The Path to a Healthier, More Productive Brain

According to Fred Gage, researcher at the Salk Institute, there is concrete evidence that neurogenesis (the creation of new brain cells) occurs in adult brains.

No longer is it believed that the brain is limited to the number of brain cells we are born with.

New brain cells are born well into the EIGHTH decade of life!

One of the main drivers of this process is voluntary movement/exercise. What supercharges this process is focused, directed attention to your movements.

You don’t have to go the gym to exercise to reap these benefits, however. In fact, pushing too hard and using too much effort will limit what you’re able to achieve.

You see, there is a scientific law that states that the more you slow down and the more you reduce your effort, the higher your capacity is to perceive differences.

The more differences you perceive in your movements directly translate to more movement possibilities for your nervous system.

By perceiving finer and finer differences in movement, you are actually increasing the number of dendrites branching out from your brain cells. These are the very parts of the neuron that tend to deteriorate with age (dendrites are the bushy projections through which a neuron receives signals from other neurons).

It has become a universal truth that the better connected a brain is, the better it will function - period.

And as Dr. Michel Merzenich, a pioneer in brain plasticity research states:

"Movement is inextricably controlled on the basis of ‘feedback’ from our bodies and brains, and movement control is guided very directly by the cognitive resources that guide all of our behaviors. They are weaker or stronger, enabled or disabled TOGETHER. Neurological processes that control the flow of cognition and thought are not really different from those that control the flow of movement — and in fact are complexly, inextricably inter-twined!"

With that being said, you can see how refining your movements to higher and higher levels of quality will enable you to refine your cognitive abilities as well!

You’ll actually become smarter!

Experience changes your brain structure.

Through your focused, directed attention to your movement experiences, you create richer and more complicated brain circuits.

It’s ALL in your hands (and brains).


LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
Are you directing your attention to the same old stuff day after day, or are you slowing down, reducing your effort and looking for new ways to do things?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Let us know what you’re doing for yourself to create a more richly connected brain.

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist
cestes@etmconsultants.com

Posture or Acture?

We have all heard that non-neutral postures are associated with a higher incidence of work related injuries, but what does that really mean to us?

First of all, I believe the term posture to be inaccurate. Words are very powerful in terms of their effect on us. This is one of those cases.

And what the heck is non-neutral!?

Posture contains the root word “post”. The idea of a “post” implies a static position. This couldn’t be more inaccurate!

Posture relates to action, not to the maintenance of any given position.

Proper posture, then, should be dynamic!

Dr. Feldenkrais, who we’ve written about many times here before, actually coined the term “Acture” to refer to the body’s positioning.

What, then, is proper Acture, and how does it benefit us?

Proper acture, he stated, would give you the ability to move in any direction without preparation.

You are not coming from a place of having to “get out of your own way” to initiate action.

That is, if you have chronically held muscular contractions (think holding your abdominal muscles in for that “flat tummy” look), you have to work against those patterns in order to accomplish what it is that you’re trying to do.

I would then think that non-neutral means that you aren’t holding chronic muscular contractions that don’t serve you.

A neutral posture would then be described as having the skeleton aligned in such a way that would enable it to support the majority of our weight in our dance with gravity.

Sounds all well and good, but what does that feel like?

You see, unless we know what something feels like, we can’t integrate it into our daily actions.

We will go about our daily activities utilizing those muscular patterns that we have learned up to this point because they feel “right” to us – regardless of how inefficient they may be.

Telling someone to sit up straight, or stand up straight, or to “lift with your legs” doesn’t do them any good because if they have to consciously correct themselves, they will return to their habitual patterns because those feel “right” them. They don’t have to think about them.

Providing experiential learning experiences for people, then, is the ONLY way to facilitate changes in our Acutre (or posture if you still want to hold onto that term).

People need the feeling of what efficient movement is like for them.

As similar as we all are, we are all very, very different.

So providing an environment to enable individualized learning to better understand what efficient movement feels like is essential.

Essential to you and your employee’s health.

Essential to you and your employee’s productivity.

And essential for the health (and the bottom line!) of your business.

The question is, are you or your company neglecting this essential?

I hope not, because in a economy like the one we find ourselves in now, it will be those companies that take care of those essentials who will come out of this economic mess the strongest.


LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What are you doing to take care of the essentials in your business?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Start paying attention to yourself and the way you move more. Do you notice any chronically held contractions that you have to work against to initiate action? Let us know what you find out about yourself!

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist
cestes@etmconsultants.com

Stress Management

It's More Important Than Ever!

A survey conducted by a large pharmaceutical company demonstrates that now it’s more important than ever to take care of your employees in terms of health and wellness programs.

According to the results, stress in their home or personal life made them physically ill in the past year and 38% said the same regarding workplace stress. Nearly 30% of respondents said they did not get much work done when experiencing stress.

I’ve written time an again how important stress management is to the overall health of a company. The cost of stress to U.S. businesses is $300 Billon per year! Left unchecked, it creates a cycle of dysfunction within both your employees and your organization that will spiral out of control.

Stress management is not simply about telling someone to calm down. In fact, according to research done by Fulbright Scholar Angela Patmore, and described in her book The Truth About Stress, how we handle stress in our lives will either empower us our tranquilize us.

Patmore explains that by calming people down as a form of stress management, you “reduce their coping skills, making people more cowardly and unwilling to take up new challenges, through which they can grow in life.”

In these tough economic times, empowering employees through education is not a luxury, it’s a necessity – at least for those companies that want to thrive.

Amen to that!

Let us be reminded here that there are specific body patterns (breathing, muscular tension, movement, and structural alignment) to stress, anxiety, and fear. Employees need to be educated as to what their individual patterns are so that they have the “tools” to deal with them.

With those “tools”, employees will be more empowered, more effective, and more productive. And their company will be able to demonstrate a tangible return on that investment. It truly is a “win-win”.

Now, more than ever, we need to shed our scarcity mindset and begin to look at how we can enable our workforce to do what we’re asking them to do – and not make them sick in the process.

LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING…
What have the effects of stress cost you and your company?

LET ME SUGGEST…
Leave us a comment and let us know any unique ways that you or your company are handling the effects of stress.

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist
cestes@etmconsultants.com

Your Brain, Learning, and Vitality

What is it that keeps our brains vital?

It’s L-E-A-R-N-I-N-G.

What type of learning is best?

To answer that question, we must first look at how our brains are organized.

What I’ve come to discover (and what neuroscience is now demonstrating), is that our brains are organized through movement.

Read that last statement again, slowly:

Our brains are organized through movement.

When you think about movement, what comes to mind?

More than likely, you mind goes to the movements that occur in our:

Joints
Bones
Muscles

You know, all of those movements that allow us to move around and take action in the world.

Did you ever stop to think about it in more detail?

Like how you speak, for example.

The movement of your lips.

The movement of the air over your vocal cords, driven by the movement of your diaphragm, to create the sounds that make up the words that you use to communicate to others.

And don’t forget the movement between the nerve cells in your brain that initiates and makes possible this ability to speak.

Movement is the language of our brains, and our brains are the great organizer of ALL movement

Movement is everything.

Without movement, life ceases to exist.

What has been shown in recent research – what we as Anat Baniel Method and Feldenkrais Method practitioners have known for quite some time – is that the quality of our movements are a manifestation of the quality of the workings of our brains.

According to Dr. Michael Merzenich, pioneering researcher of our brain’s plastic nature:

"Movement is inextricably controlled on the basis of ‘feedback’ from our bodies and brains, and movement control is guided very directly by the cognitive resources that guide all of our behaviors. They are weaker or stronger, enabled or disabled TOGETHER. Neurological processes that control the flow of cognition and thought are not really different from those that control the flow of movement — and in fact are complexly, inextricably inter-twined!"

What we have found is that when you begin to refine your movements, you begin to refine the way it is in which you think.

It’s called ‘embodied cognition’.

And this is clearly demonstrated in this study.

What it shows is that movement actually helps organize our brains ability to solve problems – and solve them faster.

Faster???

… from just movement?

How does 40% faster sound?

Gimme some-a dat!

As neuroscientific research marches on, you are going to see a new paradigm in terms of how this is implemented into educational and corporate training programs to:

Boost memory
Increase problem solving skills
Create perceptual changes in the way we take in and process information (which will increase creativity)
Enhance the way we handle stress and anxiety (which costs American businesses $300 Billion dollars per year!)
Eliminate repetitive stress injuries
And increase employee productivity

All through movement and attentional training.

We just happen to be at the forefront of this.

So if you’re looking for that edge, that extra something that’s going to enable you to outpace your competition. Give us a shout.

You’ll be glad you did.

LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What are you or your company doing to keep you (and your brain) from being stuck in the rut of rote repetition?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Let us know how you apply the power of movement in your daily life.

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist

Movement IS Life

I have inspiration to write about my friend Adam as he is dealing with some pretty major issues in his life right now.

Due to an accident while on vacation in Nicaragua less than two weeks ago, he suffered a severely broken neck, and has (temporarily) lost his ability to move - he’s paralyzed from the neck down.

I say temporarily because with the brain and nervous system, nothing is set in stone. It is constantly changing based on experience. Provided the necessary experiences, some pretty miraculous things are possible.

The following statement has never rung more true to me that right now:

“Movement is life.”

Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais coined this phrase. He was a pioneer in his understanding of how truly important movement is in our lives, as well as how much potential for change exists.

However, with the majority of folks in the world, movement is so ubiquitous, so ever present in every moment in our lives, that most take it for granted.

It something that we are ALWAYS doing – there is movement always occurring in the body regardless of what activity we are taking part in. Heck, when you are sleeping, your ribcage is moving. Your diaphragm is acting as a bellow to both bring in, and then expel, the air that is keeping you alive.

When movement stops, life ceases to exist – it’s that simple.

What most often fail to realize is that this ubiquitous part of life – movement – can not only continue to be refined, but must be refined for us to experience life long energy and vitality, as well as mental acuity.

Don’t get me wrong; habits are a necessary part of life. If we had to think about everything that it is that we do on a daily basis, our ability to accomplish our goals would definitely suffer.

However, as with anything that we do, if we get entrenched into our daily habits, and we no longer seek novelty, we cease experiencing variations.

When we no longer experience variation, we halt the learning process.

Halting this learning process arrests our development and our ability to evolve.

You see, in life, never do we “arrive”.  Some may believe this to be so, but this is false thinking.

We are all on a continuum based on where we are at and what is possible. When we stop engaging in the learning process, especially with movement, we become entrenched in our habits and continue to “burn” in patterns of action that aren’t advantageous to our structures.

Unfortunately, we don’t notice the downside of our movement choices until later when we begin to experience pain and limitation.

When someone throws their back out tying their shoes, it wasn’t the act of tying their shoes that caused it. That action was simply the straw that, pardon the pun, broke the camel’s back.

It was the accumulation of all the poorly executed actions up to that point that enabled the simple act of tying one’s shoes to cause severe pain and limitation.

Once people (and corporations) begin to take advantage of this hugely untapped source of learning – movement – we will begin to see some amazing outcomes.

Productivity will skyrocket!

Don’t believe me? The Journal of the American Medical association has recently estimated that over $61 billion dollars per year are lost due to common chronic pain conditions! Seventy-six percent (76%) of that is while the employees are AT work!

On top of that, the impact of stress holds an estimated price tag to US businesses of over $300 billon dollars per year.

And again, as I’ve written many times before, stress is a somatic experience – we experience it with our whole selves. There is a body pattern that accompanies stress, anxiety, and fear.

When left unchecked, and no opportunities are presented to learn how to better deal with chronic pain and stress (when there are no opportunities to learn more efficient movement patterns), we enter into a cycle of dysfunction.

We begin to slowly circle the drain.

With movement, as in life, everything is a choice. You can choose to remain in your entrenched movement habits, or you can seek variation in what it is that you do when moving in the world.

Movement is ALWAYS good to upgrade for yourself.

And unlike most folks, Adam knew this. 

He appreciated what it meant to learn more refined movement. I have worked with him for over two years and to see what he had become was to see a more fully evolved human being.

His ability to handle stress had improved immensely. His output at work had skyrocketed!

And it could have played a part in saving his life – who knows!?

Regardless, I look forward to working together with Adam upon his return from Nicaragua.

Helping him to hopefully put the pieces of the movement puzzle together once again.

I ask you this: don’t wait until something (movement) has been taken away from you before you realize what a gift it is.

Take advantage of every opportunity to improve yourself - and your movement.

You might be shocked at the outcomes.

LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What do you do on a daily basis that takes advantage of, and improves, your ability to move?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Log into Adam's journal and send him some encouragement here.

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist

Learning From Children

I was struck this morning by what a friend’s child said to her.

Her 8 year-old daughter said, out of the blue, “Mommy, every thought counts.”

It’s amazing sometimes when you stop a listen to the wisdom of children.

Children are pure, unadulterated, and they speak the truth.

They don’t yet have the stresses of life that most adults have layered one on top of the other.

They’re not interested in what they can’t do.

Their imaginations are FULL.

That’s right, little one - every thought DOES count!

Applying that statement to what I do, I would say that every movement counts.

Here’s why:

Many children are encouraged very early on to walk by their parents.

In and of itself, this is not a bad aspiration for parents to have – but to encourage it sooner than they are able to can, I believe, have long-term consequences.

When parents hold onto the goal of getting their children to walk early, children miss out on some very important learning.

They miss out on learning certain motor patterns.

You see, I believe that we (as children) learn to stand up lying down.

All of the fundamental motor patterns that are necessary for efficient standing and walking are learned while rolling around on the ground.

The first time a child stands up on their own, it’s purely by accident. They aren’t trying to stand up - they’re just trying to get to something.

This is why many children cry the first time they stand – they don’t know how they got there (and they don’t know how to get down)!

Only after the second time does standing become intentional for them.

So encouraging them to stand and walk before they’re ready means they’re missing out.

Not crawling (or not crawling for a long enough period of time) = missed opportunities for their nervous systems to experience certain motor patterns.

If a child is encouraged to go straight into assisted walking before learning to crawl, they develop inefficient ways of moving.

The reason that I am such a believer in this line of thinking is that I was one who went straight to assisted walking. I never learned to crawl, therefore I didn’t learn the underlying fundamental motor patterns that are necessary in order to be efficient in the way that I “use” myself.

And after dealing with chronic back pain for a number of years, I was told in my early twenties that I would eventually need to have a spinal fusion of the discs in my lower back.

Nuh-uh.   Not this kid…

So I set out on my own learning quest, and what I’ve found was this:

There is MUCH we can re-learn from children.

When we re-enter into the child-like movement based learning process and we “roll around” on the ground, there is a wealth of information for our nervous systems.

Using finely designed movements in a sequential order, we are able to re-learn what it’s like to move like a child again.

These methods are based on the body of work created by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, as well as one of his most well known students, Anat Baniel.

These movement sequences are designed to bring greater awareness to your movement capabilities while working through a series of gentle, comfortable steps that involve thinking, sensing, moving, and visualizing.

The process facilitates the development of an enhanced awareness of habitual muscular patterns and rigidities that may be causing limitations in movement.

Through slowing down, you’ll be able to feel those muscular patterns that are limiting you.

And, as Dr. Feldenkrais said, “Once you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.”

We have the capacity to expand our options for moving with increased sensitivity, learning to eliminate unnecessary effort, attend to our whole self, and better mobilize our intentions into action.

Tension and tightness in our bodies does not exist because your muscles want to be tense.

Tension is controlled at the level of the nervous system – not locally. Your muscles don’t have a desire to be tight!

When seeking solutions to our movement limitations, we need to address movement where it originates – in the brain.

Slowing down and reducing the effort gets the brains attention.

And what has been demonstrated in recent neuorscientific research is that focused, directed attention is the gateway that allows you to take advantage of brain plasticity.

When you apply the possibilities that brain plasticity makes available in terms of movement, you have a recipe that will allow you to move away from those patterns that presently cause you pain into new ones that aren’t limiting.

So, learn to move by rolling around on the ground again.

Have fun.

Pay attention to what you feel.

And remember, not only does every thought count – every movement does to!

LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What is it that you do that keeps you in a curious, child-like state of mind?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Leave a comment below with your thoughts on the above post.

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist

Functional Training

I have been thinking a lot lately about how there is no dedicated training program for the development of the human brain and nervous system in business and industry.

We have Six Sigma training, Lean training, and Total Quality Management (TQM) training but there is no systematized method that industry uses at this time in order to train the nervous systems of their employees.

Their employees – the ones that execute the above systems!

What business has done is to encourage participation in specific learning modules/ seminars, etc. in order to enable their employees to learn more about their specific jobs, but hasn’t done anything to affect the big picture (developing the human organism as a whole).

As an ex-Physical Educator, this reminds me of the different physical training methods that exist.

There are those that have the bodybuilding type mentality – those that train each individual muscle simply for size without any regard as to how it works with the other muscles in the bigger picture.

Then there is the functional training group.

They are the one who concerned mainly with how things work together. They train to increase function, leaving the asthetics in the background.

However, when you would see a bodybuilder next to someone whose main drive is functional training, the functional trainer would have a better appearance by most people’s standards.

Bodybuilders are often referred to as being “all show, and no go”, which is a reference to how inefficiently they are put together (I would describe it by saying how poorly integrated they are).

Those concerned mainly with functional training will consistently outperform so-called bodybuilders in functional activities (aren’t all activities functional?!) because they have learned how to use more of their whole self, while the other training method produces a bunch of “parts” that don’t work well together because they haven’t been trained to work together.

And I won't even get into the shrinkage part of it.....

When looking at employee development in business and industry from this perspective, one can see that they are creating “bodybuilders” – they’re only training a small portion of their employees potential.

Corporations are missing out on fully capitalizing on their human element.

They are only training the “thinking” part of their employee’s self-image.

And remember, how you take action and function in the world is determined by your self-image.

As we’ve mentioned before, your self-image consists of four parts:

Feeling self image
Thinking self image
Emoting self image
Movement self image

The contribution of each of the components to any particular action varies, but each component will be present to some extent in every action we take.

To only train a small portion of our self-image is to miss out on an incredible opportunity for not only growth, but true transformation.

And in an economy like the one we’re in right now, we need transformation.

When corporations begin focusing on developing the entire human organism - their human element - we will begin to see how truly capable we really are.

LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING…
Do you or your company approach your development with a bodybuilding mentality?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Send us an email and let us know what you are doing to stay ahead of your competition!

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist
cestes@etmconsultants.com