Action Meditation: Three Steps to Declutter Your Mind with Brain Science

Hello and welcome to the RxChill Pill podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Juna Bobby MD, and I'm a physician specializing in mind-body medicine. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I upload meditations, and this one today is a little different from the usual relaxation response. I'm now adding a segment called action meditations, and and this is one of them. You're actually gonna write in this one, so get a pen and paper ready, and you'll hit pause when you do the 60-second writing exercise. You're also going to do a short relaxation response and visualization—super short, just a few minutes—and at the end you're going to get an explanation on why this works for your brain. This one is intended for when you're feeling super cluttered or very overwhelmed and you just need to know what to do, the next step. If you want the meditative version of this, opt in for the newsletter at mindbodyspace.com and you'll get it right into your inbox. Or you could just simply email podcast@mindbodyspace.com and in the subject line, Episode #43: Declutter the Brain, and in the email body, just simply write Please send the full guided version. So have you been feeling cluttered lately? Well, you're not alone. So whether it's mental clutter or physical clutter, maybe the sense of feeling kind of overwhelmed with clutter, this is actually quite common right now because we've been living inside of our computers. For most of us, we've been in Zoom meetings, whether student or CEO, we're all inside this two-dimensional emotional space. The most important thing to do is get out of our minds. So physically and literally and figuratively to get out of our minds. What do I mean by this? Well, take a pen and paper and start to do a brain dump. Literally just write without taking your pen off of the paper. Put a timer on for 60 seconds and just write whatever comes to mind, pen to paper. Don't even lift it up. Don't question your thoughts. Just write it out. And it might just be a train of thought, or it might be a to-do list, whatever comes up. You'll see how it flows. The key here is not to stop yourself from writing whatever is coming through your mind. So don't hesitate and just keep writing, even if it's just something like, "I can't even think of anything to write." Just write that. So hit pause right now, go and do it for 60 seconds, and come back for the next step. Now let's just sit and breathe for just 1 minute. Just sit quietly and comfortably. Take a deep inhale and exhale. Take a deep inhale. And exhale. Now take a deep inhale. And this time really let it all go. Like you're deflating a balloon out of your shoulders and neck. Let your face just fall. And on your next breath, whenever that may be, just let gravity pull everything down and release. Feel that gravity working to just let everything melt away. And now ask yourself, What is the most important thing to me? Oftentimes when we feel cluttered, we kind of feel lost and we lose touch with our priorities. And it happens to everyone. So just take a breath and say to yourself, what are my core values? What is the most important thing for me to do right now? And now zoom out into the future and see yourself if you've done this most important thing, staying true to your core values, on a moment-to-moment basis. And this is your North Star. Just always having this in your back pocket. What is the most important thing to remember? And it always comes back to our core values. So now for the next minute, get that pen and paper again and start to write down in a more cohesive way What is the most important thing that you need to do right now, today? Maybe you write the top 3 things. Then maybe you look at the whole week and see what the goal is. Of the week, and then perhaps the month. And then you can zoom out into the quarter or the year. And if you like, zoom all the way out to the rest of your life and see where you want to end up. When we connect to our core values, we'll know what's most important to do right now. So you can do this anywhere, anytime. It just takes 3 short minutes. The first minute, you set a timer and you write down everything that is going through your mind without editing anything, just like a train of thought. Then you put the pen and paper down, you sit quietly, for 1 minute, taking a few deep breaths and letting the tension melt away from your muscles, especially your neck and shoulders and your face. The final step is to come back to that pen and paper and just write out what is the most important thing right now. Top 3 things. You can zoom out as far as you like, and you can also zoom in to your day and what needs to be done moment to moment. The reason that actually taking a pen and paper takes us out of our minds and declutters us is because sometimes when we're just thinking, it's like being inside a 2-dimensional computer screen or phone screen. We're not making all of those neural connections that we like to make when we integrate thoughts and ideas and plans. So when we take that piece of pen and paper into 3-dimensional space and we start writing and we hear what we're writing, we see what we're writing, we're using all of our sensory motor neurons as well as the thinking neurons. It kind of takes us out into our sensory motor cortex. So that's kind of an integration and using more of our brain than when we're just thinking and going in circles. So once we come out into the 3-dimensional space, the sensory motor neurons start to communicate with each other with chemicals that actually transmit an electrical current. And when we're writing in 3-dimensional space, our finger sensory motor neurons, which are some of the largest areas that take up our brain because our fingers are very sensitive, and our visual cortex starts to light up because we're looking at and recognizing letters. So for one, writing slows down our thoughts, and so it gives us some time to digest and process and comprehend our thoughts. If we go back and reflect and read what we wrote, we're tapping into an area called the ventral occipitotemporal cortex. All of this we know from modern neuroimaging measurements, from the functional magnetic resonance imaging studies and diffusion-weighted imaging studies. So what does that all really mean? Like I said, it's integration. It's like getting out of your repetitive thoughts and using more parts of your brain so you can integrate your information and come out on the other end feeling more clear, feeling more purpose, and knowing what to do to get out of our cluttered minds. Taking those few deep breaths elicits our relaxation response and takes us out of our stress response, opening our brains and creativity up for more comprehension and understanding of what we need to do in our lives to align ourselves with what we want for ourselves, our goals. Then finally, after taking that moment in the relaxation response, allows more clarity in thinking. So perhaps on the second round of writing, you were able to experience a lot more clarity. Next step would be decluttering our space. So, look out for that meditation. If you like these meditations and tips on how to stress less, do more, and be happier right in your inbox, then go to mindbodyspace.com and opt in to our newsletter. And always remember that clarity is just a few deep breaths away. Please email podcast@mindbodyspace.com to let us know what you thought about this episode, and to let us know if there's any other topics you'd like us to cover. This is Dr. Juna signing off. Wishing you wellness.