I keep recommending "Incognito" by David Eagleman and "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain" by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Both have to do with the enormous complexity of our bodies and our brains. We humans have a tendency to think that our minds are totally withit, that we are mostly the same as our minds. Both of these books try to give a reader a chance to see how much our bodies and our lives operate outside our minds, our conscious minds, that is. Neither book is long and neither one is hard to read or understand. Professor Barrett's first chapter gets to the idea. It is called "Your brain is not for thinking." It is true that you can think with your mind but your brain is bigger than your mind and it is the control center of your body. Balance, appetite, heart beat, blood pressure, digestion, breathing - all those essential operations get overseen by the brain. "Incognito" is terrific at showing how the mind gets an idea, a topic, a worry, a thought after the body and the rest of the brain have been working on them for a while.
Prof. Willoughby Britten of Brown University and Dr. Elizabeth Stanley are two scientists who look into difficulties people have with their minds and their emotions. Both women are names I keep in mind as sources of information about ways of seeking calm and acceptance of life and it's problems. Britten was the first name I found to look into the downsides and limitations of meditation. Later, I learned a bit about Dr. Stanley. Today's message from "Sounds True", a firm that specializes with creating materials that help with living, was about Dr. Stanley.
As a US Army veteran with a PTSD diagnosis who thought it would be cool to pursue two graduate degrees simultaneously, she was a pro at it—or so she thought.
It took the onset of asthma, chronic lung infections, insomnia, migraines, clinical depression, a near-death experience, and temporary blindness for her to finally decide that there must be a better way.
For the next 15 years, she studied the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and resilience—initially as a way to save herself, and then to help others heal, too.
I think it helps to be aware that there are parts of us that operate outside our consciousness. I think, in a sense, we humans are too complicated to think our way through life. We can think, and dream and examine and plan and remember, but we are much more than we can know about deliberately.
