Archive for the ‘neuroplasticity’ Category
Sunday, May 5th, 2013
“If you are cultivating mindfulness in your life, there is not one thing that you do or experience that cannot teach you about yourself by mirroring back to you the reflections of your own mind and body”, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Over the past years I have written about the fact that meditation is evidence based, that its scientific credibility has been shown by fMRIs as being capable of changing brain pathways. Neuroplasticity, the ways in which the brain is capable of changing itself has brought new hope to many. Neuroscientists have shown that meditation practice is not a New Age airy-fairy endeavour but that it does have scientific value and emotional benefits in a world desperate for ways in which to end the suffering of many.
I am currently in the middle of a program of mindfulness, the third of such meditative training practices I have undertaken in the past 20+ years. For me, a cardiac patient and one who lives with fibromyalgia, the process of daily meditation is one which is imperative for an acceptable, if not good quality of life.
While I have written extensively about meditation in general, based upon my earlier experience of meditation at the Shambala Centre, and one of the ‘courses’ I took at the university, I have not discussed the more specific mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression as it is new to me.
For those of us with chronic pain, anxiety and depression are constant companions. The comments and letters I receive daily from readers tell me that the same is true of most who live with fibromyalgia. For that reason I have been taking the MBCT program offered in the city where I live, in particular because my anxiety level is so very high now that I have had a heart attack. It has helped tremendously. I am working on living moment to moment, trying not to look back nor into the future. It isn’t easy and requires discipline to do the practices daily.
I am fortunate to be in a program led by two extraordinary women who are experienced as a meditator and are able to handle groups in a very relaxed, kind, thoughtful way for two hours. There is meditation, discussion and education happening at various times throughout the program and we are all made to feel as though our thoughts and feelings are important. Even more fortunate this is offered without cost within a safe environment. Unfortunately, it became one more undertaking at a time when I was doing a heart rehab program. Nonetheless, I knew that this was an important part of my training to accept yet another struggle with health issues.
The ‘aha’ moments for me happened when I truly began to understand a few years ago that fibromyalgia is a life long challenge and that the only person who could help me was me. Reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s works further enhanced my realization that I expended many hours anticipating pain and fatigue, worrying about the next flare up, filled with regrets about the past, and how distraught I am with the label of the fibromyalgia. In spite of this condition being non life threatening, my quality of life was not what I wished it was. Sitting still for twenty minutes a day was not something I relished. Meditation takes a great deal of commitment as it is not something one can do haphazardly, but when I practiced regularly I found I was able to be less reactive when the flare ups did occur. My nervous system loves it when I work to train my mind to become more calm. I can change those neural pathways and take another route through my mind.!
For the first two months following my heart attack I did not meditate. I was filled with anxiety and depression. While there was a heart rehab program dealing with diet, exercise and medications I could not find what my body and mind craved more…help for those emotional challenges that were self-destructive to my well-being and peace of mind. By chance I found the open Mindful group and subsequently an 8 week course that I was so desperate for during this crisis in my life. I am back on track with meditation and hopefully will continue with the discipline that is required to practice every day. Kabat-Zinn describes mindfulness:” It is the process of observing body and mind intentionally, of letting your experiences unfold from moment to moment and accepting them as they are” (Full Catastrophe Living, p.23). It is not easy and requires a commitment and daily practice, and there isn’t anyone who can do this for me. One would think that sitting still, allowing thoughts to emerge as they will, then labelling them “thinking” and gently pushing them away and focussing on the breath (over and over I might add) would be an easy task. It sounds so simple, yet it is perhaps the most difficult task I have undertaken- that is why it is called ‘mindfulness meditation ‘practice’!
Now living with two chronic conditions I will perhaps always be an anxious person but the earlier days of deep depression have lifted and there is something to work towards- a future with a recipe for hope, one where negative thoughts are just that…thoughts that can be dispelled.
Posted in breathing, chronic pain, cognitive behavior therapy, Fibromyalgia, heart rehab, Jon Kabat-Zinn, living in the moment, mindfulness meditation, neuroplasticity, pain, shambala | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
“When you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel“, David D. Burns
I have been pondering of late how I can change the nature of this website from that which focusses on symptoms and instead place more emphasis on neuroplasticity in action. Now as I write this 70th blog, for the time being at least, I want to write about living the experience of actively working on changing my brain, rather than espousing the rhetoric. After all these years I am finally fed up with defining myself, to myself, that I am “fibromyalgia”. I am bored with it. I have even become fed up with the word. What kind of a label have I given myself? It has become self fulfilling. I expect pain, fatigue and flare-ups. My brain, sleepy at times, crazy at others, jumps to the old pathways and keeps up the usual harangue. “Can’t do this, it will cause a flare-up”. “Too much excitement, I will be in pain tomorrow”. ” I shouldn’t do this long walk, I will be in a state of fatigue all week”. My brain eagerly accepts these depressing messages and goes down the well worn path. Strangely, it is so well travelled that it actually feels comfortable. New journeys into unfamiliar places in my brain means taking risks and cutting through the brush. So, why haven’t I taken this road before? Why do I have a mild flirtation with going a new route while trudging back into the boring, old worn out path? I have crept onto the unexplored by occasionally meditating, taking on a new, creative, repetitious craft (quilting), trying to remember how important movement is to changing the brain, but not in any disciplined way. I have not actively sought out joy in my life. When it happens I am thrilled but suspicious! The brain has amazing capacities and neural pathways, so why not bring the pathway to joy, rather than depression and anxiety?
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Posted in central nervous system, changing the brain, conquering fibromyalgia, david burns, david butler, depression, discipline, fatigue, Fibromyalgia, flare-ups, joy, labelling, neurodynamics, neuroplasticity, sensitive nervous system, symptoms of fibromyalgia, taking risks, triggers | 10 Comments »
Thursday, October 7th, 2010
“Life has got to be lived-that’s all there is to it. At seventy, I would say that advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that “this,too, shall pass!”, Eleanor Roosevelt
In my book I write about the confusion in the research regarding whether or not fibromyalgia improves (or not) with aging. I now know that there is no easy answer to that question and that it may improve for some but for many the opposite is true. Aging brings about its own aches, pains and fatigue that often cannot be differentiated from those of fibromyalgia. In fact, both may be exacerbated as one ages.
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Posted in 40 year olds, 50 year olds, brain changes, brain scans, eleanor roosevelt, fatigue and aches, Fibromyalgia, highly sensitive persons, menopause, neuroplasticity, old age and memory, older women, pain, personality types, pessimism, responses to crises, senior citizen, surgery, thanksgiving | 12 Comments »
Saturday, May 29th, 2010
“Every man (sic) can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain”, Santiago Ramon Cajal
I have before me books, newspaper clippings, magazines that speak to the phenomenal advances that are occurring in the area of brain science and remapping the brain. Just this week I have read in our Canadian newspaper (The Globe and Mail) about brain research exploring the differences in social economic status (SES) of children, in particular regarding children raised in poverty. The June edition of Yoga Journal speaks to training the brain through meditation. The book Buddha’s Brain explores the brains of those who meditate, while the magazine Shambhala Sun has an article (May edition) on this very topic as well. All of these I have read (or re-read) in just one week. Interestingly, apart from the Buddha’s Brain book, and the research cited in the newspaper, the other two are magazines not known to be ‘scientific’ in nature.
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Posted in Anil Kuchinad, art therapists, brain fog, brain rewiring, breathing, Buddha's Brain, changing the brain, chiropractors, chronic pain, creativity, deficits, discipline, emotional distress, Fibromyalgia, Globe and Mail newspaper, loss of gray matter in brains of FMS people, massage therapists, meditation, movement, neuroplasticity, neuroscientists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, premature aging of the brain, psychologists, sensory processing, Shambhala Sun, The Journal of Neuroscience, training the brain, yoga journal | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
“Far more than you may realize, your experience, your world, and even your self are the creations of what you focus on”, Winifred Gallagher
I have long been searching for the exact definition of fibromyalgia given that I have written so much and spoken so often about the various systems that are compromised within the body of someone with this dis-ease. To-day I have finally found the right way to express all that I have written about in these blogs and in my book. In particular, I can finally put the theory I espouse in my book to the test as I work to take this demon to a higher level of understanding. In the book I painstakingly explain the social and psychological conditions that are responsible when a person develops fibromyalgia. Here I present the end result of this theory I developed. The words have been articulated by my massage therapist/osteopath, Peter Goodman who has worked for so many years with clients who have struggled with fibromyalgia, myself included. These are his words (they are very technical, but bear with us), edited somewhat by me, worked through together as a summary of both our views: Fibromyalgia is a syndrome marked by habitually restricted circulation due to a build up of lactic acid within the myofascial system. It is caused by a sympathetic nervous system dominant stress disorder with accompanying dysfunctional brain maps. The work of Dr. Mick Thacker (found online: NOI notes Wednesday October 28, 2009) confirms our view as he believes “that much of chronic pain could be conceptualized as an ‘inflammation in the brain’ “. The PBS documentaries on positive neuroplasticity fill me with hope that someday soon there will be those writing about fibromyalgia and how to change the brain as we understand that link to exciting advances with neuroplasticity and pain.
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Posted in attentional crisis, chronic fatigue, dysfunctional brain maps, environmental irritants, Fibromyalgia, fibromyalgia and growing older, flu virus, hyper-aroused nervous system, irritation of fascia, knee pain, lactic acid build up, leg pain, muscloskeletal system, myofascial system, negative brain messages, negative emotions, neuroplasticity, neurovascular system, pain in feet, PBS documentaries, primary fibromyalgia, RAPT book, restricted circulation, root cause, secondary fibromyalgia, surgery, sympathetic nervous system, TV content, virus, winifred gallagher | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
” The tenuousness of modern life can make anyone feel overwrought”, Robin Marantz Henig
An article in the NewYork Times Magazine, October 4, 2009 by Robin Marantz Henig, entitled Understanding the Anxious Mind has led me to speculate about the anxious, highly reactive, overly sensitive temperaments of those of us with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndromes. While I am not the first to equate a hyperaroused nervous system with these two conditions, I believe that the new scientific information regarding the brain, remapping and neuroplasticity must also be taken into account if we are ever to reach some kind of understanding of both syndromes.
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Posted in amygdala, anxiety and fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue, Fibromyalgia, hypervigilance, jerome kagan, nathan fox, nature vs nurture, neuroplasticity, new york times magazine, peter levine, remapping the brain, robin marantz henig | 13 Comments »
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
“Self development is a higher duty than self sacrifice”, Elizabeth Stanton
As I read more and more about brain mapping and how to change the pain mappings in my brain I am reminded about how intensely I wrote in my book regarding the highly sensitive person (HSP, according to Elaine Aron). This is the ‘empath’, the person who senses what other people are feeling and takes on the emotions of others as though they were her/his own( I don’t mean this in the usual sense of the ‘psychic’ person, or in any mystical way). I still stand by that description of the person with fibromyalgia. We are like a toxic sponge! Now, I believe that this type of person (mainly, but, of course not solely, women) has the personality characteristics of the self sacrificing, doing good for others (what Dr. James Rochelle calls ‘goodism’) and ‘giving yourself away’ (a term Nick Matheson coined). When I think of Florence Nightingale on this May day, her birthday month, suffering from fibromyalgia, I think of her as a primary example of self sacrificing.
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Posted in allmothering, brain mapping, CBC video, David Suzuki, dis-ease, Dr. Norma Doidge, Dr.James Rochelle, Dr.Peter Levine, emotional trauma, empath, fear, Fibromyalgia, florence nightingale, goodism, group gatherings, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, psychonuerologists, root cause of fibromyalgia, self sacrificing, self-regulation therapy, sensory input, talk therapy, The Brain that Changes Itself, The Naute of Things, ultra-sensitive person, unconscious brain, Waking the Tiger Healing Trauma | 8 Comments »
