Anat Baniel Action Guide
Anat Baniel Movement Techniques that Keep You Young The following is taken from The Future of Health Now interview conducted by Ann Wixon with Ms. Anat Baniel, author of bestselling Move Into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality, and Kids Beyond Limits. She has established an international reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities in finding ways to access the brain to overcome pain and limitation, increase vitality, and help children with special needs make the impossible possible. We have compiled the best, most valuable and easily applicable content from this amazing interview so you can begin to implement positive changes today, as you strive to live a happier and healthier life now and in the future. Who is Anat Baniel? I hold a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from Tel Aviv University and have established an international reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities in finding ways to use movement as a way to communicate with the brain to overcome pain and limitation, increase vitality, and help children with special needs make the impossible possible. I am the author of Move Into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. I’m pleased to present my research with a proven movement technique that can help keep your brain (and entire being) younger and more vibrant. What is Brain Plasticity? Brain plasticity is the brain’s ability to change itself, to change the structures, the connections, the patterns that control your movement, your thinking, your emotions, and your feelings. The brain is the master manager, CEO of your life, and the way that it’s put together, the way that it's built, and the way it works and how well it works will decide how well you move, and the kind of intelligence and abilities you have. They’ve recently discovered that brain cells can actually be created in the brain later in life. But, really, the most important part that we now know about brain plasticity is the ability of the © The Future of Health Now 2012
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existing brain cells to create new connections, to create new synapses, and connect themselves to other brain cells. In this way, we don’t have to worry so much about how many brain cells we have. We have plenty of cells to work with. It's about the connections that are formed between the different cells. We can get the brain to wake up and start growing new connections anytime…under the right conditions. We're talking about millions upon millions and probably more like billions new connections, if we do what works for the brain. Defining Movement Most people think of movement in terms of exercise or Pilates or yoga or anything that causes you to twist or stretch yourself. For me, movement is more about how you go about doing the movements that you do. So the first thing that you really need to do is to move. The moment we move, there are ways to do things, and how we go about moving completely changes the outcomes—physically, mentally, and emotionally. No matter what type of movement you want to do, the important part is to spend a few moments, ideally every day, moving with attention. Normally we “move” automatically, we don’t think about it. But if you just take a few steps—30 seconds, 60 seconds—you slow down a little bit and you pay attention to yourself, to your body, to your shoulders, to your hips, to your feet, as you move. You'll be amazed how quickly your body starts shifting because your brain, the moment you pay attention to your movement, this is really a resource of new information to your brain. The Nine Essentials The nine essentials are nine key things you can do in your daily life (or at least twice a week), to reverse the typical trend of aging and allow you to function better. They include: 1. Movement with attention 2. Slow down 3. Reduce the force 4. Make intentional mistakes 5. The learning switch 6. Enthusiasm 7. Flexible goals 8. Imagination and dreams 9. Awareness
© The Future of Health Now 2012
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Move with Attention Exercise is one form of movement. There are also “habits,” which are automatic movements. But thinking is also movement. Emotion is movement. Feeling is movement. Everything that we do on every aspect of ourselves is movement. Usually, people think about movement more in the physical sense. However, your thoughts are also organized by your brain, and the brain moves to create thoughts. Even the word emotions is e-motion, it's movement. So, to move with attention applies to physical performance, such as reducing aches, increasing flexibility, strength, etc., but it is also important to bring attention to the movement of your thinking. Try this exercise: Sit on the edge of a chair and put your feet flat and spread on the floor, so you’re sitting comfortably. Next, very simply, turn your head to look to your right, and bring it back to the middle, and then turn your head to look to your left, and bring it back to the middle. All right? Now, you know, more or less, your current full range of motion in this movement. Now, lean on your right hand on the back, behind on the chair. Next, lift your left arm in front of you and place your chin on the back of your hand. So you're kind of like leaning on the back of your hand, kind of over your chin. It's a kind of a funny, little position. Now, very important, do these next movements very gently and slowly. This is not stretching. With your arm and your head together, leaning on your right hand behind you, turn your left arm and your head to the right and back. You should be resting on your right hand behind you and using your left hand to gently move your head and chin. You're basically twisting your shoulders, your arm, and your head to the right, and you're bringing it back. Do it again, very gently, very slowly, and don’t go as far as you can, just as far as is easy and comfortable and come back to center. Now, go just as far as it's easy for you, and stay there. In that position, with your eyes only, look a little to the right. Not your head, just the eyes. Now look to the left. Usually, in the beginning, when people move their eyes, they also try to move their heads, but move just the eyes to the right and to the left, and one more time to the right and to the left. Now, bring your head back to the center and, once again, take everything together to the right and see if you're moving already a little more.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
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Now, let's just do one more thing. Take everything again, just like this, leaning on the back of your left hand and move your head to the right. You're probably going a little further. Now, move the head to the right, so you take it a little away from the hand, and then you move the head to the left. You should notice that when you move your head to your right, your eyes also look to the right. When you move your head to the left, the eyes go to the left. So now, when you move your head to the right, take your eyes to the left, and when you move your head to the left, take your eyes to the right. Just do it very slowly because, in the beginning, it can be confusing. Do it again, and then turn your head to the left, take your eyes to the right, come back to the middle with everything, the chin is again on your left hand. Once again, turn everything to the right and see if you're a bit more flexible. Now, put your left arm down and just sit, lean on your right hand still behind you. Now, simply turn your head to look to the right and see how far you're turning. Now, sit and turn to the left and see how far you turn to the left.
This is your brain changing, manifesting through your body, through your movement. Some signs that you need to move with attention and wake up your brain include: Telling the same stories over and over Doing the same routine over and over Increased anxiety Physical movements are more difficult Sense of hopelessness, boredom, or difficulty to understand a new idea Not open to new thoughts or ideas Reluctance to shift a belief system Difficulty standing on one leg to put on pants (balance issues) Slow It Down When you want to change something or want to learn something new, you need to slow down. Fast, we can only do what we already know. So, when we do things fast, we can only do what we already know. We can only use the existing patterns or habits. But when you slow down, you get your brain’s attention. It gives you the opportunity to feel what you're doing, how you're doing it, and what you're thinking. Then, it gives your brain an opportunity to do something new. Reduce the Force Very often, when we want something from another human being or we try to change something, we use way too much force. We are too forceful. As a result, we are, most often, met with resistance.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
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But, when you slow down and you reduce the force, all of a sudden, your brain can start moving things around. This can have a profound effect on your body, your work, your family, and your relationships. Variations/Make Mistakes When you are trying to solve a problem, be it work or even pain, take your mind off the immediate issue by making intentional mistakes. The reality is no one really knows the right way to do anything, so try four or five different ways that are not that right way. Your brain needs flexibility, the brain needs to be flooded with new information, and to be able to shift things around as you grow and change as the demands change. The Learning Switch Think of your brain as a light switch. The switch can be on and the switch can be off. When the switch is off, you're on automatic a hundred percent of the time. Then, the learning switch, you can turn the switch on, and all you have to do is to say, “I am interested in what I can learn right now.” Decide to take five minutes every day, no matter where you are. At that moment, decide, “I'm going to discover something new. I'm going to learn something. I'm going to figure something out in the next five minutes.” It can be the simplest thing or you can discover the new biggest thing in the world. I don’t care. Look to learn, turn your switch on intentionally. Enthusiasm Enthusiasm is like an excited child. It helps to wake the brain up. It causes the brain to say, “Something important happened here. Pay attention.” It creates the connections and selects those connections. That’s when the learning happens. Notice I used the word enthusiasm and not excitement. Enthusiastic is controlled excitement. It is also empowering. Not only does it empower YOU when you get enthusiastic, but it empowers everybody around you. Enthusiasm, the capacity for enthusiasm is probably one of the most important traits of a true leader. You cannot have a leader that slouches around, has negative thinking, and you have to give them lots of good news before they're going to really step up. Flexible Goals Goals are very, very important, they organize our life. A very important part of goals is to know what your goal is, then to keep it both in the background and sort of throw it into the future.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
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Allow yourself enormous amounts of flexibility in terms of the way you accomplish your goal, the timing of accomplishing your goal, what it's going to look like, and what it's going to feel like. You leave it very kind of loose. You don’t get attached to the way you're going to get there, the time you're going to get there. If you knew how to accomplish your goal now, you would have accomplished it already. Imagination and Dreams Your brain doesn’t really know the difference between real and imagined, when you imagine very vividly. With imagination, you can create lots of different scenarios in your mind, and then let it go and see what happens. You don’t need to get rigid, you can bring a lot of variation in your imagination, and you can really practice stuff. The other part is dreams. I'm not talking about nighttime dreams, but I'm talking about your personal dream, your vision dream. Your brain grows into, moves into, and is guided by your dreams into the future. Daydreaming is one of the best ways to figure out and find solutions. Actually, so are night dreams. When you try to solve a problem and then you go to sleep, very often the solution will come to you in your sleep. You have to let go and allow the brain freedom to move things about, because if you want something new, something new has to be created. Awareness Awareness is a skill, not as a state of mind. It's not something that you somehow fall into. It's an active use of your brain. It is, to the extent that we can do it, the remarkable unique capacity of the human brain to observe itself. The brain needs an observer to grow, to figure itself out, to form itself, and to thrive. We see that absolutely with small babies, infants, and young children. This is the highest use of our brain. It's the slowest function, it's the youngest function of the brain, as I understand it. But, when we apply awareness, we are using our brains to its highest capacity. When we do that, we actually get calmer, we get wiser, we see more, we learn more, and we reach levels that, otherwise, are not there for us. Fitness Myths The first myth is what I call the flat stomach myth or what many people call core. So let me tell you what is a myth about the core or flat stomach myth. The most powerful part of our body, the most powerful muscles, are the muscles that are attached to the pelvis. So whenever we do any movement, those muscles should do their share. When they do their share, the movement becomes very easy to do.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
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That’s why I call it power center rather than core. The power center of our life is our brain, but the power center of the body is in the pelvis. However, the idea that it is by tightening, strengthening, and some people even think of holding the abdomen muscles tight all the time is how we get powerful, is absolutely wrong. A hundred percent, neuro-physiologically and mechanically wrong. What happens if you pull your belly in or just use your abdomen muscles, you are actually inhibiting the use of your back muscles. That’s how the brain works. When one group of muscles works, the opposing group of muscles is inhibited. All upright movements that have to do with standing up or jumping, require actually powerful work of the back muscles and the gluteus and freeing the abdomen muscles, actually freeing belly. So, while your abdominal muscles need to be strong, they are a secondary, power-wise, in the sense that when you do the movement, every movement that you do, power generation-wise is the center of the body. Sometimes, it's the abdomen muscles, sometimes it’s the back muscles…it depends on the movement. The second fitness myth is that stretching is good for you. The actual idea of stretching is really silly. Muscles are not structured to stretch, and there is no neuromuscular function, there's no brain function called stretch the muscle. What happens is, in every muscle bundle, there's a little nerve ending, and there's a little loop that goes to the spinal cord, and that loop is called the stretch reflex. That reflex is in there to protect the muscles from being torn. So, when you really stretch a muscle, if you really do it, you'll activate the stretch reflex. When you stop, it’ll actually get shorter. That’s why people need to stretch over and over again, because their muscles keep getting shorter and shorter. Plus, there's quite a lot of research out there showing that you may actually get more injuries after stretching rather than less. You don’t want to warm up your muscles. You want to warm up your brain, you want to wake up your brain. You want to have a brain that’s ready to do what you wanted, and one of the ways is to go slow, with less force, the exact opposite of stretching. Do some variations of movement, do them slowly, do them with very little force. Have fun, make intentional mistakes, and then go ahead and do your activity. You warm up your nervous system and its connection to your body. Do not stretch, it's ridiculous. The third fitness myth is that practice makes perfect. Practice doesn’t make perfect, depends how you do your practice. Bring the nine essentials to your practice, it will make you more than perfect, it’ll surprise you. But if you do practice just rote, rote, rote, you're just grooving in both what you can do and your limitations.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
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Final Thoughts Move with attention, just do it, just start. Slow down at times, especially if you want to improve in what you do or learn to do something new. Reduce the force in your exercise, in your communications, at least some of the time, feel how this affects you. Bring variations, make mistakes on purpose, or get playful. Do the other essentials and be enthusiastic. Change your attitude to goals, don’t bring compulsivity to your goals. Bring curiosity and playfulness and knowing the things can work out and just wonder how it will resolve itself. Bring awareness, activate your awareness, it's very important. Just know that you have a remarkable brain that will always say yes to you when you give it what it needs. It will always wake up and grow better for you the moment you give it what it needs. Resources
Dr. Cynthia Green interview This Action Guide has been brought to you by The Future of Health Now © 2012
© The Future of Health Now 2012
8
1
existing brain cells to create new connections, to create new synapses, and connect themselves to other brain cells. In this way, we don’t have to worry so much about how many brain cells we have. We have plenty of cells to work with. It's about the connections that are formed between the different cells. We can get the brain to wake up and start growing new connections anytime…under the right conditions. We're talking about millions upon millions and probably more like billions new connections, if we do what works for the brain. Defining Movement Most people think of movement in terms of exercise or Pilates or yoga or anything that causes you to twist or stretch yourself. For me, movement is more about how you go about doing the movements that you do. So the first thing that you really need to do is to move. The moment we move, there are ways to do things, and how we go about moving completely changes the outcomes—physically, mentally, and emotionally. No matter what type of movement you want to do, the important part is to spend a few moments, ideally every day, moving with attention. Normally we “move” automatically, we don’t think about it. But if you just take a few steps—30 seconds, 60 seconds—you slow down a little bit and you pay attention to yourself, to your body, to your shoulders, to your hips, to your feet, as you move. You'll be amazed how quickly your body starts shifting because your brain, the moment you pay attention to your movement, this is really a resource of new information to your brain. The Nine Essentials The nine essentials are nine key things you can do in your daily life (or at least twice a week), to reverse the typical trend of aging and allow you to function better. They include: 1. Movement with attention 2. Slow down 3. Reduce the force 4. Make intentional mistakes 5. The learning switch 6. Enthusiasm 7. Flexible goals 8. Imagination and dreams 9. Awareness
© The Future of Health Now 2012
2
Move with Attention Exercise is one form of movement. There are also “habits,” which are automatic movements. But thinking is also movement. Emotion is movement. Feeling is movement. Everything that we do on every aspect of ourselves is movement. Usually, people think about movement more in the physical sense. However, your thoughts are also organized by your brain, and the brain moves to create thoughts. Even the word emotions is e-motion, it's movement. So, to move with attention applies to physical performance, such as reducing aches, increasing flexibility, strength, etc., but it is also important to bring attention to the movement of your thinking. Try this exercise: Sit on the edge of a chair and put your feet flat and spread on the floor, so you’re sitting comfortably. Next, very simply, turn your head to look to your right, and bring it back to the middle, and then turn your head to look to your left, and bring it back to the middle. All right? Now, you know, more or less, your current full range of motion in this movement. Now, lean on your right hand on the back, behind on the chair. Next, lift your left arm in front of you and place your chin on the back of your hand. So you're kind of like leaning on the back of your hand, kind of over your chin. It's a kind of a funny, little position. Now, very important, do these next movements very gently and slowly. This is not stretching. With your arm and your head together, leaning on your right hand behind you, turn your left arm and your head to the right and back. You should be resting on your right hand behind you and using your left hand to gently move your head and chin. You're basically twisting your shoulders, your arm, and your head to the right, and you're bringing it back. Do it again, very gently, very slowly, and don’t go as far as you can, just as far as is easy and comfortable and come back to center. Now, go just as far as it's easy for you, and stay there. In that position, with your eyes only, look a little to the right. Not your head, just the eyes. Now look to the left. Usually, in the beginning, when people move their eyes, they also try to move their heads, but move just the eyes to the right and to the left, and one more time to the right and to the left. Now, bring your head back to the center and, once again, take everything together to the right and see if you're moving already a little more.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
3
Now, let's just do one more thing. Take everything again, just like this, leaning on the back of your left hand and move your head to the right. You're probably going a little further. Now, move the head to the right, so you take it a little away from the hand, and then you move the head to the left. You should notice that when you move your head to your right, your eyes also look to the right. When you move your head to the left, the eyes go to the left. So now, when you move your head to the right, take your eyes to the left, and when you move your head to the left, take your eyes to the right. Just do it very slowly because, in the beginning, it can be confusing. Do it again, and then turn your head to the left, take your eyes to the right, come back to the middle with everything, the chin is again on your left hand. Once again, turn everything to the right and see if you're a bit more flexible. Now, put your left arm down and just sit, lean on your right hand still behind you. Now, simply turn your head to look to the right and see how far you're turning. Now, sit and turn to the left and see how far you turn to the left.
This is your brain changing, manifesting through your body, through your movement. Some signs that you need to move with attention and wake up your brain include: Telling the same stories over and over Doing the same routine over and over Increased anxiety Physical movements are more difficult Sense of hopelessness, boredom, or difficulty to understand a new idea Not open to new thoughts or ideas Reluctance to shift a belief system Difficulty standing on one leg to put on pants (balance issues) Slow It Down When you want to change something or want to learn something new, you need to slow down. Fast, we can only do what we already know. So, when we do things fast, we can only do what we already know. We can only use the existing patterns or habits. But when you slow down, you get your brain’s attention. It gives you the opportunity to feel what you're doing, how you're doing it, and what you're thinking. Then, it gives your brain an opportunity to do something new. Reduce the Force Very often, when we want something from another human being or we try to change something, we use way too much force. We are too forceful. As a result, we are, most often, met with resistance.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
4
But, when you slow down and you reduce the force, all of a sudden, your brain can start moving things around. This can have a profound effect on your body, your work, your family, and your relationships. Variations/Make Mistakes When you are trying to solve a problem, be it work or even pain, take your mind off the immediate issue by making intentional mistakes. The reality is no one really knows the right way to do anything, so try four or five different ways that are not that right way. Your brain needs flexibility, the brain needs to be flooded with new information, and to be able to shift things around as you grow and change as the demands change. The Learning Switch Think of your brain as a light switch. The switch can be on and the switch can be off. When the switch is off, you're on automatic a hundred percent of the time. Then, the learning switch, you can turn the switch on, and all you have to do is to say, “I am interested in what I can learn right now.” Decide to take five minutes every day, no matter where you are. At that moment, decide, “I'm going to discover something new. I'm going to learn something. I'm going to figure something out in the next five minutes.” It can be the simplest thing or you can discover the new biggest thing in the world. I don’t care. Look to learn, turn your switch on intentionally. Enthusiasm Enthusiasm is like an excited child. It helps to wake the brain up. It causes the brain to say, “Something important happened here. Pay attention.” It creates the connections and selects those connections. That’s when the learning happens. Notice I used the word enthusiasm and not excitement. Enthusiastic is controlled excitement. It is also empowering. Not only does it empower YOU when you get enthusiastic, but it empowers everybody around you. Enthusiasm, the capacity for enthusiasm is probably one of the most important traits of a true leader. You cannot have a leader that slouches around, has negative thinking, and you have to give them lots of good news before they're going to really step up. Flexible Goals Goals are very, very important, they organize our life. A very important part of goals is to know what your goal is, then to keep it both in the background and sort of throw it into the future.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
5
Allow yourself enormous amounts of flexibility in terms of the way you accomplish your goal, the timing of accomplishing your goal, what it's going to look like, and what it's going to feel like. You leave it very kind of loose. You don’t get attached to the way you're going to get there, the time you're going to get there. If you knew how to accomplish your goal now, you would have accomplished it already. Imagination and Dreams Your brain doesn’t really know the difference between real and imagined, when you imagine very vividly. With imagination, you can create lots of different scenarios in your mind, and then let it go and see what happens. You don’t need to get rigid, you can bring a lot of variation in your imagination, and you can really practice stuff. The other part is dreams. I'm not talking about nighttime dreams, but I'm talking about your personal dream, your vision dream. Your brain grows into, moves into, and is guided by your dreams into the future. Daydreaming is one of the best ways to figure out and find solutions. Actually, so are night dreams. When you try to solve a problem and then you go to sleep, very often the solution will come to you in your sleep. You have to let go and allow the brain freedom to move things about, because if you want something new, something new has to be created. Awareness Awareness is a skill, not as a state of mind. It's not something that you somehow fall into. It's an active use of your brain. It is, to the extent that we can do it, the remarkable unique capacity of the human brain to observe itself. The brain needs an observer to grow, to figure itself out, to form itself, and to thrive. We see that absolutely with small babies, infants, and young children. This is the highest use of our brain. It's the slowest function, it's the youngest function of the brain, as I understand it. But, when we apply awareness, we are using our brains to its highest capacity. When we do that, we actually get calmer, we get wiser, we see more, we learn more, and we reach levels that, otherwise, are not there for us. Fitness Myths The first myth is what I call the flat stomach myth or what many people call core. So let me tell you what is a myth about the core or flat stomach myth. The most powerful part of our body, the most powerful muscles, are the muscles that are attached to the pelvis. So whenever we do any movement, those muscles should do their share. When they do their share, the movement becomes very easy to do.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
6
That’s why I call it power center rather than core. The power center of our life is our brain, but the power center of the body is in the pelvis. However, the idea that it is by tightening, strengthening, and some people even think of holding the abdomen muscles tight all the time is how we get powerful, is absolutely wrong. A hundred percent, neuro-physiologically and mechanically wrong. What happens if you pull your belly in or just use your abdomen muscles, you are actually inhibiting the use of your back muscles. That’s how the brain works. When one group of muscles works, the opposing group of muscles is inhibited. All upright movements that have to do with standing up or jumping, require actually powerful work of the back muscles and the gluteus and freeing the abdomen muscles, actually freeing belly. So, while your abdominal muscles need to be strong, they are a secondary, power-wise, in the sense that when you do the movement, every movement that you do, power generation-wise is the center of the body. Sometimes, it's the abdomen muscles, sometimes it’s the back muscles…it depends on the movement. The second fitness myth is that stretching is good for you. The actual idea of stretching is really silly. Muscles are not structured to stretch, and there is no neuromuscular function, there's no brain function called stretch the muscle. What happens is, in every muscle bundle, there's a little nerve ending, and there's a little loop that goes to the spinal cord, and that loop is called the stretch reflex. That reflex is in there to protect the muscles from being torn. So, when you really stretch a muscle, if you really do it, you'll activate the stretch reflex. When you stop, it’ll actually get shorter. That’s why people need to stretch over and over again, because their muscles keep getting shorter and shorter. Plus, there's quite a lot of research out there showing that you may actually get more injuries after stretching rather than less. You don’t want to warm up your muscles. You want to warm up your brain, you want to wake up your brain. You want to have a brain that’s ready to do what you wanted, and one of the ways is to go slow, with less force, the exact opposite of stretching. Do some variations of movement, do them slowly, do them with very little force. Have fun, make intentional mistakes, and then go ahead and do your activity. You warm up your nervous system and its connection to your body. Do not stretch, it's ridiculous. The third fitness myth is that practice makes perfect. Practice doesn’t make perfect, depends how you do your practice. Bring the nine essentials to your practice, it will make you more than perfect, it’ll surprise you. But if you do practice just rote, rote, rote, you're just grooving in both what you can do and your limitations.
© The Future of Health Now 2012
7
Final Thoughts Move with attention, just do it, just start. Slow down at times, especially if you want to improve in what you do or learn to do something new. Reduce the force in your exercise, in your communications, at least some of the time, feel how this affects you. Bring variations, make mistakes on purpose, or get playful. Do the other essentials and be enthusiastic. Change your attitude to goals, don’t bring compulsivity to your goals. Bring curiosity and playfulness and knowing the things can work out and just wonder how it will resolve itself. Bring awareness, activate your awareness, it's very important. Just know that you have a remarkable brain that will always say yes to you when you give it what it needs. It will always wake up and grow better for you the moment you give it what it needs. Resources
Dr. Cynthia Green interview This Action Guide has been brought to you by The Future of Health Now © 2012
© The Future of Health Now 2012
8
