Saturday, April 19, 2014

Hug the Monkey

No this post isn't about some euphemism about taking matters into your own hands, rather it is about taking matters into your own mind. What I am really going to write about in this post is why we find it so difficult to let go of the past and move on; why we continually allow past experiences to shape our present day experiences. In this post I want to share a little bit about what I have learned from exploring the work of Rick Hanson, author of the best selling book, Buddha's Brain. Hanson is actually the one who coined the phrase, "Hug the Monkey," and you can read his own posting entitled the same by clicking here (Just One Thing — Hug the Monkey). For now permit me to synthesize his ideas along with adding my own understanding.

Basically neuroscience has shown that the brain evolved in three key stages.
  • The Reptilian Brain — Brainstem, focused on avoiding harm.
  • The Mammal Brain — Limbic system, focused on approaching rewards.
  • The Primate Brain — Cortex, focused on attaching to "us." 

The Reptilian brain is our core survival brain. It is the brain that gets activated when we sense danger, feel anxious or stressed. At the school where I work we often talk about "downshifting." This is a concept wherein because of anxiety you (or your students) "downshift" to the lowest core level of thinking — the fight, flight or freeze level. If you find yourself functioning at this level for extended periods of time very little actual learning is able to occur. You are more of less relying on instinct and past experiences. So as teachers we are always looking for ways to "upshift" the "downshifted" child so that their brains are in a state where they can do the most processing. We don't want an under-stimulated brain (bored, disengaged) and we don't want a hyper-stimulated brain (anxious, wary). The reptilian brain is the oldest part of the brain and since it is essential designed for survival we tend to have a negatively biased brain.

Hanson uses the analogy of the carrot and the stick. It is good to use the mammal brain and seek out what we need (the carrots in life), but it is OK if we don't retain all that information because if we miss a day without a carrot we are more than likely going to find another carrot the next day; however, we need to always be wary of the stick, because if we miss getting clobbered by a stick it may be the last time. Mother nature wants us to be suspicious every time we enter into the jungle that there might be a leopard waiting to pounce on us, even though 99% of the time that does not happen. However, it only takes the 1% for us to be lunch. So it makes sense that we have this negative bias. The unfortunate thing is that these negative memories get wired down in the lower primal levels of the brain where they are hard to re-wire. If you are an Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) like me you spend more of your waking hours in a low level state of anxiety due to the overload of stimuli coming at you. As such, an HSP tends to write even more negative experiences onto our hard drive and we tend to do it in greater detail. The same is true of people who have experienced trauma, abuse, or neglect. These people approach life from a much more vigilant perspective. I would also sense that people who feel marginalized, who were shamed, or "othered" — some members of the LGBTQ community for example — would also feel this sense of wariness. On a personal level I can now understand why my brain is tilted so far in the direction of gloom and doom, but I am not satisfied with simply understanding why it is that I grasp so tightly to the negative; I want to know what to do about it. That's where the "Hug the Monkey" comes into play. 

Hanson has constructed a framework entitled "Taking in the Good," wherein you work at leveling the playing field in your brain by actually building up a resource of positive memories. It's about, "weaving the sense of being included and loved in the primate cerebral cortex" — hugging the monkey if you will. Neuroscience knows that neurons that fire together wire together. We have spent most of our time wiring negative leaning neurons. By "Taking in the good" we can actually do our own self-directed neuroplasticity. It isn't about sugar coating our lives or going to your "Happy Place." "It's about using new positive experience to balance old negative ones." says Hanson. Basically the steps are as follows: 



1. Bring to mind a positive or good fact and allow that good fact to become a good experience — the felt sense.

2. Next savor that experience for at least 10 to 20 seconds. One of the problems that contributes to a negative bias in the brain is that in order for an event (good or bad) to become memory we need to experience it over an extended period of time. Because negative experiences tend to generate a heightened state of arousal we tend to stay in them longer (if you are an HSP you easily go to this heightened state of arousal and it takes you longer to come down), thus we have a greater capacity to commit negative experiences to memory. With positive experiences we don't allow ourselves to linger on them long enough in order for them to become memory, so this step is key if we want to get those positive neurons firing and wiring.

3. While you are savoring the positive experience allow that experience to seep into your physical being. Some people like to do visualizations that help them reinforce this concept. For example: some people envision a golden syrup filling in holes and wounds; some envision a warming light that baths the body; while others envision a jewel being placed in the “heart treasure.” The point is to sense and intend that this experience is sinking into you as you sink into it. The theory being that when we experience something not only in our minds but on a kinesthetic level it tends to become more permanent. 

This isn't a quick and easy fix. It takes time and practice. The fact of the matter is that it takes many more positive experiences to override one negative experience. Ultimately the goal is to build up an internal resource of positive memories so that if you are faced with a negative experience you will be able to look inside rather than externally for support and strength.

Hanson goes on to recommend several phases of practice and he suggests we try and do these 3 or 4 times a  day. Here are four  of the basic phases —

GRATITUDE — Bring to mind an experience for which you feel gratitude.
CARING — Choose a person, being, animal that generates a feeling of being cared about (you can add an embodied cognition piece of putting your hand on your cheek or heart while working with this type of experience).
ACCOMPLISHIMENT — Bring to mind a feeling of accomplishment. Try and associate that experience with a sense of self-worth.
QUALITIES — Bring to mind a good quality about yourself.

You can also work with experiences of safety and security, strength and tenacity, or your innate goodness.

Finally, Hanson goes on to explain how we can use this technique of "Taking in the Good" to heal past wounds or places where we experience a shortage or something lacking. I won't go into it here, but if you are interested in hearing him go through this process, as well as, hear him go through each of the aforementioned steps, I would recommend you listen to the following talk on DharmaSeed.org (Taking in the Good), or read his book, Buddha's Brain.

I have to tell you that I have been stumbling my way through doing this practice over the past years and I sense that it is helping. One of the things that has benefited me the most is when I find myself caught up in a negative thought about someone from my past I immediately try and think of a positive experience I have had with them. I try and linger over the positive and let the negative one fade into the background. What has been so interesting for me is that being an HSP I have very little difficulty when it comes to recreating a painful or negative experience in extreme detail; however, I struggle to visualize very clearly the positive experiences. Hanson uses the analogy that our brains have "Velcro for the negative experiences and Teflon for the positive." Like I said, I am pretty new at this, but one thing is for certain, with my central nervous systems and upbringing I have a HUGE positive memory deficit to work on filling. It is my intent to continue working on building new neuro pathways and see if I can arrest the process of deepening the negative grooves already in my brain. As a commenter to my last post suggested, I need to put my gifts of being a highly sensitive person to work on the positive and joyful aspects of my life.

I am larger, better than I thought,I did not know I held so much goodness.— Walt Whitman 

Monday, March 31, 2014

Identity

Although in Buddhism we talk a lot about non-self or anatta (an important, but very complicated concept) I want to spend a little time discussing identity. Although we are part of everything and everyone in a greater sense, I personally believe that it is our life's work to uncover our authentic selves and then set about living that truth. The concept of authenticity and non-self are actually not at cross purposes, for it is the letting go of the layers upon layers of false identities and facades that we construct over the course of our lives that we can ultimately reach a state or being.

So to start off and borrowing a graphic from Sam Killermann's wonderful gender identity book, "The Social Justice Advocate's Handbook: A Guide to Gender," sit for a hour or so and map out what identities would go into making your "You Soup?"


Saturday, July 13, 2013

Welcome, You Are Right Where You Need to Be


“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know 
reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.”
— Rumi