I love neuroscience. If I could audit a college course just for pure fascination
value, it would be a neuroscience class. I'm not sure where this fascination
came from but it stretches to every part of my life, most notably Yoga. Over
the past decades science has been proving, or rather catching up, to what yogis
and Buddhist have known for years; that meditation has profound found effects
on the brain. Such effects are not localized to the brain because well we all
know that the brain is the command center of the body, so the effects we create
by calming the brain and resetting g our neuro pathways reach to every cell of
our body.
A few years ago I read the book, My Stroke Of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, she
is a neuroscientist who had a stroke. I read the book and thought it was good
but I didn't put it down thinking "wow!" like you hope to when you
are reading about something you are enthusiastic about. And maybe that was
simply because the experience she had doesn’t translate to written word. You
have to see her, hear the emotion swell in her voice, watch her body revert to
stroke like status and the lift to the light she found within her own battered
and bruised brain. So here watch for yourself:
Right?! Wow! Pretty amazing. She got to see witness her own brain
deteriorate, surrender, and then decide that the reason she came back was to
share the peace she found. It was almost too much for me. Actually it was too
much for me because I know how hard accessing that right side of the brain is.
I've been trying to meditate for years and the discipline it takes is
astounding. But having a stroke seems a very drastic way of skipping the
practice. So what is the trick, well there's not one, there's just practice.
Practice and the willingness to never stop learning. So that's what I’ve been
doing.
I’ve been going to yoga school and studying Ayurveda and working towards
living a more disciplined yogic life. This weekend while I was in a training
session I had when some of the information I’ve been learning in school as well
as other studies, including this video from TED talks, all came together in one
moment of awareness. It happened of course during a meditation.
It was during a session on Pranayama, the yoga of breath. We were lead
through a series of breathing exercises for about an hour then we sat in
meditation for about 15 minutes. As I began my meditation letting go of the
breathing techniques we’d been working with and simply observing my breath I
began to feel a sort of swirling sensation in my head and I thought
"right, I’m trying to access the right part of my brain." So I sent a
little more breath there and the swirling sensation increased. Then the sensation
moved to the left side of my head and I thought,”ok, this is ok because I want
balance." Then I realized I was doing a lot of thinking for a meditation
so I took a calming breath and let my thoughts go. Then it came, that moment of
inspiration that gives you the clarity to keep up with your practice.
As I let my thoughts go the swirling sensation in my brain increased then as
though the bones in my head evaporated the sensation spread apart. I saw in my
mind the two sides of my brain becoming the walls of a canyon, a great and
beautiful calm between them; orange and yellow and red in color. And without
"thinking" it was more like a feeling I thought "how do I cross
this canyon" and I saw/felt a blue bird soar over from my right brain to
my left and back again and then floating on the breeze sort of danced between
them. Like a barn swallow swooping through the air and as he flew the canyon
walls started moving back together. And then I startled.
it couldn't have taken more than a few seconds like the way dreams stretch
on for hours when only a few minutes has passed between alarms. But it was so
cool! I knew without having to question my experience that what I was seeing
was the tool I needed to balance my brain to be able to access both parts of my
brain and have better control over which side I function in and when.
That key is my breath. After spending an hour learning the tools to control the
breath and the good fortune of have watched Ms. Bolte and the physical and scientific
knowledge of the brain, something about that combination allowed me to stop
trying to learn how to meditate and just do it. Almost like an athlete who has
trained for years before that one race in the Olympics or an actor rehearsing
for weeks before opening night, at some point you just have to have faith that
you have learned what you need and then let it go and just do it. Except for me
I had to let everything go and just be. Yeah it was pretty cool.
Fascinating.
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