Train the Brain
The brain has three broad sections.
Reptilian Brain: Bodily Functions, Autonomous
Limbic Brain: Memory, Instinct, and Reaction
Frontal Brain: Cognition, Conscious, response
Mindfulness / meditation doesn’t just affect our mind - it changes the way that the brain works permanently.
Dr. Lazard’s Harvard Research:
MRI scans show that after eight-weeks of mindfulness practice, the amygdala (the brain’s ‘fight or flight’ centre) shrinks. This primal region of the brain, associated with fear and emotion, is involved in the body’s response to stress. At the same time, the pre-frontal cortex, associated with higher order functions such as awareness, concentration and decision-making, becomes thicker.
Neuroplasticity - also called brain plasticity or brain malleability - is the brain's capacity to change and adapt, to re-organise itself by forming new neural connections.
Through functional MRI it’s been proven that our brain is capable of reorganising itself, both physically and functionally, throughout our life in response to our environment, behavior, thinking, and emotions.
The adult brain is not entirely “hard-wired” with fixed neuronal circuits. Wiring and re-wiring occurs with training (both in early life and in adulthood) and in response to injury (e.g. result of accidents, stroke, birth defects).
When you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow. An example we discussed earlier was the London cab drivers, and how their hippocampus, the part of the brain that holds spatial representation capacity, grew measurably larger than that of a bus driver.