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Video about the Integrative Learning Center

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Does better visualization lead to better thinking?

10 Jul
Science to Art, and Vice Versa... "Nathalie Miebach, a sculptor who translates scientific measurements into three-dimensional objects, believes that better visualization leads to better thinking." NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/science-to-art-and-vice-versa-prot...

submitted by Nancy Magnusson

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Air pollution linked to learning and memory problems, depression

7 Jul
ScienceDaily (2011-07-06) -- Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to physical changes in the brain, as well as learning and memory problems and even depression, new research in mice suggests. While other studies have shown the damaging effects of polluted air on the heart and lungs, this is one of the first long-term studies to show the negative impact on the brain.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110705071735.htm

submitted by Nancy Magnusson

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Combining physical activity with classroom lessons results in improved test scores

5 Jul
ScienceDaily (2011-07-01) -- When schools cut physical education programs so students can spend more time in the classroom, they may be missing a golden opportunity to promote learning.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110501183653.htm

Submitted by Nancy Magnusson

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9 Tips for a Mindful Home

28 Jun

Karen Maezen Miller, author of Momma Zen, gives a few quick instructions for intentional living.

Here's a couple:

  • Wash your bowl
    • Rinse away self-importance and clean up your own mess. If you leave it undone, it will get sticky.
  • Set a timer 
    • If you’re distracted by the weight of what’s undone, set a kitchen timer and, like a monk in a monastery, devote yourself wholeheartedly to the task at hand until the bell rings.

 

To see more, please go to the following link:  
http://mindful.org/at-home/family/9-tips-for-a-mindful-home

 


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You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain's Representations of the Body

8 Sep
Want to chat about this? A great read with ride ranging implications on the potential changing nature of who we perceive ourselves to be.

Several thoughts arise for me:
1) In the course of seeing many people per day with varied professions, one of the more interesting ones is musicians, particularly those who play a stringed instrument because it requires such an assymetrical adaptation to the body. Organ, piano, and some wind instruments can be played with a ride range of body positions but strings instruments begin to reshape the torso, neck and arms (and of course the rest of the body as well) in a significant way. If the individual is a professional or high level performing musician (many hours per day), one can remove the instrument and the person remains in that essential shape. They begin to look like their instrument in a way. 

Recently in a mentoring session, the mentor arranged for me to work with an upright bass player. Before seeing him, she said, even his tissue feels like taught guitar strings. And actually I would agree. This article certainly support this observed phenomena.

Having said that, once can see that walking about in the would in a continuous shape for playing the Upright Bass can be a challenge. So we get a big hint in this article. Vary our tool use (and therefore our mind/body use) a lot!!!

2) One of my more favorites sayings is that we are continuing shaping our literal body according to how we use ourselves and the surfaces with which we connect. This research implies this to be the case, although it is not directly what it is studying.  Still connection, activates proprioception, and this activates the body map or brain map. Again variation seems important.  Don't sit in the same chair all day; use a droid all day, etc. Stare at a computer screen. As I type those specific words, I invited myself to type with eyes close for a while and voila a completely differently experience. I now sense my fingers coming to the keyboard in a new way. I am more aware of my breathing and my eyes searching for the keys even though they are closed. I can also pause from typing and invite the images of the screen to arrive to and received by my eyes instead of reaching for them and the dropping into myself is extraordinary in that moment.  These are variations on "How" to use the tool if the tool itself can't be changed which of course this research does not explore.

3) Also implied is the importance of the way in which a somatic practitioner connects with the client. To the degree it is effective, the client does not so clearly distinguish, as an example, the moment his/her arm ends and the practitioner's begins. The movement that is transmitted back and forth between practitioner and client has a seamless quality to it and perhaps when functional use is added to the mix (the movement has function meaning, not simply highlighting a local area) the brain goes beyond sensing the area (oh there is a sore area of my body) to "this is a tool I can use.  Oh I am that tool."  Perhaps it also implies the important of how a mother brings the baby to the breast or bottle to feed.  The way in which eyes connecting might even change the infant's body map.

So it brought up some fun thoughts for me.  How about you?
submitted by Cynthia Allen

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Wisdom is the brain slowing down in old age

25 Jun

At my own age of 51, which I consider on the young side of maturity, I have experienced the slowing of impulsiveness which I find leads to general happiness or contentment.  Is it my age or the somatic work such as Feldenkrais and Bones for Life?  I believe it is both.  As soon as I began somatic explorations in my early 30's, I felt changes occurring in my emotional states for the better.  Also fun in the below link is the finding that there is no decrease in learning capacity with age.  Love that! Wisdom 'is the brain slowing down in old age' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7852122/Wisdom-is-the-brain-slowing-down-in-old-age.html Shared via AddThis.com

Posted via email from integrativecynthia's posterous

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