I happen to love running.  It’s something that gives me strength (physically, but also mentally) by allowing me time to be present to nature around me, to clear my mind, and to replenish myself to face whatever challenges may lie ahead. 

But this isn’t about my running.   It’s about the powerful mind-body connection that exists that not only affects our physical well-being but also our mental well-being .   It’s about what you can do to strengthen the connections and pathways in your brain that create this well-being, to literally rewire your brain.

I learned about rewiring my brain first hand from minor running injuries that have landed me in physical therapy (PT) on and off over the years.   I’ve had some injuries that are just pulled muscles, but the ones I’m talking about are more niggling and lingering ones where I have felt tightness, pain or discomfort that just won’t seem to go away.  What I learned is that often in these cases I have slipped back into old habits of poor form, where the neuromuscular firing patterns (the communication between my brain and muscles) get out of whack, causing me to overuse smaller, stabilizing muscles first instead of the bigger, stronger muscles that should “fire” first.  In that case, the short daily exercises I would practice were not just intended to strengthen my muscles, but more importantly to rewire my brain, to create new neural pathways to help my body move more efficiently.  One particularly helpful thing that my physical therapist told me is that I can best practice this by becoming more aware of simply walking throughout the day, and paying attention to the correct muscles firing as I push off.  While that requires no additional time in my day, that simple awareness has gone a long way.

So you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with your life.  Believe it or not, it has a lot to do with it.   As a psychologist, I am in the business of helping people to change their behaviors, to replace old habitual ways of being with more helpful ones, to reduce patterns of stress, anxiety, anger; to grow patience, calmness and joy.  In essence, I am in the business of helping people to rewire their brains.  In order to make any kind of change, we need to carve out new pathways in our brain to take over the old pathways that are no longer serving us.  When the neurons in our brain fire with enough frequency and consistency, we wire in new connections.  While that may sound daunting, the truth is that it may be simpler than it sounds.  My experience with PT offers a helpful model for thinking about this, by incorporating daily awareness with short, daily exercises that help to rewire new patterns of behavior. 

Let’s say that you want to change the way that you react to stress in your life – something that I think most of us can relate to.  Here are some steps that you could take to begin to rewire your brain:

1.  Become increasingly aware of your old patterns as you go through your day.  Awareness is the first step to changing any behavior.  Notice how you respond to stress by observing the tension in your body, what emotions tend to arise throughout the day (e.g., anger, irritability, anxiety), and what thoughts you say to yourself that feed your stress.  By paying attention as you go through the normal motions in your day you set the stage for being able to choosehow you want to be.

2.  Practice short mind-body exercises that teach and remind your body what it feels like when it is relaxed, and that teach you how to observe what is happening without getting pulled away by it (even 3-5 minutes several times throughout the day will go a long way!).  

3.  Once you have practiced under calm circumstances, use these short exercises to begin to interrupt the stress response when you feel it starting to build.  See if you can use these exercises to be with what is happening without getting swept away by your thoughts or emotions.

Just these three steps, which don’t require you to set aside much time in your day, will begin to create new pathways in your brain.  Once you start to make small changes, you’ll be more motivated to keep going. 

To get started, feel free to try some of the free meditations on this website.  Also, stay posted for my new book coming out in early spring 2017 focused on practical tools for transforming stress and cultivating well-being.