Your Chia Pet Brain

Oh, the human brain. We are only just beginning to discover how remarkable it is. We all have the capacity for genius in us. We all have the capacity for insanity in us. Harboring the seeds of both, expression of either is just a matter of degrees.

What I'd like to explore in this month's blog is the idea that we can grow our own brains. With the power of neuroplasticity, epi-genetics, neuroscience, and Compassionate Communication, we have at our synaptic connections the power to grow new, more functional, more life-serving brains.

I'm inspired to write on this topic this month because I recently attended a workshop hosted by the Rocky Mountain Compassionate Communication Network, “Compassion, Empathy and the Brain,” led by Sarah Peyton and Dan Miller.

In it, we explored...

• Knowledge and information of how our brains work.
• Process work that releases emotional pain and resolves trauma.
• The living energy of love and compassion experienced in your own nervous system.
• Reflections on how to use this knowledge and skills after the workshop.

The information I learned was incredibly powerful and life-changing.

Along with that, my roommate, Colleen McMahon, and I have engaged ourselves in a new experience called “Holosync.” Every morning, we each meditate for an hour while listening to sound that was specifically created for the purpose of synchronizing the two halves of the brain and entraining certain brain waves that are more conducive to learning and developing the internal witness.

Holosync is part of a program offered by Centerpointe, along with a study program taught by Bill Harris. Together, Colleen and I study a lesson each week and discuss what we are learning and the progress we are making.

The combination of these programs – Holosync, Compassionate Communication, and what I learned from Sarah Peyton and Dan Miller – are truly changing my life. The benefits are cascading and building upon themselves.

From Sarah and Dan I have a better understanding of my brain and which parts are activated when I'm triggered in an emotionally-charged situation. I also understand how childhood trauma shaped my brain and what I can do to grow the empathy part of my brain (the right pre-frontal cortex) in order to help heal my brain and my being.

One of the most significant pieces of information I gained from Sarah Peyton is that neuroplasticity isn't activated unless the right brain is activated. This is absolutely crucial. It's like getting into a car and not knowing how to start the ignition. The car is still there, encapsulating you, but it can't serve its most important function, which is transportation.

So now that we know how absolutely essential the right hemisphere is to a whole, functioning brain, how do we activate it, so we can heal old wounds rather than being “triggered” all the time? How do we grow new neural networks that take us in the direction of self-actualization rather than living out our old limiting beliefs?

Asking myself these questions, the image of a chia pet came to mind. In our culture, we've been trained to live in our left brains, but the left brain alone is dry like the chia pet before it's been watered. It can't grow. It stays the same, all dry and brown. But when we water it, that's like activating the right brain and the green wiry plants begin to sprout. It becomes lush, colorful, and alive. Each one of those sprouts is like a new dendrite growing.

I think of my Holosync meditation each morning as watering the chia pet. Then my Compassionate Communication training comes in to cultivate it, like cultivating a garden. I gently weed out the strands that are not life-serving and then nourish and feed the strands that are.

Already I am seeing the exponential transformation since the Peyton and Miller workshop. It was an incredible gift for our community here in the Rocky Mountain region to be able to experience these two gifted teachers without having to fly all the way to Oregon. We have Susan Jennings and the Rocky Mountain Compassionate Communication Network to thank for that, and I want to express my deep gratitude.

Now it's just a matter of daily watering with meditation and continuing to develop my Compassionate Communication skills through weekly practice groups and the upcoming workshop, “Beyond the Basics,” starting on Wednesday, October 28th.

In that workshop, Susan Jennings will present some information about the brain, so even if you weren't able to attend the Peyton-Miller workshop, you can still gain a fundamental understanding that will help you to work with your own brain in a more compassionate and life-affirming way.

I will be a support trainer in that workshop, so maybe I will see you there! To register, click on the link to the upcoming workshop, “Beyond the Basics,” starting on Wednesday, October 28th.