Today I had my brain electroencephalogrised to see if it works more awesomely than non-mindfulness practitioners,
how cool is that!!?
Part of it involved trying to remember a bunch of letters in my head while simultaneously being shocked mildly on my arm and having to notice when I was shocked twice in a row instead of once while still trying to focus on the memory task!
My brain was like, bro, this is hard as.
And the answer is: I’m exceptionally bloody good in the brain.
Just joking.
I was a bit nervous they’d say “Andrea Featherstone, your brain appears to be broken.”
But they can’t tell me anything much about my brain specifically, so I’ll never know.
Monash University is doing AMAZING research into the effects of mindfulness on the brain, so I volunteered myself to sit in a small room for 3 hours with a skull cap on my head, gel being syringed into my hair and electrodes sticking out of my head while completing complex cognitive tasks on a computer while my brain activity was being measured.
The hypothesis is that people who have been practicing mindfulness for at least 2 years will show less overall brain activity when completing tasks, the idea being that mindful folk are better at focussing our attention on only what’s relevant and not wasting our mental energy on random crap, as compared to control subjects.
Not the researchers’ words.
I’ll let you know what the results of the study are when they send them my way!
My life, emotions, ability to self-regulate (read: ability to stop being a snappy moody trout), ability to let go of things, to focus on what matters and see the big picture rather than getting bogged down in tiny perfectionistic details and mind-made drama radically changed 5 years ago when I started practicing mindfulness, but I can’t prove that except to myself and those who knew me before.
So I can’t tell you how excited it makes me to see scientific proof of the structural and functional changes that mindfulness has on the brain, so more and more people will be open to it, and more and more lives will change.
Have I mentioned if before?
Get into mindfulness in whichever which way you can.
I’ll be running a free 5 day mindfulness challenge soon when I get out of my own way and get it done :D Make sure you’re on the list here if you want to join us :D
