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RETHINKING THE BRAIN
Notes on a talk by Phyllis Strupp, brain coach
What is this strange organ that we can’t feel, that never shouts at us but that we cannot do without? The answer, the brain, is what Strupp is all about in her informal talks to paying audiences. She’s full of insights, things the rest of us may not have thought about. “Are we telling our brains that they're too slow? That’s negative. Negative thoughts don’t promote motivation.” Maybe we’ve retired before our brains are ready to.
Strupp gives us, her audience of about 20 50+ year-olds, a mantra that will help encourage our brains: “My brain is good, and with my help it’s going to be even better!” Back into the closet, you dark thoughts of Alzheimer’s disease.
The brain coach gives us simple tools that promise to keep our brains functional for as long as we want them. One kind of valuable input we can give them is new sensory perceptions. Information from sights, sounds, tastes, touch, smells, and emotions constitute kinds of food for the brain. If it is not getting stimulated by those inputs, especially new ones, it goes to sleep, and so do we.
Another engaging element is time. Humans are the only animals (as far as we know) with the ability to think about the broad range of time, millennia, ages, years, months, or a personal life span. It’s a common belief that the other animals have no concept of birth and death, only the present moments in which they live.
Good emotions promote good brain chemistry, says Strupp. If we’re cold, distant, out of touch with others and ourselves, we miss chances to energize our brains, to connect the world outside with our inner world. (“We have 100 billions neurons in our brains,” says Strupp. “That’s the same number of stars in our galaxy.” What a concept.)
The brain coach asks, “Are you important?” Various answers come back. “To others.” “To those close to me.” You need to be important to yourself, she says. “If I am not important to myself, then my brain won’t work as hard.” In other words, we need to keep our brains awake and working. They need workouts as much as our muscles need the gym or In considering our brains, we can discern between inputs and outputs, just as in electrical circuits. Inputs come from the world outside our brains and bodies. They are perceived through the five big senses. Outputs are what the brain does in response to the inputs.
Do we have unfinished business on Earth? Well, that’s good, says Strupp. We need reasons to go on living. Often some event that happened to us between ages six and twelve lodged in our memories and needs to be exorcised or at least understood. That event might have been criticism in those key six years from a parent or a sibling. We may carry that stigma all through our lives unless we can get rid of it. Our brains are waiting and able to help.
In her previous talk, Strupp used a powerful symbol. She took a glass globe and put a few marbles into it. “For each hour you spend watching a screen—movie, TV, computer, even reading a book—take out one marble. For each new sight or other sensory perception you take in, add a marble. In that way, you can find out if you are deficit spending when it comes to brain stimulation.” We also need challenging, new experiences to keep our brains young and functioning, to keep that beta amyloid from accumulating and wiping out our identities.
So what are the practical, gritty things we can do to keep our brains smiling? Strupp recommends activities that involve the hands to help boost short-term memory. That might be playing a musical instrument, gardening, drawing, writing, or creating artwork. Learning a language is also good brain exercise. In other words, going where we have not gone before, keeping our thinking organ engaged and refreshed. In that way, we create our own futures. Our brains are ready and waiting.
-- Jack Grenard, Carefree AZ 1-26-11
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| THERE IS A SEASON TURN TURN TURN
The fifth and final talk in Phyllis Strupp’s “Brain Fit Toolkit” was entitled Seasons. She explained that seasons refers to three kinds of time that are important to the brain: natural, cultural, and personal seasons. Natural means Nature’s four seasons, as the sun climbs and then drops over a year’s time. Cultural seasons are those we humans generate, around Nature’s calendar or other important events: Saint Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, for example.
While these days of celebration may link strongly to commercialism, Strupp says, we should still respect them. They are causes for celebration, for connecting to each other even across cultural boundaries. The third kind of seasons covers the human lifespan: diapers, toddling, teening, coming of age, fading. This kind of season is personal yet related to everyone else’s seasons.
Now, what does all this have to do with brain health, which Strupp preaches? The brain stores memory by the coordinates, time and place. Delving further into the gray matter, our brains tell time using the pineal gland, a pine-cone-shaped structure that some cultures call the third eye, placed deep in the brain's center. We also tell time without wristwatches because we’re all in touch with circadian rhythms -- it’s in our cells. We can feel the start and end of each day.
The Greeks recognized two basic kinds of time, says Strupp. One is chronos – “What time is it?” – and the other kairos – “What is it time for?” Subtle but different, measured differently. “Society is missing out on this second type of time, kairos,” says Strupp, with its emphasis on minutes and seconds and de-emphasis on Nature’s timetable.
“Alzheimer’s patients,” she says, “lose a sense of time and place. Time, place and season are pivotal to our memory.”
So what counts as good brain exercise? The answers include observation, sensory stimulation, and rituals and tradition. The key word here is celebration.
We celebrate holidays, personal achievements, birthdays, the more the merrier, Strupp says. Celebrations keep us connected with others.
-- Jack Grenard, Carefree AZ 3-8-11
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