the reality of emotions
Imagine if you can put your swirling emotions in a crystal ball, then elevate the ball in mid-air before scrutinising them from a distance. What would it be like to be able…
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breaking the doom scroll
7 days ago I changed my morning routine: previously I would doom scroll with my morning coffee, but for the last week I’ve been writing my morning pages instead. I had the…
my messy brain
seeing my brain in new light & trying to work with it instead of against it
the will to be truly alive
Every morning at the park I see people of all types doing their morning exercise. People exercise for different reasons. Vanity is of course a strong motivator, some people do it because…
A person cannot direct his emotional life
A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing, or to love the right person, or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded.
39
I write one of these every year, since the age of 30. This is my tenth year writing, and from reading posts from the previous nine years you could see the trajectory…
There is a wealth of data showing that changes in the rate and depth of breathing
There is a wealth of data showing that changes in the rate and depth of breathing produce changes in the quantity and kind of peptides that are released from the brain stem. And vice versa!
The three classically separated areas of neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology
The three classically separated areas of neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology, with their various organs—the brain; the glands; and the spleen, bone marrow, and lymph nodes—are actually joined to each other in a multidirectional network of communication, linked by information carriers known as neuropeptides.
Emotions are constantly regulating what we experience as “reality”
Emotions are constantly regulating what we experience as “reality.” The decision about what sensory information travels to your brain and what gets filtered out depends on what signals the receptors are receiving from the peptides. There is a plethora of elegant neurophysiological data suggesting that the nervous system is not capable of taking in everything, but can only scan the outer world for material that it is prepared to find by virtue of its wiring hookups, its own internal patterns, and its past experience.
In order for the brain not to be overwhelmed by the constant deluge of sensory input
There is no objective reality! In order for the brain not to be overwhelmed by the constant deluge of sensory input, some sort of filtering system must enable us to pay attention to what our bodymind deems the most important pieces of information and to ignore the others.