Healthy Mind & Emotions

Emotional Help & Awareness 

We should start with the facts and the awareness that you are not alone. Incontinence affects millions of Australian Men and Women. In Australian alone there are over 4.8 million people living with incontinence.

People can suffer from incontinence for many different reasons and at all stages of life. So it’s important to remember that there is nothing to be ashamed of. You shouldn’t feel the need to hide it or feel alone during this time.

Medical advice, facts and support for incontinence are readily available and easy to find on websites like ours.

The large number of Australians living with incontinence is a good indicator that our society in general has not been properly informed or conditioned about the importance of proper physical and dietary awareness.

It’s important to maintain good emotional support by surrounding yourself with family, friends and loved ones.

Taking a positive approach can help put you in charge of your incontinence, rather than it having control over you!

Looking after your mind and emotions can be approached in many different ways. 

You can expect to find an array of facts and suggestions to help you deal with the emotional impact these symptoms can have, along with some general knowledge about the human mind and ways to keep it active and healthy.

  • Brain & Mind
  • Healthy Thoughts & Emotions
  • Train Your Brain
  • Meditation

Here are the many interesting facts about the brain and mind!

  • It is believed that the average number of thoughts a human has in one day is 70,000.
  • The brain is made up of 75% water and uses 20% of the bodies oxygen and blood, which is why we have an entire section on the importance of quality spring water and correct breathing.
  • Did you know we have more than one brain?
    • The obvious one is in our head. This brain consists of 100 billion neurons.
    • However the heart could be considered the second brain as it has 40,000 neurons
    • The third brain is the digestive system (the gut), which has 100 million neurons and 500 million nerve cells
  • The body and mind connection is so strong that it is believed that 50%-70% of visits to the doctor for physical illness are related to physiological factors.
  • Neuroplasticity, in short, is the ability for the human brain to continue to create new neural pathways starting from childhood and throughout life into old age. However it was previously believed (20 years ago) that we developed a certain amount of neurons and that was it. It is now known that the brain can regenerate new pathways at any age, adapting to change and new environments or rebuilding to compensate for injury of disease.
  • Excessive stress will alter brain cells, brain structure and brain function. Understanding neuroplasticity also helps us to understand that we are what we think about.
  • The mind is a muscle and like regular muscles it gets stronger with training.

Choosing healthy thoughts and emotions:

That’s right you choose your thoughts! For some this is a bold statement and for many people it is hard to imagine that they are in control of their own emotions and happiness.

An example would be to look at it from a scientific angle.

When something happens that makes you feel good it is believed that the brain creates and releases the chemicals “serotonin or dopamine”. These “drugs”, which are developed in the body, are related to you elevating your mood, among other things. Without getting too scientific serotonin creates happiness. 

Did you also know you have complete control over the chemical release of serotonin and your happiness?

All you have to do is remember someone, something or a moment that made you truly happy, then bring it to life in the minds eye. Replay this image as vividly as possible with as many senses and as much emotional attachment as possible. This will create a serotonin release and essentially make you happy.

We encourage you to combine this technique with breathing deeply and relaxing the whole body. After completing this one to three minute exercise you should be able to see how happiness is essentially controlled by you. Now imagine if you took the time for just a few minutes a day and practised happiness through similar exercises or meditation and the affect this would have on your overall emotional state.

It is important to realise that the human brain is hard wired for negative thoughts and a negative thought will stick to the mind more easily than a positive thought. So it is important to spend more time embracing the positive thoughts and essentially deleting the negative.

How could this work? 

What’s really happening is that the brain cannot tell the difference between a mental picture and the real thing. As a result, it releases (serotonin  – happiness) and you feel good.

Why does this happen?

Because the eyes are not really doing the seeing it is the brain/mind that sees the images. The eyes are only the windows acting like a reflector, which sends an image into a wave current through the nerves to the minds memory centre. There it is processed and the body responds accordingly with serotonin and dopamine and all the warm fuzzy feelings you get when something feels good. 

Why is this important? 

Well, there are two main reasons why this is so important:

  • Firstly this is a good indication that we can choose and have some control over our happiness.
  • The second is because healing and growth is accelerated when we are vibrating at a higher level of happiness or love.

Where there are positive emotions there can also be negative emotions and these lower vibrations are extremely damaging. Negative thoughts and states of mind can severely hinder the recovery of any illness. It is extremely important to start realising the power and control you have if you are living in a state of shame, guilt, grief, fear, anger or doubt.

If your plan is to cure incontinence then exercise and diet are important factors but you also need to start putting more awareness on what is happening in your own mind. Focus on positive thoughts and start controlling and releasing the negative ones. While looking after your mind is a subtle element to the management of incontinence, it is also important for a healthy and happy life.

If you are reading this and thinking yes there was a slight change in my mood but it’s not the same and it doesn’t last or it wasn’t as strong as it use to be then this is a good indication that the muscle is weak and with training can be improved (you don’t just wake up one day and feel depressed. Depression is developed overtime because the mind is grasping or holding onto negative thoughts to a point where it can’t remember or return to happy thoughts).

Just the same as if you walk up at set of stairs after not exercising for some time the muscles burn and it is hard work and a week or 2 later it becomes easy and almost effortless because the body literally wakes up and realises this is what we have to adapt to, so it builds the muscles required. The same principal applies to the mind and its ability to create happiness and love when you train it and it becomes second nature. THE MIND AND BRAIN ARE NO DIFFERENT TO ANY OTHER HUMAN MUSCLE OR ORGAN, IT NEEDS TO BE TRAINED AND MAINTAINED TOO. 

The best thing about serotonin is that it’s completely free to all humans and you have the control to turn it on at anytime of the day.

Every event and experience in life is filtered through the minds conditioning up to that point in time. When you start changing the way you see the world, the world becomes a reflection of your thoughts and you attract the things you think about most.

With that in mind pay attention to what you are taking in on a day to day basis. If you are constantly watching and hearing the negative and fearful stories through the media and social groups around then this will be taking a toll on your own mind and thoughts.

How and why we should train our brain?

Just because we are getting older it doesn’t mean that we need to slow down mentally in fact, the importance of finding something to stimulate the mind is becoming more important that ever and can be easily over looked.

It is estimated we only use around 10% of our total brain capacity which we can increase though training and exercise but without use, this percentage can decrease and there is an old saying “use it or lose it” which can most definitely be applied to mental cognition.

 With new science breakthroughs constantly arising and supporting the wonders of neuroplasticity and its effects on old age related issues within the brain as well as deep-seated behavioural and emotional problems, we are literally seeing a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we can view the ageing mind.

These breakthroughs in neuroplasticity show that it is possible to train the mind to break cycles of depression or regain the use of limbs that have been disabled by stroke and ultimately re-set our happiness meter.

You can exercise the brain in many ways staring with the simplest of things like doing daily routines and tasks in a different sequence and manner.

Studies have shown that challenging ourselves with new activities can use the brains natural plasticity to make positive changes. For example crosswords or learning a new language or playing a musical instrument or maybe something more physical would interest you like dancing or juggling.

The trick is to do something new and challenging. A great place to start is brain training games because they have games for different cognitive functions.

Brain training games or neuroplasticity exercises are great ways we can stimulate our minds, enhance attention span, increase levels of our working memory and speed up the brains processing power because the brain controls everything the body does, it makes sense to have it running at an optimal level.

All you need is a computer and the Internet. We recommend having a look at luminosity.com for a fun way to exercise the brain that is designed to stimulate different brain functions and it is a fun way to spend 15 to 20 minutes of your day. Your Brain will literally love you for it because it thrives for stimulation. 

With neuroplasticity exercises we can fend off symptoms and ailments like Alzheimer’s disease, absentmindedness and old age in general.

Brain exercises for neuroplasticity need to challenge different functional systems in order to maximise the potential for change in the brain. For best changes brain exercises should be hard work so your brain is challenged, making your brain adapt and giving new connections between neurons.

Have some fun with it and please write in with ideas for our readers.

Mental and physical exercise done regularly can also delay health related issues like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Introduction to Meditation: Why should we meditate? How does it work?

Meditation is not just about stillness, blissing out and having monk like spirituality. 

Meditation can be used as a tool to mould and re-shape our minds to install and up load the changes we want, so we are in control of the direction of our lives.

It is the synchronisation of the two brain hemispheres (the left side being our creative brain and the right side our logical brain) with no limit to what you can achieve.  With scientific studies proving meditation can reduce stress and aid the alleviation of depressive symptoms. There are studies to prove that, through meditation you can increase emotional awareness, empathy, kindness, compassion and control at the very least you will feel calm and relaxed as if you have just had a good amount of deep sleep or a relaxing massage. It is also a great way to improve the quality of sleep.

Perhaps the most significant benefit of mediation is its ability to improve attention and boost the working memory.

With as little as 10 minutes of meditation a day you can improve just about anything a human can do. It is literally the key to unlocking human evolution. 

It is also a great tool for connecting to our deep conscious mind where we can control our relaxation, healing and happiness and the list is endless. We suggest starting with lighthearted meditations to connect the body and mind by simply becoming more aware and centered.

There are many types of mediation practices, most of which follow a process of awareness of breathe and body, being completely present in that moment which leads to slower brain wave patterns and deeper states of consciousness that is almost like falling asleep with full awareness. There are 4 to 5 main brain wave patterns that correlate to different states of the mind.

  • Beta – brain waves are associated with the normal waking state and a heightened state of alertness and logic. While beta brain waves are important for effective functioning throughout the day, they also can translate into unmanageable stress, anxiety and restlessness.
  • Alpha – brain waves are present in deep relaxation or slipping into a lovely daydream. This state is an optimal time to program the mind as it is the gateway to your subconscious mind and lies at the base of your conscious awareness. Alpha is believed to be the doorway to your intuition.
  • Theta – brain waves are present during light sleep and deep meditation including the all-important REM (rapid eye movement) dream state. It is your subconsciousness and is only experienced momentarily as you drift off to sleep.
  • The Delta – frequency is the slowest of the frequencies and is experienced in deep dreamless sleep and in very deep transcendental meditation where awareness is fully detached. Among many things, deep sleep is important for the healing process – as it’s linked with deep healing and regeneration. Hence, not having enough deep sleep is detrimental to your health in more ways than one.

There are many guided mediations and audios designed for different purposes. Everyone is different and it’s important to find the right one for you. You can have a teacher talking you through a meditation experience while listening to soothing audios of nature or more scientific audios like brainwave entrainment or binaural beats which are soothing humming sounds that can help you reach alpha and theta brainwave states more easily by playing different frequency sounds into each ear, helping the mind slow down into the lower frequencies.

Introduction to meditating

Start by finding a comfortable position, sitting or lying down.

Quiet your thoughts and focus on your breathing. For more information on breathing techniques.

  • Start by closing your eyes and becoming completely aware of the body and what it feels like. Now bring your awareness to the breathe flowing in and out the nostrils filling the belly.
  • We can then start relaxing each specific area of the body starting with the top of the head and focusing on the sensations and warm feelings of the blood moving through the area and letting go any tension with each exhale. Really feeling like each breathe is reaching and relaxing that area.
  • Then move the sensation and awareness slowly down the body to the forehead and eyes with slow rhythmic breathing. Repeat for several breathes. It helps to smile slightly making the tissue around the eyes more relaxed.
  • Continue down the body with no urgency to your jaw, neck and to your shoulders letting yourself slip deeper into relaxation with each breathe.
  • Continue down into the heart space relaxing the muscles in the area and filling the heart with oxygen and energy on every in breath. Move down the body to the abdomen, hips, thighs, knees, calves and feet.
  • You should now be feeling relaxed calm and more peaceful. There are many different ways of further deepening from here. Like counting down slowly from ten to one and letting yourself slowly descend rhythmically following the breathe. 10 deeper, 9 deeper, 8 deeper and so on.

For beginners this is a great practice for finding your center and relaxing the body. To explore meditation in depth we have recommended some sites that are great places to learn more techniques. 

Our purpose here is to provide you with a specific training that can be applied to kegel and pelvic floor exercises where the emphasis is on the connection between the mind and the pelvic floor muscles.

Combining a physical meditation with kegel exercises will help the process of getting neurons firing together and working in sync. 

It is important to focus on being calm. Don’t get too caught up in thinking about the next step. Take your time. The aim is to quiet the thinking mind by stopping thoughts and useless images and focusing on the breathe and muscles. It is also important to locate the correct muscle, refer to our bladder training and kegel exercises before you continue.

Please do not panic if you cannot stop the thoughts. It takes practice and is not nearly as easy as is sounds. Simply let them arise and pass in each moment without holding on to them. Return to the body and breathe.

Pelvic floor meditation

  • Continue on from where the introduction meditation left off completely relaxed body and mind only observing your breathe.
  • Then begin to very lightly and mindfully contract the pelvic floor muscles on the in breathe.
  • On the exhale relax everything building a rhythm. 
  • When you find your rhythm you can give the mind something to visualise. Imagine you can see the flow of energy firing from your brain running down through the body and spine connecting to the pelvic floor muscles.

“Everything that humans create and do is first seen in the mind and then brought to reality”

There are many types of meditation for developing the human experience. If you feel this could benefit your life we strongly suggest exploring the world of meditation and mindfulness.

We also suggest Qi Gong as a moving meditation. It is a great combination of flowing movements and working with the body’s subtle energy.

Relaxing Mediations 

www.soundstrue.com

www.silvalifesystem.com

www.mindvalleyacademy.com