Neuroplasticity and mindfulness

Neuroplasticity describes the ‘changeable’ state of the brain. When we are young, we have very ‘plastic’ brains. At this age, brains are very ‘absorbent’ to basically anything, whether it is language, movement patterns, skills, tasks and so on – the brain adapts and changes dependent on what it is getting exposed to, or what is ‘needed’ of it. This is why it's much easier to learn a language while we are young, in comparison to attempting it when we’re older. (Sorry Duolingo, I tried).

Sometimes, I think the average person underestimates just how powerful and complex the brain is. It is known that we have trillions of ‘connections’ within our brain. These connections are created when the brain cells, neurons, connect with other neurons. Neurons are electrically excitable cells that ‘synapse’ with each other, creating a link to pass on messages. This link between neurons is effectively like piecing sections of a road together – it allows the passage of ‘cars’ along it, and we can think of impulses within our brains as the ‘cars’.

The impulses are the messages that eventually reach a section of our brain, let’s say the section that controls the muscles that bends your arm, and the impulse then stimulates that area. This then causes that area to produce lots of other messages or ‘impulses’ to travel along a different neuron pathway via our spinal cord down to the muscle that bends your arm. This stimulates our muscle causing it to ‘contract’, and the movement of bending our arms occurs. (That was a very oversimplified version of what happens so apologies to you neuroscientists reading this).

Our brain is a very, very complex organ and this cannot be understated. As I mentioned, it is thought that there are trillions of neuronal connections within the brain. One neuron doesn’t just connect to one neuron – they each connect to thousands and thousands of other neurons within the brain. A study by neuroscientists in 2009 gave an answer of an estimated 86 billion neurons within the brain (ref). That’s not neuron connections, that’s just neurons on their own. Feel free to re-read those last three sentences.

Now, it is also well known that us humans have a real tricky time trying to understand the sheer magnitude of ‘1 billion’ (ref). We just can’t really quantify a number that big. We have a pretty good idea of how large one million is, and we can picture 100 million just about ok, but that’s where our limit starts to get stretched. It’s no wonder that 100 billion is something pretty difficult to picture, yet alone the trillions and trillions of connections within the brain.

For reference, it is estimated that for every ONE grain of sand ON EARTH, there are TEN THOUSAND neuronal connections in the brain. Take a second to re-read that. One grain of sand equals 10,000 connections. This cannot really be proven, nor is it 100% accurate, but it helps to give us an idea of the scale of power the brain holds. Apologies for my slight geeking out tangent, but that is ridiculous. To bring this back to mindfulness practice and neuroplasticity, these neurons synapse with each other to help send messages to complete a task. The ‘task’ in this instance, is the practice of focusing your brain on something that isn’t your thoughts. The great thing about neuroplasticity is that with more practice, this ‘connection’ improves. There is an old saying in neuroscience that originated from some research by a scientist called Donald Hebb (ref):

“Neurons that fire together, wire together”

This effectively means that the more you ‘run’ this neuronal circuit – i.e. sending impulses to complete a task – the stronger this circuit gets. While the rhyme is a paraphrase of Hebb’s work, for simplicity reasons we can take the notion that practicing tasks repeatedly helps to increase the strength of pathways in the brain. That’s why the more you practice things like the piano, shooting a perfect basketball shot, learning a language – all become easier with more practice. The really good news is that the same principle can be applied with practicing mindfulness. The more we practice these snippets of focused attention, the easier it can become.

Moreover, the same principle can be applied to just thinking about the practice of mindfulness. The more we think about it, the stronger it is embedded in our mind and memory. The stronger it is embedded into our memory, the more likely we are to practice its teachings in our day to day. This is why I suggest starting the day first by repeating what it is that you want to achieve through mindfulness, in order to give the mind its ‘template’ for the incoming thoughts of the day. However, the principles of neuroplasticity suggest that the more we can repeat this focus, the stronger the neuronal connections will be – and thus, why I also suggest repeating it throughout the day.

Ultimately, this is why I feel that incorporating a few minutes of mindful focused attention intermittently throughout your day can be a better method than a westernised ‘traditional’ meditation. We can stimulate the neuronal circuit more frequently in shorter bursts to strengthen the skill, improve the recall ability of why we’re doing the task to aid our mindset, and overall it fits into the busy schedule of most people far more easily. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try meditation – it is a very powerful tool and there’s a reason its been around for thousands of years. But, if you are new to the whole scene, it may be worth starting with snippets of meditation that are better categorised as mindfulness first.

One last suggestion I may give is an imagery example you can practice throughout your day that I found really helped me. With this constant stream of thoughts going through our head each day, it can sometimes be hard to focus on moving forward to complete the day’s tasks. I often like to picture my daily thoughts as a slow, downstream flowing river surrounded by colourful wildlife. I always think of cherry blossoms surrounding this river, as they have always felt calm and happy. The odd gust of wind sends a collection drifting down the river, never in a rush and always landing without impact on the water’s surface. Perhaps it was previous videos and photos I’ve seen of my friends and family seeing an abundance of these trees in Japan that had me fixated on them ever since. The beauty of this analogy/imagery is that you can make this river personal to you. Fill it with big oak trees, place it down the edge of a snowy mountain, put it within a seaside town slowly returning to sea – add whatever uniqueness is going to help you build this neutral, calm zone in your mind to return to.

Within this imagery, you can picture your thoughts as the slow river running downstream. No matter what the thought is, whether it’s one you end up adding emotion to, one that distracts you from a task, or one that is in and out in a flash - the river always keeps slowly running downstream. Acknowledge it, address it if you need, but ultimately return to that slow downstream river that keeps you moving forward in your day. This picture of a continuously moving river in my head helps me return to my mind to a ‘neutral’ place, and aids me in simply letting thoughts come and go. You may find it helpful to picture some of these thoughts as tiny little side streams that occasionally drift aside into the shrubbery away from the main river. Yet, once you have acknowledged them, the little side stream bends back in and joins the main peaceful river, slowly moving forward – just as you return your mind to a neutral zone, allowing you to carry on with your day without holding onto any added attachment.