Skip to main content

Thinking differently

Neuroscience is an interesting subject, and for me came to the fore a few weeks ago when I was asked to have an MRI scan to check out a series of pretty 'gnarly' headaches that I have been experiencing for a while... I turned up for the scan which went well (apart from the poor lady doing it having to deal with a broken air conditioning unit half way through which stopped the machine..) and I was given a DVD to bring home which I promptly popped into my laptop to watch ...

Wow! It is quite remarkable to behold what is up there within the old 'grey matter'.. A spaghetti mix of blood vessels weaving in and out of brain matter, and that is it. Nothing more, nothing less. Having watched it, I felt quite enlightened to know that (a) there is nothing wrong with my brain and (b) that we are such simple beings. I began to think very differently about myself, how I think, and what I do. I realized that worry really is simply a process our minds go through, which often simply wastes energy. I realized why our heads get so hot (there is a lot of blood up there being pumped around!). Since then, I have been refocused on the power of now, the present and the fact that we are given all the physical tools within our heads to decide how we want to feel and what we want to do - now. I am not entirely sure why, but I have a feeling it is the result of a medical procedure, the MRI scan, reminding me that life is often not as complicated as you at first think. Yes, the human brain is remarkable, but in the end it is actually quite a simple concept of chemical and electrical interactions.

It is amazing to think that we all have the same physical make up, something so complex and yet so simple and we are all empowered to make choices about how we use it. Having an MRI really emphasized this for me, and as a result I am thinking differently.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow, pretty nice article. Where can I get this RSS?

Kate Stepman
spy source
9:30 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas & Looking Forwards

Happy Christmas to those who have arrived here to read this post. The world and the media remind us often that Christmas is a time for giving, for compassion, for family, for celebrating Jesus and for receiving. It is also a time when we reflect on the past year - what has occurred and happened in our lives and where we have come. The New Year beckons and we begin to look forward to the positive changes that we desire, our aspirations and hopes for the future. We want to feel better in ourselves, and have an improved world with less stress, anxiety and suffering. Looking forwards is a powerful thing. It provides us with the ability to consider what may be, as we journey into the unknown. It enables us to work out where we would like things to go. In the animal kingdom, I expect we are one of very very few species that have this ability to look out over long periods of time. Other animals will look forwards I expect season by season, if that. They concentrate on the present. ...
5 comments
Read more

The pace of life

As we begin the Christmas season around this beautiful world, a period of reflection often occurs. Christmas (for most of the western world) is a time when we think about the year gone by, and about how far we have come along the road, and then we turn to the new year and begin to think about how far we are going to go and what we are going to do with our time next year. We all live life at different paces, sometimes we move quickly, at other times more slowly. We each choose how fast we want to move, making decisions that alter our progress and that sometimes take us in different directions. Sometimes those decisions help us gather momentum, at other times we lose it. That got me to thinking about physics...I was never really any good at school physics, I think the highest exam mark I ever got was around 40% despite the attempts of some very good teachers!, and the lowest was somewhere in the teens ....now a few years on from school, the querky reality is how much physics i...
2 comments
Read more

Sic Parvis Magna

From small beginnings... This is a phrase that I often latch on to. After all everything has to start somewhere. The seed of an idea has to be planted before the seed can develop. Nothing can be generated from nothing.. This week I have been sorting few several problems at work, problems that all stemmed from something small. An assumption about something that turned out to be incorrect was the common denominator. This got me thinking about how catastrophic events can stem from one small act, and how delicate we sometimes have to be when we make a judgement or decision about something. Like snow gathering on an acorn rolled down a slope, things can quickly escalate. The key observation that came out of the problem solving actually relates not to the seed or the person making the assumption, but rather what happens when others who put you in a position of authority rely on your judgement and assumption to take things forward... The snowball moves faster and gets larger and larger. ...
1 comment
Read more