begin to feel, think, behave, respond and believe that we can’t change or that changing would be very difficult. You know those thoughts that course through your mind “Well, that’s the way I am. That’s who I am.” Once we believe that, we begin to look for more ways to solidify our convictions that we’re right about whatever we believe is true and that change isn’t possible.

Anything you repeat over and over whether it's mind talk, something you practice or are repeatedly exposed to, the effects are the same, it causes a change in your brain. More neural pathways are made available for doing, thinking, believing, feeling or being “it”. The result is a new neural pathway is created for it.

In the early days of brain plasticity research, monkeys were trained to push a lever over and over for many days. When the brains of the monkeys were looked at, researchers found that lots of neurons had been dedicated to lever-pushing.

Most of our lives are spent in the beta brain wave state. The beta wave represents excitement of the cortex to a higher state of alertness and tension. This is a good place to be some of the time but not all the time. The alpha, theta, delta, and gamma brain waves are more resourceful brain wave patterns and meditation can help you become better at creating them.

These brain wave states are involved in the most fundamental human ability-awareness. When you're in those states, you’re not just creating new neural pathways, new ruts, you’re creating super-awareness. Awareness, super awareness in particular, creates choice and when you're able to create choices, you can choose what you want to experience in life.

Repeated meditation or other ways to enter these brain wave states allows for a is a huge increase in awareness, which allows you to see that you have choices about, and the ability to change, your automatic responses. And, as a result, you can choose to step out of the ruts that no longer are beneficial. Once these new patterns become the established norm, you’ll naturally choose to do, feel, think and be what's best for you to reach the goals you have set for yourself.

Eric Kandel, the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, discovered that when an animal learns something over a period of several hours, that learning process causes signals to be transmitted into the DNA of the nerve cells.

Those signals, Kandel found, turn certain genes on and other genes off. He proved that you can repeat a thought or action over and over, or create slower, more coherent brain waves day after day through meditation, and some of your genes are turned on to make new proteins inside your brain cells.

This genetic change alters the structure of that cell and changes the number of connections that cell has with other cells in your brain which leads to more awareness, more resourceful ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and being that are more beneficial and have the ability to slow the aging process.

Kandel also showed, contrary to what had long been believed, that even our genes can change. Not only can our brains change, we can also change the genes we inherited or the personal characteristics we've created in those genes and consequently lessen, or eliminate totally, our beliefs about genetic predisposition.

Kandel's research proved that our thinking, behavior and the way we stimulate our brain can actually influence the aspect of the gene that causes it to turn on or off certain proteins, proteins that influence our level of awareness, what we believe is possible, our emotional reactions and how much motivation, creativity and happiness we have.

Larry R. Miller has been a freelance writer since 1982 on health, fitness and, more recently, anti-aging.

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