How Mindful Relationships Change your Brain (no, really)

So I must be somewhat of a left-brained person, because whenever I learn a cool fact about neurobiology, it excites me like nothing else. So it was, in was reading The Mindful Therapist (2010) by Dan Siegel, leading expert in interpersonal neurobiology, that I came across his idea that certain types of social interaction have the power to transform our brains.

In the book, Siegel says that interacting with another person in a mindful state, such as counseling, can fast-track the growth of new neural pathways in the brain. From the counseling perspective, this is good news, since it means that engaging in a relationship with a non-judgmental, mindful therapist boosts your potential for brain change, or neuroplasticity, which we now know occurs throughout the life span. This means that whatever process of change you're working on, having a mindful therapist can be a big help. I can only imagine this would apply to a mindful yoga teacher or spiritual guide, as well.

I also like to think about the big-picture perspective - does this apply to all relationships? For the last 10 years, I've surrounded myself with healthy people, hoping this would support me in developing health and well-being in my own life. But I never thought that interacting with my friends in a mindful way - such as through highly attentive conversations, playing music or dancing together - could actually change the structure of my brain. Since reading The Mindful Therapist, I've paid attention to how I feel after socializing with people. And sure enough, people with active mindfulness practices tend to leave me feeling more energized, compassionate, and confident, which supports my personal growth goals. And as it turns out, Siegel has something to say about this.

"Integrative communication in a relationship stimulates the growth of integrative fibers in the brain. You're going to say, That's too weird -- how would a relationship shape the brain and why would it be that simple? Well, what they share in common is energy and information flow. So a relationship can be defined as the sharing of energy and information flow. And when we understand how that energy and information flow is happening -- it could be with words, with the body, with an attitude -- we can feel it, and we feel it with each other. It's not some weird unknown thing. It's fantastic and it's real. Energy is absolutely a part of this world, and energy can be shared between us."-cited in Huffington Post.

According to Siegel, having a mindfulness practice allows us to become more attentive to others. It also allows us to be more open to receiving mindful attention from other people, which we all need. When I look back on the groups of "healthy people" to which I've belonged, sure enough, they are mostly people who do yoga, meditate, or have an active spiritual or self-care routine. And I have witnessed tremendous acts of friendship and personal transformation within these communities. 

I envision a future where we're more aware of this capacity to transform each other at the cellular level. Forgive me if I'm getting a little "woo-woo" here. But it has really stunned me, the extent to which I feel more comfortable in my skin after a group yoga class, or playing music with a friend. And I can think of no better explanation than Dan Siegel's theory of interpersonal neurobiology. Siegel also defines the mind as: "a... process that regulates the flow of energy and information." While new-agey people tend to say we are all connected through Love, I like to borrow Siegel's concept here and think of us being connected through "energy and information" flow. Because in terms of the brain, knowing that you are loved is just a piece of information carried on a wire. And that's exciting to me, because wires can be repaired, and mindful relationship is one way to do that.

Self-care and the importance of soothing

Therapy is not always the grueling process of deep self-excavation it’s portrayed to be in pop culture. Although it’s sometimes necessary to “excavate” ourselves – to dive through layers of the mind, childhood and all that – it’s equally necessary to know how to self-soothe and create positive experiences in our lives. And though this necessitates challenging our negative thought patterns and habits, it also be cultivated by acts of self-care that create positive experiences in our lives.

Self-care can include anything from having a bubble bath to hanging out with a friend, or even yoga and meditation. It really doesn’t matter what form it takes, as long as it feels relaxing. Engaging in something soothing on a daily basis can go a long way toward lowering your level of anxiety (which is often just another habit), because you’re taking a proactive step to stop thinking about your troubles, and start focusing on what you can do to improve your situation. It creates a new neural pattern in your brain that should allow you to relax more quickly, consider your own needs, and feel less pressured to over-work or over-stimulate yourself.

The habits of “busy-ness” often buffer us from our true emotional experience. Taking time for self-soothing may induce a vague sense of apprehension since doing so could potentially blow the lid off of any feelings you’ve been bottling up. Also, many of us simply haven’t been taught how to care for ourselves when this happens, instead reaching for distractions. If this is your fear, keep in mind that self-care need not be an intensely deep experience. Try watching movies, listening to dance music, reading a good book at a cafe, and then gradually move into more reflective activities if you feel up to it. It’s good to have a big toolbox of self-care tools, using the ones that feel right in each situation. Mental health is a journey of balancing the “excavation” of awareness with a nice deep breath of life. Because life, after all, is good.

Feeling Stuck? Mindfulness can help.

Do you ever feel like there's one aspect of your life that you keep getting stuck on? Maybe something in your marriage or relationship, your physical self-confidence, ability to receive, or a work issue like perfectionism? Something that influences you perhaps in just one sphere, or perhaps in many, but regardless, has that sense like, "if only I could resolve this, life would be so much better!"

In my own journey with mindfulness and yoga, I've found that even these core issues I'd come to take for granted can be altered. I informally call this integration, because I believe, like many other mental health people, that healing involves bringing to light aspects of ourselves that are broken, orphaned and abandoned, and re-uniting them with the more nurturing side of ourselves. (I also borrow the term integration from Daniel J. Siegel's book The Mindful Therapist (2010). According to Siegel, engaging with a mindful therapist, and/or having a mindfulness practice of your own, can help integrate neural synapses in the brain, helping with brain functioning and mental health.

The fact that parts of your life feel stuck, could mean that your brain is stuck - there may be aspects of your brain that function separately when they should function together. Research is beginning to show that mindfulness can help to integrate the disparate parts of the brain. This is another level at which emotional transformation is a process of brain change, and we can begin it anytime.

For me, this inspires yet more respect for the process of personal growth. When I think about my own and others' growth, I feel excited, in awe, and patient, trusting that the process has its own hidden timing. We are trained to think that it's possible to transform ourselves by sheer mental effort. But in reality, transformation belongs to the body, of which the brain is decidedly a part. The brain functions together with the entire nervous system, which controls your gut reactions to everything from stress to caffeine to sex.

Research is beginning to stand by that belief, long-held by many, that the brain can be changed by mindfulness. By training ourselves to notice things without reacting, we can learn to live from a less reactive, more responsive, and open-minded place. Mindfulness is a powerful tool. It may just help you move that mountain that's been in your way.

What is the "goal" of mental health?

A misconception I've often heard about mental health is that our "goal" is to become totally self-aware, and by doing so, become the master of all that happens in the unconscious brain. This sort of amounts to a triumph of logic over feelings, which can, after all, feel like jack-in-the-boxes waiting to sabotage our best-laid plans. It can feel invigorating at first, but if not balanced with gentle allowing of the inner self, momentum can gets lost in a viscous cycle of of self-critique and backsliding.

This is one end of a spectrum, a belief held by people who tend to live more in their feelings and impulses. There is nothing inherently wrong with this way of being. The opposite belief, held by more logical people, is that mental health lies in "not over-thinking everything". But it's easy to see how the extreme of either one could be disastrous, as leading too much with the head can lead to repression of natural and valid feelings, and leading only with feelings can lead to carelessness.

The answer isn't in becoming fully, logically conscious of EVERYTHING. No matter how troublesome or sneaky feelings can be, they still serve a purpose. Any prolonged attempt to muzzle our feelings before they're out of the gate, will lead to them becoming even more insistent on bursting forth, this time heedless of warnings. The answer lies in letting our logical and feeling sides become friends. Letting that sneaky, often-selfish lower brain come out and have tea with the protective, logical side, and letting that logical side see that feelings aren't really as scruffy or incorrigible as once thought. Feelings actually have value that the thinking brain could never come up with on its own, but they are not the ultimate truth in life.

Mindfulness is a great way to introduce these sides to each other. Through things like meditation and yoga, you can develop a non-judgmental awareness of your "lower", reactive, intuitive self, and sense it as neither good nor bad, but simply there. Eventually, the higher brain can learn to trust feelings and allow them to shine, and the lower brain can learn to trust logic to balance raw energy with wise restraint. There is a way to be whole.

For information on therapy using mindfulness and yoga, email me at andreabussinger81@gmail.com.