Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, March 15, 2024
“It takes a long time to become young,” Pablo Picasso said.
Every March, because it’s my birth month, I think of this whole notion, for me and everyone else on planet Earth, of entering the world, taking a breath, and being a human.
Partly, this is because March is a lot like a weed, a tiny tendril of gumption desperate to bust through the winter-caked earth and greet the sun. It is a badass month. And partly it’s just me, and my annual timer going off, saying to myself yet again, “Wow. You need to pay more attention. To pretty much everything.” No pressure, but life is only getting shorter.
What does this have to do with health? I’ll get to that.
First, I will ask you to go back in your mind. To some precious moment (looking back at it) when time stood still. It doesn’t have to be a grandiose moment; it could simply be the earliest rays at dawn, a deep breath of cold and quenching air – or maybe redwing blackbirds going off in a cottonwood tree as you are walking along, one blustery, cloud-heavy March day. And as the tiny aviators hail the world, everything, all of it, becomes more fully alive in a profusion of black and red flutter and mysterious song. You actually feel your ears open more from the inside as the trills go in, curlicues of honey-like brain floss. It’s unclear which part of your gray matter is receiving this information or how you would translate it, but it lands.
If you’re lucky, you might notice a moment of micro-healing as the birds belt it out. What does it feel like, briefly letting go, in this miniscule fragment of time, here among the billions and quadra-skillions of moments that are happening in the universe all at once? Does it matter? It matters.
But then this moment in time passes and you forget about it so quickly, it’s as if it never happened. Your whole life whooshes back into the cracks of your mind, where words, worries and tasks live smashed up against each other. But for a second there, a bird pinged your heart. You got an inkling of what it means to be more alive and to be a lot less – what would be the word? – time based.
Children inhale the present moment far better than adults, we know this; they inhabit it, all five senses sort of smeared on the backs of their brains in a permanent juicy mark. This capacity to inhabit the now like they do is something we adults might live a long time before rediscovering and prioritizing.
The fact is, we accumulate baggage over time, doing what we do because of nature, nurture, fate, free will, catastrophe, triumph, failure, and trauma, and we start grooving deeper and deeper neural pathways, the same ones over and over. Eventually, for some things, we are living in the proverbial and literal trenches. Cells that fire together wire together – and what I myself don’t want is for them to retire together in a narrow, stingy and hardened way.
There has recently been plenty of buzz and research around forging new neural pathways in order to keep our brains more vital and plastic (neuroplasticity). Now we know the brain can grow and change throughout our entire lifetimes, and we can learn how to help forge these new neural connections by nourishing ourselves well, through movement, and by making sure our sleep is as good as it can be.
The first thing, of course, is to recognize our ingrown neural pathways (habitual ways of thinking or doing that do not help us), and then use mindfulness – which involves refocusing attention on the present moment – to help induce the structural changes linked to enhanced plasticity.
In other words, rewire your brain. Reframe an old stressful thought into a new landscape. Walk a different way to work, or create a brand new positive habit. Mindfulness encourages the integration of different brain regions and networks, contributing to the flexibility and adaptability of neural connections.
Recently, I discovered the quote, “Body is not stiff, mind is stiff,” by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. I have to say the quote stopped my brain in its neural tracks as I examined its deeper implications. Mind is stiff! Naturally the ancient traditions have known this all along. And in our typical and very tender 21st-century-world way, we do our best to catch up. We flail and sometimes we shine!
Luckily, every moment of mindfulness counts, and every moment that leads to a moment of mindfulness counts, as well.
ESSAYS THEN AND NOW 