Dr. Juna Bobby walks through three quick exercises that rewire your brain when you're feeling down: drawing stick figures to activate multiple cortices, mindful walking to engage your brain's 3D design, and breathing to calm your nervous system. London cab drivers' hippocampi actually grew from navigation training. Small repeated actions reshape your brain.
Chapters
Hello and welcome. If you're here, I know that you're feeling a bit down and blue, and I want you to know that you're not alone. I've been there too, and millions of people have felt the way you feel right now. I know it may not sound convincing in the moment, but I'm here to tell you that there are things that you can learn and do to lift yourself up. My name is Juna Bobby MD, and I'm going to be leading you through 3 concepts and exercises. At the end of which I hope you walk away knowing that you have more power than you think over your mind, your body, and even the space that surrounds you. I'm going to be completely transparent about the science behind these mini lessons and how these concepts can help you because I want you to become the scientist of you. So let's get started. First, I want to share with you a fact about the brain that you may already know. Oftentimes we don't think of our brains as something separate from ourselves. But understanding our brain as an organ can be super empowering. Knowing the science of neuroplasticity, which simply means that your brain can change with learning and experiences, is informing a whole new perspective on exactly how much we can change our own brains. I'm gonna give you an extreme example of how much the brain can change. Matthew Whitaker, he's a jazz piano prodigy who was blind at birth. Dr. Charles Lim, a scientist who studied Matthew's brain, says that Matthew is using parts of the brain that's normally reserved for seeing to hear music. Now that's an absolutely incredible example of how flexible our brains can be. Now, a little less extreme, but still impressive example of neuroplasticity: London cab drivers. In order to pass their licensing exam, they have to memorize labyrinths of streets throughout London. Researchers found that their posterior hippocampus, an area deep in our brain that stores navigational memory, were enlarged. This is amazing because just a few decades ago, we used to think that the brain really changed significantly only when we were young. We now know that neuroplasticity, where the ability of our brains to change with experience and learning, is something that occurs throughout our entire lifespan. Now that you understand the power of the brain to change, let's do a little activity. Grab a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Let's together draw a quick stick figure. These are simple, basic shapes that anyone can draw. Now you might be saying to yourself, why does drawing have anything to do with feeling blue? I'll explain that in the next mini lesson. So please humor me for now. And if you happen to be artistically talented, please go ahead and make it a little more elaborate and challenge yourself and have fun with it. So let's start with a circle for the head and lines for the body, for the arms, legs, join the little eyes, a little nose and mouth. Now let's put it into action. Maybe a little basketball or a carrot to munch on. Just use your imagination. Now this simple drawing exercise use many areas of your brain, the motor cortex, the the sensory cortex, the visual cortex. This little activity already changed the way your neurons connect with each other. Now I want to introduce you to the sea squirt. What the heck is a sea squirt and what does it have to do with our brains? The sea squirt is a marine animal, and I learned about it from my mentor, Dr. Rodolfo Linas, when I was a medical student working in his laboratory. Dr. Linas is a preeminent neuroscientist, having written over 600 academic papers, which have been sighted over 60,000 times. Now, the sea squirt is a very interesting animal to neuroscientists because the first part of their lives, they have a tiny little nervous system that they use to move about at the bottom of the ocean floor. They move until they find a good spot where they want to plant themselves. They become sessile, meaning they no longer move when they plant themselves, and the digestive juices at this point dissolves their own nervous system. And this is so curious. Why does this happen? Well, because it no longer needs to move in 3-dimensional space. So the theory is that as human beings, we've evolved to have the biggest cortex made for higher brain orders like planning, predicting, and imagination because we move in 3-dimensional space and we interact with our environment. In fact, we affect our environment like no other living biological organism. We change every space that we occupy. Just look around you. If you're indoors, you'll have a hard time finding something that's not human-made. So our amazing human brains are made for planning so that we can move through three-dimensional space and create things that affect our environment. So that's why I had you draw that little stick figure. That was your brain having an effect on your immediate space and creating something. Unfortunately, due to modern conveniences that we have created for ourselves, we move less than we ever did before. And we tend to move even less when we're feeling a little bit down and blue. So now that you understand that our brains are built for moving in space, let's stand up. Let's take a few steps around the room, or if you can, even step outside. So let's slowly walk around looking at the things in our space as if we've never seen them before in our lives. Just pretend and use your imagination. Our brains are designed to use our imagination for planning and creating change in our environment. These unique human traits help us to remember where things are and to predict what's coming up as we move through 3-dimensional space. Now for your final and third experience, the relaxation response. This is a physiologic response that everyone alive has access to. This little exercise will help boost your metacognition, or the human ability to step outside of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors so that you can coach your own brain. So let's sit quietly and get comfortable. Close your eyes or lower them with a soft gaze, whatever feels good for you. And on your next out-breath, whenever that is for you, just release the muscles in your face, your neck, and shoulders. Imagine that you're deflating a balloon. And whenever your next in-breath is, Say quietly to yourself, "I am." And on the exhale, "safe." Inhale, "I am." Exhale, "safe." There's no wrong or right way to do this. I'm going to leave you for just 30 seconds, and whenever your mind wanders, just kindly say to yourself, "Oh well," and return to your inhale, "I am." and exhale, safe. Now just gently release the phrase, and if you haven't already done so, slowly open your eyes and take a deep breath. And you can stretch if you like. Now let's summarize what we did together. In the stick figure drawing exercise, you created physical change on a piece of paper. In the walking exercise, you perceived your surroundings in a new way using your senses. These two exercises empowered your brain by allowing your brain to do what it does best. That is directly creating change in your environment and moving through three-dimensional space using your imagination. Modern conveniences rob us of movement. So in order to boost our brain power, we need to consciously make a point to move and create change in our space. This can be done through simple things like creating a piece of art, making a healthy meal for ourselves, just doodling, gardening, or even just cleaning out one drawer. Novelty can also boost brain power. So pretending that we are seeing things for the first time or actually trying out new things, or even just going outside in nature is always a great boost for your brain. The third exercise. The relaxation response trains your nervous system to increase parasympathetic tone, the rest and digest system, allowing your mind to settle down, boosting your metacognitive skills. Metacognition gives us that pause, that moment of opportunity to steer our own thoughts towards more realistic, helpful perspectives. Even this very short experience has changed the neuronal connections in your brain. So start small, one little action at a time, and over time, just like those London cab drivers, you too can take an active role in shaping your own brain. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I wish you wellness.
