Power of the Human Brain
Thanks to the work of neuro-psychologist, Petr Anokhin, we now know that the human brain is unbelievably powerful. There are 10 billion neurons and 12 trillion nerve cells in each human brain and each cell can physically connect with 100,000 others.This means that the interconnections a brain cell can make are: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,00 (ie 1 followed by 271 0’s).
Dr Paul McLean has demonstrated that the human brain is made up of three distinct parts which developed at different times in our evolution. The so-called “reptilian” brain is the oldest part of our brains and is responsible for our most basic responses such as dealing with threats. Our “mammalian” brain is the seat of our emotions. Our “thinking” brain is, in evolutionary terms, very young, having evolved some 40,000 years ago. It is the source of our ego, our ability to think about ourselves.
Left and Right Brains
Roger Sperry of the University of California, Los Angeles was the first to explain the division of the cerebral cortex in our brains into two sides, left and right. The left side of the brain was found to be responsible for logical thinking; the right side for imaginative thinking. Almost overnight, Sperry changed the way we thought about thinking. No longer was logical and linear thought seen as the purpose of thinking; instead a balance between right and left was believed to be the secret to maximising our mental abilities.
Here are three examples of the left and right brains working together:
• when you spell a word wrongly, your right brain intuitively tells you it’s wrong; your left side checks it out
and finds it’s wrong.
• when President John Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the
end of the 1960’s, he also had to agree to the funds needed by NASA to make it happen.
• when Einstein’s theory of relativity finally came to him, he had left the laboratory (seat of left-brain thinking)
and was lying on a hillside looking up at the sky wondering what it would be like to ride on a sunbeam.
The Conscious Brain
The conscious brain is that part of our brains that deals with what we call “reality”. It uses the senses to interpret and analyse information from the world around us. This is done through perception, association, evaluation, and decision taking. However, the analytical conscious brain is very limited. Despite the power of the brain, we can only hold about 7 or 8 different thoughts in our head at any one time.
The Sub-Conscious Brain
The sub-conscious brain is the storehouse of all our past thoughts. This is the source of the most creative use of our brains. For example, if we set goals for our brain, the sub-conscious part of our brain will supply us with information in line and will work by itself to find solutions as a way of restoring its balance. There are a number of ways to reach our subconscious creative selves...
1. Intuition: sensing when something is right shows up through your bodily sensations. Some people get gut
feelings, others feel what’s right in their heart of hearts. Every time you need to make a decision, listen to
your body.
2. Meditation: meditation allows you to put your brain into an alpha state, or, when you become proficient at it,
a waking theta state. These states reduce your blood pressure, and increase your immune system.
3. Soft Focus: soft focus allows your eyes to focus on a neutral area and become aware of everything around
you. Immediately, you will increase your peripheral vision and your mind will be calmed. This is the focus of
martial artists and athletes.
The Reticular Activating System
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a group of cells in the brain which monitors sensory messages to the brain. It is a natural filtering device which allows only personally profitable data or threats to get through. A simple analogy of how the RAS works is a busy airport terminal lounge where you may be waiting to board a plane. You are largely oblivious to the noise and sounds around you, but if you have programmed your brain to listen out for the name of your flight, you will hear it when it is called. The RAS is the key reason why we need to feed in our goals to our brains and then leave the brain to work by itself. It is like an evolutionary survival system, where only relevant information for our survival is allowed to get through while irrelevant information is left to die by the wayside.
The Supra-Conscious Brain
In recent years, there has become a growing realization that the functions of the conscious and sub-conscious brain are only a small part of what constitutes our mind’s functions. This is the realization that the mind is something bigger than the physical brain. For example, you have over 200 trillion cells in your body all functioning in a healthy person in harmony and doing their own thing without any conscious input from you or your brain. So what keeps these cells working? A super-conscious mind that links to a consciousness that extends beyond our brains, our bodies and our senses, what some people call the “supra-conscious” brain.
Maximising Our Brains
We maximise our potential when we maximise the power of our brains. We can do this in some of the following ways:
• use both left and right brains to dream new goals and plan the steps to reach them
• align the three evolutionary brains by thinking about your goals, feeling passionately about them, and taking
appropriate focused action
• tap in to the creative power of the brain to make better decisions and find better solutions to problems
• recognise the limitations of the analytical brain and tune in to what the brain is telling you through intuition
and instinct
• recognise that there is a powerful consciousness that extends beyond your brain but is accessed by your
brain to things beyond normal thought.
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