Trajectory

 As i look at the trajestory of  Life , i see we have all traversed our paths in such beautiful shades and varied vibrancies. If someone is super successful in career and personal life , there is some body who had had a debacle with both career and personal life. We have all grown up from a starting point of coming into this world with nothing. I think what shapes up are decisions. Conscious decisions arise out of personal needs and perspectives. My upbringing and background results in a different need in comparison to others. I graze along and pick up things that shapes up my perspectives. Its that program and functions of my system that takes me along. 

I got to hear and see Dr. Caroline leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist in one of the lifestyle medicine podcasts that i watch now and then. There she promoted her book" cleaning up your mental mess" . It got me hooked onto it. I read through the book and found it to be informative. Another neuroscientist i had read was Dr. Tara swart who had a different take on our mental systems. 

    

 Caroline leaf elaborates techniques for mind management.  She as evident in her narratives is a good communication pathologist and sees that her communications are perfect. However i find flaws in her claims for her neurocycle technique for mind management. It does not have hard scientific research evidence backing it in terms of the number of people studied. She has studied only about 6-7 people. But, they have been thoroughly studied with brains scans, blood work ( cortisol and homocysteine levels) , electrical activity measure of the brain ( frontal alpha, beta, gamma asymmetry ) , well thought out psychosocial measures of autonomy, awareness, toxic thoughts, anxiety and depression scales. She has also also measured telomere length. Shorter telomere length indicates toxic stress and cellular aging. Uncontrolled toxic thinking adversely affects brain functionality, blood cortisol levels and even the telomeres on the chromosomes. Through the technique people have been thought to tune into their non conscious mind to manage their thought life and detox and build the brain. Acknowledging, embracing and processing our issues will optimise brain function and create coherence.  It will give us the ability to see our issues clearly and deal with them. The mental mess is reflected in the qEEG where the energy waves in the brain are measured. Toxic thoughts are like getting onto a hamster wheel, leads to positive feedback loops and more stress. The neural circuitry is transformed and a new set of neural pathways are build through the exercise of the neurocycle technique. The 5 steps of the neurocycle technique  are gather, reflect , write , recheck  and active reach. The foundational principles of this technique are embracing , processing and reconceptualizing.

 The current mental diet has been good enough to create that space in me to be able to open up , sort out and continuously reframe. Would want to take in more but have gained atleast some little emotional closure to be contended with what is there and what is possible.