Way Back to Happiness...
A MissyAnn song about how to return to happiness. Click to watch on YouTube.
Maybe it was 2010. Could have been ‘09. I was sitting on a folding chair in a lecture room at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in West Marin. My therapist had encouraged me to go. Buddhists were talking with Neuroscientists. The people on stage were joyful.
One began, “Buddha said, “One day science will prove what I teach works.”” They all smiled and laughed.
Their laughter seemed far away to me. I was wracked with anxiety and ptsd ~ high heart rate, sick stomach, unable to sleep. What I didn’t know in that moment, was that these teachers and their findings were about to offer me something that would change my life ~ hope.
Images of colorful brains were projected onto a screen. The people on stage took turns explaining what were we seeing. They were elated to be able to document and share their findings. They showed us a brain of someone with ptsd ~ it was lit up in the amygdala. Or what they also called the lizard brain. The “lit up” portion meant that this was where the brain was active. They showed “red” and explained that it was like having all the lights turned on in one room of a house and no other lights were on anywhere else. This was what fear and anxiety looked like in a brain image when highly active. I knew what that felt like.
Then they showed the change in brains where people were taught to meditate… the active areas in the brains changed! Breathing, focusing the mind, imagining beauty and love… and many other gentle efforts overtime created new pathways in the brain to other areas in the brain that were more peaceful.
This moment changed my life.
I came to understand that I could be an architect/ road construction worker for my own brain.
There were many sayings from Rick Hanson and others in the field that I learned over the years that helped me create new roads in my brain ~ out of fear and anxiety to places of love, gratitude and beauty. “Neurons that fire together wire together.” This meant that where I placed my focus actually built pathways, roads in my mind. Slowly, overtime, I could create a different brain with new roads to… peace… love.. beauty. Wow.
One of the most lovely tools I learned was “sinking in the good”. What this means to me is that I spend time recalling, savoring, reimagining moments that are tender, beautiful, kind. I think of it as a lingering in loveliness.
Blessings on your journey.
Peace,
Kathleen
