Moving Differently Can Help Rewire and Enhance Your Brain
I like to think of myself as wearing several hats – where on the one hand I am an investor and wealth creator, on the other I am a ceaseless seeker of health and wellness. It is always my endeavor – and that of fellow seeker Chad Lefevre – to find and bring my readers/ listeners effective, realistic, actionable, and hopefully, low cost solutions. Chad was fascinated to learn about the life and work of Anat Baniel whom I interviewed recently. Baniel has developed the NeuroMovement system which has helped numerous people with injuries, mobility issues, and conditions such as cerebral palsy and special needs.
The making and breaking of habits.
As Chad puts it, the brain is a habit making machine. Think about it – there are so many things that we just do automatically, without conscious thought, just because we’ve always done them that way. The brain falls into a groove and does what it thinks it is meant to do. This is why we think of habits as difficult, if not impossible, to break. We think of certain limitations as being natural and unchangeable.
So if, during exercise, we are only able to reach our hands down up to our ankles we believe that this is all we are capable of. We don’t think that one day we could reach our toes and then another day we could actually touch our palms on the ground! However, we can change what and how much we can do. This is something I once demonstrated in front of a live audience on PBS.(You can find details about a package we had created atadielgorel.com.)
We do what we do because we think we are wired to do things in a particular way. However, Anat Baniel’s work shows us that this is not true. It is possible to actually change the physical structure of the brain, to improve performance, range of motion, and even ease persistent aches and pains. She has worked with people that have cerebral palsy, children with special needs or ADHD, and people that have suffered brain injuries or strokes. She has demonstrated how the brain can, in fact, change and be rewired.
Learning a new language or musical instrument, learning to write with the hand you don’t favor, and simply changing the way you’ve always moved – these can bring about surprising changes and enhancements. They can help us heal, reduce chronic pains and even improve athletic performance.
The brain can change.
Chad shares some very interesting insight into the reason for experiencing pain in the body. Apparently, most pain and injury is the result of compensation for some other part of the body. The fact is that we still don’t fully understand the interconnectedness of the body; how misalignment or disorder in one part of the body finds echoes in other parts of the body. Sometimes, when something goes wrong in one part of the body, the impacts can show up in distant, seemingly unconnected parts of the body.
It is this interconnectedness that we are now learning more about. We are discovering how small, slow movements, how changing the way we move, can give us amazing results – reducing pain, helping us become more flexible, and even increasing athletic performance! I recommend catching Chad and I in conversation as we discuss more about Dr. Anat Baniel’s work in NeuroMovement. You may well find that this is something that could be life-changing for you. Don’t miss it!
Also stay tuned for more conversations about powerful, workable and cost effective wellness. I will shortly be speaking with Dr. Shang Hong Liu, who is a practitioner of western medicine as well as traditional Chinese medicine – combining the best of both disciplines so to speak. Watch this space!
