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	<title>awareness Archives - Amazing Health Advances</title>
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		<title>The One Mind-Management Technique Required for Sustainable Healing</title>
		<link>https://amazinghealthadvances.net/the-one-mind-management-technique-required-for-sustainable-healing-7760/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-one-mind-management-technique-required-for-sustainable-healing-7760</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[AHA Publisher]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Dec 2021 08:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Archive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Emotional Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brain awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mind awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mind management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-regulation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thought-tree]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://amazinghealthadvances.net/?p=13700</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Caroline Leaf &#8211; In this podcast (episode #344) and blog, I talk about the importance of self-awareness and how it is a key part of the healing process. Without awareness, we cannot change or move forward. To make changes in our thoughts and subsequent communication, we need to be strategic, proactive and deliberate about our thinking. We need to try to be aware of what we are thinking about every day. This is called self-regulation. Self-regulation means that we don’t need to be held captive to our thoughts. Instead, we can capture our thoughts and change the way they impact our lives, and this begins with awareness. Awareness means tuning into the messages coming from ournonconscious mind into the conscious mind, where they can be changed. Once a thought is in the conscious mind, directed neuroplasticity(the ability of the brain to change) kicks in, and the protein branches holding the memory information in vibrational frequencies weaken. That’s when the thought is at its weakest and can be reconceptualized. This is why I keep talking about embracing our issues. We need to face what is bothering us and become aware of it—that is, be conscious of it—by gathering an awareness of the signals our mind, brain and body are sending us, such as feeling anxious, depressed, upset, sick, overwhelmed and so on. Once we do this, we can draw out the toxic stuff in our nonconscious mind and bring them into the conscious mind, where they are malleable. Only then can we process and reconceptualize what is bothering us and move on. Questions that can be helpful to ask as you do this are: 1. What keeps popping back into your mind? What thought(s)seem urgent? 2. What are you experiencing through your five senses? How are these thoughts making you feel physically? Gather awareness of these physical warning signals emerging from your body. 3. What is the information in the thoughts bubbling up from your nonconscious mind into your conscious mind right at this moment? Gather awareness of this information, noting how many thoughts there are and what they are.  4. What feelings are attached to the information the thought contains? Every thought has emotions as part of its structure—they’re stored in the nonconscious mind. When thoughts move into the conscious mind, we feel the emotions of them. How are these thoughts making you feel emotionally? Gather awareness of the feelings attached to each thought. The key thing to remember as we practice self-awareness is that we need to manage what we are aware of, or the thought can go back into our nonconscious mind even more toxic than before. Self-awareness is one part of the mind-management, as I discuss in my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, my app Neurocycle and my blogs and podcasts. The easiest way to understand the whole process of mind management is to imagine a thought tree. Look at it from the branches to the tree trunk to the roots. The first thing you need to do is gatherawareness of the branches and leaves, which are your behaviors and their attached emotions. Then you need to focus on the whole tree to try to make some sense of it—the branches, trunk, and roots, or the detail of your behaviors and emotions, what perspective they bring, and where they come from. This is a very revealing process—you are bringing the memories of the thoughts out into the open and into your conscious mind so that you can work on pruning and grafting the leaves and branches based on your process of self-awareness and self-discovery. This, in turn, will help you work towards stabilizing and consolidating the growing branches and leaves, much like those posts that are often tied to a tree or part of a tree to help it grow. Then you should allow the new branches to settle a little before you do more work on them to change the way this thought plays out in your life on a long-term basis. All of this first starts with awareness! To read the original article click here.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net/the-one-mind-management-technique-required-for-sustainable-healing-7760/">The One Mind-Management Technique Required for Sustainable Healing</a> appeared first on <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net">Amazing Health Advances</a>.</p>
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		<title>Heartbeat Can Help Detect Signs of Consciousness in Patients After a Coma</title>
		<link>https://amazinghealthadvances.net/heartbeat-can-help-detect-signs-of-consciousness-in-patients-after-a-coma-7276/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=heartbeat-can-help-detect-signs-of-consciousness-in-patients-after-a-coma-7276</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[AHA Publisher]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Apr 2021 07:00:23 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Archive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Advances]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Neuroscience Advances]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brain injury]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[consciousness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disorder of consciousness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EEG]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heart and brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heart and brain connection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heart and brain interactions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-consciousness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unresponsive wakefulness]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://amazinghealthadvances.net/?p=11371</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>L&#8217;Université de Liège via Newswise &#8211; A new study conducted jointly by the University of Liege (Belgium) and the Ecole normale superieure &#8211; PSL (France) shows that heart brain interactions, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), provide a novel diagnostic avenue for patients with disorders of consciousness. This study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Catherine Tallon-Baudry (ENS, CNRS) introduces : &#8220;The scientific community already knew that in healthy participants, the brain&#8217;s response to heartbeats is related to perceptual, bodily and self-consciousness. We now show that we can obtain clinically meaningful information if we probe this interaction in patients with disorders of consciousness.&#8221; In the past decades several important improvements for the diagnosis of these patients have been made, yet, it remains a big challenge to measure self-consciousness in these patients that cannot communicate. For their study, the researchers included 68 patients with a disorder of consciousness. Fifty-five patients suffered from the minimally conscious state, and showed fluctuating but consistent signs of consciousness but were unable to communicate, and 13 patients in the unresponsive wakefulness state (previously called vegetative state) who do not show any behavioural sign of awareness. These patients were diagnosed using the coma recovery scale-revised, a standardized clinical test to assess conscious behaviour. &#8220;As these patients suffered from severe brain injury, they might be unable to show behavioural signs of awareness. Therefore, we also based our diagnosis on the brain&#8217;s metabolism as probe for consciousness. This is a state-of-the art neuroimaging technique that helps to improve the diagnosis of patients with disorders of consciousness. Although these scans are very informative, they can only be acquired in specialized centers,&#8221; says Jitka Annen (GIGA Consciousness, ULiege). The researchers recorded brain activity during resting state (i.e. without specific task or stimulation). They selected EEG segments right after a heartbeat and EEG segments at random timepoints (i.e. not time-locked to a heartbeat). They then used machine learning algorithms to classify (or diagnose) patients into the two diagnostic groups. Diego Candia-Rivera (ENS) further comments: &#8220;EEG segments not locked to heartbeats were informative to predict if a patient was conscious or not, but EEG segments locked to heartbeats were more accurate in doing so. Our results indicate that the heartbeat evoked potential can give us supplementary evidence for the presence of consciousness.&#8221; It is important to note that the heartbeat evoked responses were more in accordance with the diagnosis based on brain metabolism than the diagnosis based on behavioural assessment. It seems therefore that the heartbeat evoked response can be used to measure a perspective of self-consciousness that is not assessed successfully using behavioural tools. &#8220;The next challenge is to translate our findings to clinical applications so that all patients with disorders of consciousness can benefit from better diagnosis using widely available bedside assessment technologies,&#8221; concludes Steven Laureys, head of GIGA Consciousness research unit and Centre du Cerveau (ULiege, CHU Liege).</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net/heartbeat-can-help-detect-signs-of-consciousness-in-patients-after-a-coma-7276/">Heartbeat Can Help Detect Signs of Consciousness in Patients After a Coma</a> appeared first on <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net">Amazing Health Advances</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Difference Between Rest &#038; Restoration, Why Resting Alone Is Not Sufficient</title>
		<link>https://amazinghealthadvances.net/the-difference-between-rest-restoration-why-resting-alone-is-not-sufficient-7126/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-difference-between-rest-restoration-why-resting-alone-is-not-sufficient-7126</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2021 08:00:29 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Archive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[burned out]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exhausted]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[finding peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[neurocycle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reflect]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resting to restore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[restore your mind and brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self care]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://amazinghealthadvances.net/?p=10926</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Caroline Leaf &#8211; In the middle of a global pandemic, the idea of rest seems so…complicated. What is it? How do you do it? How do you find peace when things seem so crazy? In this podcast (episode #253) and blog, I talk about the difference between resting to restore versus just resting, why rest alone is often not enough, and how to use a Neurocycle to effectively and sustainably restore your mind and brain. How many of you have ever binge-watched a Netflix show because you desperately needed a break, only to feel completely unrested the minute the binge ends? How many of you went on that weekend break or holiday, and came back feeling like you are still exhausted, even though you spent hours lying on that beach and going for long walks in beautiful scenery? If this sounds familiar, you are not alone! Indeed, finding ways to rest well can be incredibly challenging — it is a recurring challenge in my life. Although there is a ton of information out there (just look at how many social media posts are encouraging you to make self-care a routine part of your regimen!), so many people are still exhausted and burned out. It seems like almost every day I get a new article or research notification telling me how bad things are! So, what can we do? Is there hope? Although this may sound counterintuitive, rest has so much to do with the mind. Regardless of what technique we use or thing we do to rest, if we can’t manage what is going through our heads, it can backfire on us, leaving us feeling tired and downcast. To do this, I recommend doing a Neurocycle, the scientific mind-management process I have developed and researched over the past three decades and discuss in my upcoming book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and in my latest clinical trials. These 5 steps can help you learn how to rest well—speaking from experience. Recently, I started using the Neurocycle daily to find out why I was still having frequent periods exhaustion and burn-out. I knew the main reason why I felt this way was because of the issues I was dealing with in my business and family—I knew the root cause and was analyzing this because I try to live a mind-managed lifestyle (I really do apply my own system in my life!). I also have an incredible relationship with my husband—we live and work well together. I do daily fasted workouts and hot yoga, I eat real food mindfully, I have daily infrared sauna sessions, and really do try to take care of my mind and body. But still I was not truly resting, and I kept saying “I am so exhausted”. I couldn’t seem to catch my “mental breath”, so I knew something else was going on as well, and that I needed to dig deeper to find the vein of that root in my life. So, starting on Jan 1st, for around 7 minutes a day, I went through the 5 steps of the Neurocycle (gather, reflect, write, recheck and active reach—see below) to find out why I was not feeling rested even though I was taking “breaks” and living a mind-managed lifestyle. This is what I did daily: Step 1: Gather In this step, I gathered awareness of the rest I had that day and my physical and emotional warning signals, behaviors and perspectives. Step 2: Reflect I then asked, answered and discussed why I am feeling the way I do, based on what I became aware of in step 1. Step 3: Write I then wrote my answers down to help me organize my thinking and gain more clarity into how I felt that day and why. To do this, I used a Metacog, a way of writing that is naturally and instinctively based on how we try to work out meaning from information. In this method, I focus on the essentials, which is usually around 15 to 35 percent of the information we are processing. For more on this, see my book Think, Learn, Succeed. Step 4: Recheck In this step, I did what I call a “mental autopsy”. I rechecked what I wrote on my Metacog, looking for patterns and triggers, and thought about why I felt the way I did and how I can do better. Step 5: Active Reach Lastly, I worked out an action for the day from my recheck, which would help me practice what I learnt about myself and my need to rest better that day. Today is day 34—I still have 29 days of practice left to establish this thought as a habit in this 63-day cycle. However, I was so excited at what I have discovered thus far, which is helping me enormously, that I wanted to share it with you in this podcast and blog. I noticed the obvious pretty quickly, which was that I still wasn’t taking sufficient time out, and had been swinging between a heavy workload, financial strain, and a family crisis. I addressed this through my active reaches daily by taking time alone in the sauna and having long, hot baths at night. However, I was still battling with exhaustion. So, what was going on here? What was I doing wrong? My “ah-ha” moment came around day 14 (two weeks in): I had learned how to build rest into my routine, but I still wasn’t fully restoring!  So, for the next week, days 15-21, I embraced, processed and reconceptualized this realization using the 5 steps of the Neurocycle until I worked out how to rest to restore versus just rest. And this is what I want to share with you now: Let’s begin with the definition of restoration. Restoring is a transitive verb; it means to give back, to return, to put or bring back into existence and use…to renew. The opposite of restoration is to weaken, undermine, cripple, undo, depress, split or dull. Rest, on the other hand, is defined as ceasing of activity to relax and refresh, or to recover strength. I recognized that, by days 19-21, I was getting the rest bit right, but I had missed the restore element. I wasn’t watching what my chaotic mind was doing while I was resting! So, for example, when I binged watched Netflix in my infrared sauna or with my family, or went to an exercise class, or had fun with my family, I was resting physically, but not restoring. Deep down, I was still worrying about a family member, the work I had to do, how this person was going to react to that person and how could I prevent it and all these things! Instead of allowing my mind and brain to renew and return to baseline, thus bringing coherence back into my mind, I was weakening, undermining and undoing my rest, which was impacting me mentally and physically. After realizing this, I came up with four active reaches I have been doing daily to rest to restore: 1. Taking more thinker moments Research shows that we spend half to ¾ of our day in our minds and time-traveling through our thoughts and memories. How we do this can either help or harm our ability to rest well, which is why it is important that we take what I call “thinker moments” throughout the day. These are periods where we let our minds wander and daydream, which help us rest and restore because they give our brains the downtime they need to function optimally. When we let our minds wander, we internally reboot our thinking, giving our internal dialogue some quality “me time”. I have found that the best way to have a thinker moment is to close your eyes and allow your mind to release a free flow of thoughts creatively for 5 minutes. I find that having pen and paper at hand is useful during this process, so you can write down the thoughts that are flowing freely and their direction, as well as the thoughts you keep coming back to that are stealing your peace, which you can then work on in a separate Neurocycle. 2. Avoiding “milkshake” multi-tasking Multi-tasking is really not good for the brain. Even though we can do it, our minds aren’t good at this kind of scattered, jumpy thinking. It draws energy from our brain and creates something akin to a dust storm in our minds, which can affect our mental and physical health. When we multitask, we end up with what I call “milkshake thinking”, which is the opposite of mindfulness. Every rapid, incomplete, and low quality shift of thought makes a “milkshake” with our brain cells and neurochemicals, which is the opposite of how the brain is designed to function. When we consciously try to jump rapidly from one task to another, we essentially cloud our ability to concentrate and think deeply, which impacts our ability to do a task well, leading to unnecessary levels of anxiety and stress in our life. If you are anything like me, sometimes it is hard to resist the temptation to multi-task when resting. However, I realized that when I consciously made an effort not to multi-task (I did a Neurocycle on this too!), I really did feel more restored and renewed. 3. Making my rest periods about myself, not other people. I came to the realization that I need to make my rest periods about my rest, and stop letting other people pull on my energy reserves. Indeed, you can’t help someone or deal with them if they are on your mind all the time, because it will wear you down. I also realized that being around negative people resulted in poor restoration. I needed to balance my time with healthy people and healthy, happy conversations, and I needed to enforce my own boundaries. 4. Practicing self-regulation. I realized that I felt more restored if I prepared myself mentally before whatever rest activity I was going to do, and self-regulated my thinking during my periods of rest to make sure I appreciated every moment. I would ask myself questions like “what am I thinking of now?”, “Is this bringing me mental peace?” and “Can I solve it now? If yes, then solve it and move on, and if no, then set a later time to deal with it”. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net/the-difference-between-rest-restoration-why-resting-alone-is-not-sufficient-7126/">The Difference Between Rest &#038; Restoration, Why Resting Alone Is Not Sufficient</a> appeared first on <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net">Amazing Health Advances</a>.</p>
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		<title>How I Got Through a Major Mental Health Crisis</title>
		<link>https://amazinghealthadvances.net/how-i-got-through-a-major-mental-health-crisis-7058/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-i-got-through-a-major-mental-health-crisis-7058</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2021 08:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Archive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Advances]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brain Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[breathing exercises]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coping mechanisms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[despair]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gain awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living in the moment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental health challenges]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mind health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[toxic thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Trauma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[traumatic events]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://amazinghealthadvances.net/?p=10742</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Caroline Leaf &#8211; I recently watched the Disney movie Soul with my family. If you haven’t yet watched it, I would definitely recommend that you do. There was a lot that touched me about that movie, so much so that I intend watching it again, and you will hear me referring to it often! The closing line of the movie was for me one of the most striking parts and spoke directly to me. The main character says, after being given a second chance at life, that “I don’t know how [I am going to do life], but I know I am going to live every minute of it”. First thing that struck me was that it’s kind of hard to do this, especially when we have had such an awful year…I mean where and how do we even begin? For myself, besides the mess that is COVID-19, with its health and financial challenges and disastrously disturbing politics, we, as a family, have faced several scary physical and mental health challenges. What I have really come to realize now is that, at the end of the day, life is uncontrollable and uncertain. And, after such a year, many of us, if asked, may also say something like “I don’t know how I will do life”. What I want to tell in you in this podcast, based on both my professional and personal experience, is that what we can do, and help others do, is learn to control our own reactions to do life—to “live every minute of it”. As I mentioned above, as a family we have suffered some extreme and traumatic events this past several years, including some very recent events just this past year. Why couldn’t I, with all my knowledge, and experience be able to fix this? What am I doing wrong? What have I missed? It was at this lowest point that the very idea of making any new year’s resolutions seemed like ridiculous motivational nonsense. My mind drifted back to the Soul movie and the closing statement and I thought: “I don’t know how I am going to do what life has just thrown at me, but I am going to try to live through this the best way I can…but, how on earth am I going to do this? How will I live in this minute?”. I am a researcher and a mental health professional, which means I am trained to think objectively in extreme situations. But sometimes this is easier said than done! When I was at my lowest point, I started a thought experiment, on me. I started doing a NeuroCycle, a scientific tool I have researched and developed and applied clinically over 38 years. It’s a 5-step process that takes you deeper into your mind in a way that influences brain and mind health and changes brain structure. It is designed to increase resilience, and help develop clear and flexible thinking in tough situations. I use the NeuroCycle as a lifestyle, so it comes naturally to me now—although it is something I still have to intentionally practice at times, especially in an acute situation like the one I found myself in in this past year. I was losing control and starting to succumb to despair—I was losing mental oxygen fast. So, I forced myself to start using the NeuroCycle process, even though I wanted to just sob and scream in a panic. Here is what I did: I gathered awareness of the dread in the pit of my stomach: the feeling that I was already dead from the shock of what had just transpired and the layer upon layer of bad news that just kept coming. I felt sick; my chest was sore and I was overwhelmed. I kept thinking, “This cannot be happening&#8230;just 24 hours ago this person was smiling.” I reflected on this awareness, realizing that this situation was out of my control and I couldn’t fix it. I felt totally hopeless and useless, like I had failed my loved one. I felt despair because of their pain. I wanted to absorb it all, so they wouldn’t have any of it. I was desperate. As I probed my thoughts and feelings, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t know how to protect my loved one. I took out my phone and started putting “my brain on paper” by writing these thoughts and feelings into the Notes app on my phone. I felt slightly calmer at this point–I could slowly feel the chaos in my mind, brain and body begin to recede as I organized my thinking. As I rechecked what I had written, I saw the words: “I can’t cope; this is too much; I don’t know what to do anymore; I am going to fall apart and have a breakdown. What happens if…I failed because I didn’t prevent this…”. Seeing these statements written down made me realize that I was spiraling into this a toxic thinking cycle that would get me nowhere and would not help me, my loved one or family. So, what would help us? I had to review this situation to influence/change the outcome. I asked myself this question: “What do I need right now to reconceptualize/reimagine this situation?”. I discussed this with myself and realized I needed information and advice from peers who knew more than I did about managing this particular situation—people who could help me put together an action plan and support me and my family through this. I couldn’t really think clearly in my shocked state, but with their advice, I knew I would know how to best manage this situation. This calmed me down and I suddenly had remarkable clarity and a sense of peace. This exercise even enabled me to do a few breathing exercises to help my brain. I immediately launched into a series of actions I call “active reaches”, which included texting and phoning my peers (who are also my friends) for the advice I needed at that moment in time, which I could then discuss with my family, so that we could think clearly and make good decisions. This set up a series of events that gave me a feeling of autonomy and control, which prompted me to do another active reach, which was to remember the previous traumas we had gone through as a family and how we had somehow got through—we were stronger than we thought! Then I did a third active reach, where I looked at my loved one and visualized them smiling, and I hung onto this each time my mind started pulling me back to the point of the trauma. And, finally, I made peace with the uncertainty of the situation; this is life, and we will find a way through. We will find a way to live this minute, and the next minute, and the next minute. At this point in time, I calm enough to do and say the right thing—I realized my experiment had worked, because I was no longer stuck in a “frozen panic” mode. I was back in action! Even though I was still tearful, fearful and didn’t know the end result just yet, I knew that I was going to get through this, taking it one moment at a time. I was then able to give the necessary emotional “oxygen” to my loved ones, and we all felt a bit more hope. I don’t want to make light of this crisis, or any crisis, by saying the 5 steps of the NeuroCycle will solve it all. I am painfully aware we cannot control events and circumstances of life, and that we cannot wrap the people we love in bubble wrap and protect them from the evil out there. Yet the one thing we can do is control how we react to all the uncertainties and tragedies of life, the good and the bad and the in-between, and find a way to “live each minute”, like the main character is Soul said. Having a mind management technique in place like the NeuroCycle allowed me to control my reactions in a crisis, so I wasn’t a useless mess and no good to myself or the people that needed me. When I started managing my mind and my reactions, I could be their advocate and the support they (and I!) needed. I had become strong in my pain. I found a way to live through that moment, and you can too. After this experience, I decided that the best New Year’s resolution I can make is to further develop this skill of self-regulated mind management and help as many people as I can use it as well, because we all have stuff we must deal with and we all need help at times. I have always felt this, but this year has highlighted the need for mind-management strategies to help people cope. You may have thought you were hardwired to be like this or that, to fail or to be bad at life, but the reality is that your mind is much more trainable and malleable than you think it is…that you are more resilient than you think you are. You can learn to be in the driver’s seat of your own mind through practice and mind-management skills like the NeuroCycle. This won’t make the pain of life magically go away, but it will help you make it through the pain to experience all life has to offer—to live each minute and live them well. You are lot stronger than you realize (speaking from experience!) and, when you harness this strength by training your thinking, you can deal with whatever life throws at you! To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net/how-i-got-through-a-major-mental-health-crisis-7058/">How I Got Through a Major Mental Health Crisis</a> appeared first on <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net">Amazing Health Advances</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Brain Science Behind Why the Negative Affects Us So Much &#038; How to Get Out of a Toxic Thinking Spiral</title>
		<link>https://amazinghealthadvances.net/the-brain-science-behind-why-the-negative-affects-us-so-much-how-to-get-out-of-a-toxic-thinking-spiral-7030/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-brain-science-behind-why-the-negative-affects-us-so-much-how-to-get-out-of-a-toxic-thinking-spiral-7030</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Dec 2020 08:00:36 +0000</pubDate>
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		<category><![CDATA[Emotional Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Advances]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anxiety]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emotions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negative thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[positive thinking]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[self-awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-regulate]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[toxic thinking]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Caroline Leaf &#8211; As I discuss in this podcast (episode #239) and blog, the brain has a natural optimism bias—we are what I call “wired for love”. This means that when we are connected to others in deep and meaningful ways, and when we are satisfied with where we are in life and where we are going (even if we have ups and downs, which are normal!), we can function at a healthy level. The brain likes it when we are in a good place! If this is so, why does the negative seem so…overwhelming? Why do bad things and bad people tend to stick to our mind like super glue? Why is it so easy to fall into negative thinking spirals? The negative affects us more because it is so unusual. Think about the many noises you hear at night: cars driving by your home, the chittering of crickets, the hum of the washing machine or refrigerator—these sounds are “normal” and don’t disturb your sleep because you are used to them. But, if you hear a door quickly open or a window break, you are suddenly on high alert. Something is out of place/out of balance, and your attention will stay fixed on that noise until you figure out what is going on and if you are safe. The negative is like this out-of-place noise: it doesn’t make sense and your brain is not happy about this imbalance, so it tries to figure out how to fix this situation. It is easy to fix all your attention on this abnormality until it does make sense, but this can have some serious mental and physical repercussions if we are not careful, because, over time, toxic rumination disrupts the energy flow in the brain. Whatever we think about the most grows! As I mentioned above, when we think too negatively or just focus on the bad (a pessimistic state of mind), the energy flow in the brain becomes distorted and incoherent, which can result in inflammation in the brain and body, jumps in cortisol levels, digestive issues, heart problems, mood swings and so on. In fact, this state of mind, which is what is known as a “red brain” on qEEG scans, can even activate weaknesses in our genetic code! And, over time, it can become a pessimistic thinking habit—the more we think this way, the more the world seems like a terrible place. Thankfully, we can combat and heal the effects of focusing too much on the negative by self-regulating our mind, which is how we think, feel and choose—I discuss this in detail in my new book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. When we learn how to control our mind, we can rebalance the chemicals and energy in the brain and combat the negative health effects of toxic rumination. This doesn’t mean that we should fear negativity. It is normal to have negative thoughts and experience uncomfortable emotions. If we think we are happy all the time, then we are lying to ourselves—we are suppressing the negative, which will only make things worse. Rather, we need to change the way we perceive the negative. We need to see negative thoughts and feelings as signals that something is going on in our lives that needs to be addressed; there is an “out-of-place noise” in our mental house that we need to get to the root of. This means asking questions like “why I am so pessimistic?”, “what are my triggers?”, “how does the negative affect me?” and “what is the thinking pattern behind my thoughts and feelings, and how can I change or rewire this?”. The brain changes all the time because it is neuroplastic. The great news is that you can direct this change with your mind (your thinking, feeling, and choosing). You are always thinking, which is why self-regulation is such a great habit—it gives you the tools to control your mind! Based on decades of research and practice, I developed a self-regulation method that harnesses the neuroplastic nature of the brain through specific techniques to combat the negative influence of toxic rumination, which we examined in our most recent clinical trials and I discuss in Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. Although there is a lot going on behind the scenes when you self-regulate your thinking and manage your mind, the process itself is not only simple but also accessible, no matter where you are, who you are with or what you are doing: 1. When you find yourself getting trapped in a toxic thinking spiral, take a 10 second pause, for as many times as you need. I recommend deep breathing during this pause, which helps bring brain energy back into balance. Breathe in for 3 counts (say, mentally or out loud, “think, feel”), then breathe out for 7 counts (say mentally or out loud, “choooooooose”). This is like a reset button in the brain, and will increase your decision-making ability and clarity of mind. Indeed, doing this 6 to 9 times can really reorganize chemical chaos that results from negative thinking in the brain by transferring this energy from the toxic thinking pattern to cleaning up your mental mess! 2. Do a NeuroCycle, which is the self-regulation technique I developed centered on my research and practice with the Switch On Your Brain 5-Step Learning Process©. Here are the steps: Gathering awareness of your physical and emotional warning signals. We can only change what we are aware of! Reflecting on why you are feeling these things in your body and mind. Writing down your reflections to organize your thinking. Rechecking what you have written and how your thoughts and feelings have changed. Active Reach: taking action to reconceptualize your thinking and find sustainable healing. If you do this daily for 63 days, you can actually rewire a negative thinking habit or a pessimistic mindset, as I discuss in detail my new book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. Each of these steps essentially reset the brain, taking you deeper into your own mind and transferring energy from toxic to healthy. Doing this not only makes your mind and brain more resilient to the pull of negative rumination; it teaches you to use your mind to change your brain! It shows you how to make negativity and life challenges work for you and not against you—YOU TAKE CONTROL, which will have positive carryover effects in other areas of your life. When you learn how to self-regulate your thinking, you change the energy flow in the brain, which has a host of positive effects on your wellbeing. You still have negative thoughts, of course, but they don’t control your thinking, you control them! To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net/the-brain-science-behind-why-the-negative-affects-us-so-much-how-to-get-out-of-a-toxic-thinking-spiral-7030/">The Brain Science Behind Why the Negative Affects Us So Much &#038; How to Get Out of a Toxic Thinking Spiral</a> appeared first on <a href="https://amazinghealthadvances.net">Amazing Health Advances</a>.</p>
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