606 June 24-26 How Mindfukness works on the brain

We talk a lot about the importance of mindfulness and its practice without explaining how it works.

Here is a possible explanation:

Because the human brain cannot process 2 metal activities at once, being mindful in a non-judgmental way on

X such as breathing or Y such as working with our 

non-dominant hand, we are forcing our brain to activate specific neural pathways and close down the current more conceptual ones such as thoughts/feelings, etc...

To be mindful* - in its Zen meaning- is to temporarily rewire our neural grid from our usually over-thinking & emotional central brain networks to our prefrontal, more rational ones. This is neuroplasticity that we talk about many times.

See picture below.

* To be mindful  in its mundane meaning is simply to focus cognitively on something.

Pic:

This is the equivalent of our neural circuits in its most simplified metaphor.

Using mindfulness we are  "changing our switches called "turnouts in railways language ", and redirect the direction and of our neural activities. 

Controlling the " traffic of our neural network " is controlling our mind.

     arnaud 

FYI: We have 100 billion neurons interconnected with ~100 trillions synaptic connections or switches in the picture:). This is enormous.  
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