Healing Thoughts

Healing Thoughts

Brainfit for Life and Healing Thoughts?

A healing thought left for other users of a sweat lodge, "Plenty of room for imperfection, no room for B.S."

Healing thoughts are real. Repetitive thinking patterns about healing change the structure of the brain.

That is how real they are. And there are so many different styles and examples. No way could I write about all of them. So I will write about healing thoughts that I know.

The down side is they do not always work fast, so I better start using them when I am well so that my body is well coded for the moments of flu.

There are many stories of healing thoughts changing the course of the lives of the thinkers.

I have seen many people come back to a normalcy from the gates of hell using the Steps of AA or NA or CA or SA, and all those folks do is think more often about the steps than about using and they stay sober. Of course their faith in a higher power helps out.

As a student of Chi Gong, I have experienced some very powerful meditations and advanced through some fascinating initiations, all of which were thinking before doing.

The whole idea behind this particular school of Chi Gong is to have a long and healthy life.

Some healing thoughts from Morrie Schwartz;

1. Be occupied with of focused on things and issues that are of interest, importance, and concern to you. Remain passionately involved in them.

2. Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself. Be generous, decent, and welcoming.

3. Recognize the difference between what you want and what you need.

Morrie Schwartz was the subject of a book called Morrie:In his Own Words. Morrie was 78 when the book was done, and dying of Lou Gehrig's disease.

A wonderful healing thought from AA, "Gratitude is the attitude."

Use that thought in place of a victim thought, the one that says someone has screwed you, the thought that leads to resentment, so that you change your physiology from stress hormones to contentment hormones, DHEA and endorphins. Sharon Begley is the author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, which talks about how fMRI has shown that the brain of Buddhist monks had been changed in a very healthy direction by meditation practices.

Prior to recent discoveries about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, no self-respecting doc or neuroscientist would ever say that a thought could change the hard wiring of the brain. Thoughts were simply chemical and electrical behaviors and could not change the brain.

Now we know that is not an accurate understanding of how thought impacts the brain.

Another researcher quoted by Begley, Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. one of the folks heavily involved in neuroplasticity research and a creator of the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program, has this to say about healthy thoughts, "Through attention, UCSF's Michael Merzenich and a colleague wrote, "We choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.""The discovery that neuroplasticity cannot occur without attention has important implications. If a skill becomes so routine you can do it on autopilot, practicing it will no longer change the brain. And if you take up mental exercises to keep your brain young, they will not be as effective if you become able to do them without paying much attention."

Some Direction for Our Healthy Thoughts

While I have practiced daily prayer and meditation for about 30 years, have some experience with TM, know how to do HeartMath, and enjoy Les Fehmi's Open Focus, and have studied Sigfried and Sue Othmer's model of EEG Biofeedback, I am not sure an fMRI would show the kinds of changes that the monks were able to demonstrate.

Is there a way to speed neuroplasticity, or more connections in my brain around healthy thoughts? After all, I am from the West.

It turns out the Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. has created a tool, and there are others, that will speed neuroplasticity. Then I can supply the healthy thoughts.

The Posit Science Brain Fitness Program has been measured in the IMPACT and ACTIVE studies with Senior Citizens and Boomers.

The Book on Brain Fitness

A wonderful resource, which discusses the research involved in the brain fitness programs linked below, is Brainfit for Life, written by Simon Evans, Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt,Ph.D. neuroscientists at the University of Michigan. Their book is easy for the layperson to read, and is an excellent resource for making the brain receptive to healing thoughts.

Need to have extra focus and attention for your healthy thoughts? This is the tool, Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro.