Want to Control Your Mind? Your Body Has it Covered

Want to Control Your Mind? Your Body Has it Covered

We’ve known for a while the incredible power of the mind over the body, but there’s an abundance of scientific evidence that’s showing the mind isn’t always the one calling the shots. The relationship is a two way one, with the body also having a hefty influence over the mind.

Professor Sian Beilock is a leading expert on the brain science behind human performance. She highlights the importance of early movement for babies and young children as a way to support their cognitive development.

Beilock claims that for babies, there’s enormous benefit in providing them with plenty of opportunities to safely run around without clothes and baby walkers so they can freely explore their environment.

For young kids, it’s important to get them moving, not only for their physical health but also for their mental health and to support their academic performance. Beilock emhapsises the importance of the ‘4 R’s’ = reading, writing, arithmetic and recess. Recess may be particularly important for boys – running around may be particularly important for their academic performance.

 Let’s not leave out the grown ups. Physical activity is also important for the rest of us. Beilock stresses the importance of activity, particularly aerobic exercise, on the structure and working of the brain, particularly thinking, reasoning and memory. Swimming, running, cycling, brisk walking, or cleaning the house with a rocket in your step can all improve mental health.

Beilock offers these ideas to strengthen the mind-body connection. Little things can make a huge difference:

  • Reboot the brain during work by taking a break and going for a walk.
  • Walking away from a difficult problem for a few minutes can help to bring around a resolution.
  • Posture and expressions all influence mood. Standing tall can help you to feel powerful and confident and can communicate the same to others. Facial expressions cue the brain to feel certain emotions. Smiling, for example, can make you feel happier.
  • For an exam or performance, study or practice in the same conditions that you’ll be performing in. Try to face the same position, stand or sit the same way, if you chew gum while you study, try to do it during the exam too.
  • Journalling can be a way to ‘download’ worries from mind to paper. It can improve performance by reducing stress or the worries of daily life.
  • Spend time in the outdoors. Science has shown us that walking in nature can recharge your mind and improve attention and the capacity to focus.
  • Meditation, even for a few minutes a day, can help ease anxiety and pain, among other things. It can also add heft to self-control if there are habits that need breaking. 

Our minds were meant to be strong, wild and beautiful – free to roam and learn and make us the best version of human that we can be. Anything we can do to maximise it’s potential – or to maximise the control we have control over it’s potential – will see to it that we flourish.

8 Comments

Hey Sigmund

Barbara I’m not sure but let’s see if I can help. There are two possibilities. You commented on Facebook about a book called ‘The Grief Recovery Handbook’. Is this it? otherwise, the closest I can find to the words you are typing in is ‘It’s Not You, It’s What Happened to You.’ Does this help? I haven’t read either of them but it looks like both are available on Amazon.

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Barbara

I am looking for a Book that was featured at the end of one of the articles. I noted it in my poor old brain and it slipped out. The cover of the book had a large tree on it. It was about personal trauma I believe.
But I keep typing ” you are what happened to you ” or something similar into search engines and do not get anything close. Anyone remember ?? I have read all your blogs for years but it was recent. Please Help ?

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Barbara

I learn everyday ! You are so important to me !

Please feel free to send me a bill, I owe you.

They keep trying to jam Big Pharma down my throat there’s not that much wrong, Widows hurt, it takes how long it takes. I have no doubt that I will succeed now.
The American Medical community won’t take the time to know what people are really going through.

Reply
Louise Armoni

On Day 14 of your own 30 Days of Flight you suggested walking tall, with longer strides – and indeed it is weirdly effective. Thanks for all those great ideas!

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Too many students are being stifled by anxiety, and this number is on the rise.

Far from being ‘another anxiety workshop’, this comprehensive approach will draw on neuroscience, evidence-based strategies, and highly respected therapeutic models in developing a fresh, impactful approach to working with anxiety in young people.

We will explore anxiety from the ground up, developing a ‘roadmap’ for a therapeutic response to anxiety that will include key information, powerful strategies, and new responses to anxiety to effect immediate and long-term change.

This workshop is for anyone who works with young people in any capacity. 

Includes full catering, handbook and PD certificate.

For the full range of workshops in Australia and New Zealand, see the link in the bio.♥️
Relationship first, then learning and behaviour will follow. It can’t be any other way. 

Anxious brains can’t learn, and brains that don’t feel safe will organise young bodies (all bodies) for fight, flight (avoidance, refusal, disengagement, perfectionism), or shutdown. 

Without connection, warmth, a sense of belonging, feeling welcome, moments of joy, play, and levity, relational safety will be compromised, which will compromise learning and behaviour. It’s just how it is. Decades of research and experience are shouting this at us. 

Yet, we are asking more and more of our teachers. The more procedural or curriculum demands we place on teachers, the more we steal the time they need to build relationships - the most powerful tool of their trade. 

There is no procedure or reporting that can take the place of relationship in terms of ensuring a child’s capacity to learn and be calm. 

There are two spaces that teachers occupy. Sometimes they can happen together. Sometimes one has to happen first. 

The first is the space that lets them build relationship. The second is the space that lets them teach kids and manage a classroom. The second will happen best when there is an opportunity to fully attend to the first. 

There is an opportunity cost to everything. It isn’t about relationships OR learning. It’s relationships AND learning. Sometimes it’s relationships THEN learning. 

The best way we can support kids to learn and to feel calm, is to support teachers with the space, time, and support to build relationships. 

The great teachers already know this. What’s getting in the way isn’t their capacity or their will to build relationships, but the increasing demands that insist they shift more attention to grades, curriculum, reporting, and ‘managing’ behaviour without the available resources to build greater physical (sensory, movement) and relational safety (connection, play, joy, belonging).

Relationships first, then the rest will follow.♥️
Love and lead. 

First, we love. Validation lets them know we see them. Validation is a presence, not a speech. It’s showing our willingness to sit with them in the ‘big’ of it all, without needing to talk them out of how they feel.

It says, ‘I see you. I believe you that this feels big. Bring your feelings to me, because I can look after you through all of it.’

Then, we lead. Our response will lead theirs, not just this time, but well into the future. 

If we support avoidance, their need to avoid will grow. The message we send is, ‘Maybe you aren’t safe here. Maybe you can’t handle this. Maybe your anxiety is telling the truth.’ 

Of course, if they truly aren’t safe, then avoidance is important. 

But if they are safe and we support avoidance, we are inadvertently teaching them to avoid anything that comes with anxiety - and all brave, new, hard, important things will come with anxiety. 

Think about job interviews, meeting new people, first dates, approaching someone to say sorry, saying no - all of these will come with anxiety.

The experiences they have now in being able to move forward with anxiety in scary-safe situations (like school) will breathe life into their capacity to do the hard, important things that will nourish and grow them for the rest of their lives. First though, they will be watching you for signs as to whether or not anxiety is a stop sign or a warning. The key to loving bravely and wholly is knowing the difference.

Teach them to ask themselves, ‘Do I feel like this because I’m in danger? (Is this scary dangerous?) Or because there’s something brave, new, hard, important I need to do. (Is this scary-safe?). Then, ‘Is this a time to be safe or brave?’

To show them we believe they are safe and capable, try, ‘I know this feels big, and I know you can do this.’ Then, give them a squeeze, hand them to a trusted adult, and give them a quick, confident goodbye. Their tears won’t hurt them, as long as they aren’t alone in their tears.

It doesn’t matter how small the steps are, as long as they are forward.♥️
I'm so excited to be speaking about separation anxiety at the Childhood Potential Online Montessori Conference. 

The conference will involve conversations with over 40 other experts, and will take place from 27-31 January 2025. This is for anyone who is an important adult to a young child or toddler. 

I'd love you to join me. See more here 
: http://childhoodpotential.com/?a_box=ncw8h43m&a_cam=1
New, hard, important, brave things will always come with anxiety. It’s the anxiety that makes these things brave.

The only way for kids to never experience anxiety is for us to never put them in front of anything growthful, new, hard, brave. They’ll never feel the discomfort of anxiety, but they also won’t grow and strengthen against it. 

We’ll never get rid of anxiety and we don’t need to. The key to strengthening young people against anxiety lies in helping them feel safer with it. 

Here are 3 ways to do that. First though, and most importantly, establish that they are actually safe - that they are relationally safe, and that they feel safe in their bodies.

1. Take avoidance off the table. Avoidance makes anxiety worse by teaching the brain that the only way to stay safe is to avoid. Little steps matter - any step, even the tiniest, is better than none.

2. Show them you can handle their anxiety and the big feels that come with it:

‘Of course you feel anxious. You’re doing something big. How can I help you feel brave?’ 

Or, ‘I know this feels big, and it feels like you can’t. I know you are safe and I know you can. You don’t need to believe it because I know it enough for both of us. I know you won’t believe it until you see it for yourself. That’s okay, that’s what I’m here for - to show you how amazing you are and that you can do hard things. I can take care of you through the ‘big’ of it all. What’s one little step you can take? Let’s take it together. And don’t say ‘no steps’ because that’s not an option.’

3. Help them understand why they feel the way they do when they are anxious, otherwise they’ll interpret sick tummies, sore tummies, racy heart, clammy skin, big feelings as a sign of deficiency or potential disaster. It isn’t. It’s a sign of a brain and body trying to protect them, at a time they don’t need protecting. 

As long as they are safe, the need to avoid is often more about needing to avoid the thoughts, feelings, and physiology of anxiety, rather than avoiding the thing itself. This is why the physiology of anxiety will continue to drive anxiety until we make sense of it. ‘Hey Warrior’ will help you do make sense of it for them.♥️

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