You might be surprised as I was to find that science has recently confirmed what some wisdom traditions have known for quite some time: Focusing our attention and increasing awareness — to stay in the present moment — can enhance our health and well-being.
As busy parents often stressed with the responsibility of taking care of the many details of raising our children, this is exciting and very practical news! And there are a number of ways you can apply this knowledge to strengthen your mind, which will benefit not only your health but the well-being of your children as well.
One way of focusing on these important life-changing discoveries is to point out that what we do with our attention, awareness and intention has been proven in carefully controlled studies to alter a number of physiological functions in our bodies that support health, longevity and vitality. When you train the mind to have focused attention, open awareness and kind intention — three pillars of mind training that have been carefully documented in scientific research — you improve cardiovascular parameters such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels; boost immune system response to infection; inflammation in the body is reduced; and the enzyme telomerase, which repairs and maintains the ends of the chromosomes that protect the integrity of your genes, is optimized, so that those telomeres — the caps on the chromosomes — are repaired and maintained, supporting a longer health span (or length of time you’re healthy, not just living) and a slower rate of aging.
What’s more, a number of studies show that the three pillars of mind training support the growth of integration in the brain. Integration is the linkage of different things, and in the brain this means the linking of the left and right sides with the growth of the corpus callosum, the growth of the hippocampus for enhancing memory integration and the growth of areas of the prefrontal cortex, a region which links the differentiated higher cortical regions at the top of the brain with the middle and lower areas of the brain along with input from both the body and from the social world. And if that were not enough anatomical and functional integration, a new way of studying the more subtly differentiated and linked areas of the brain called the “connectome” reveals that these mind training practices lead to an increase in these interconnections as well.
[Read: The ‘Yes-Brain’ Approach to Parenting and Life.]
Why Does Increasing Integration in Your Brain Matter?
Integration in the brain is reflected in the major ways we regulate our lives, such as balancing emotions, creating an even-keel mood, focusing attention and regulating thought, as well as morality and relationships. Integration allows us to coordinate and balance a complex system and avoid prolonged states of chaos or rigidity. Some studies reveal that happiness and health arise from integration, which also allows us to age more slowly and make and maintain more meaningful connections with others.
All of this helps you have something we can simply call “presence.” Parental presence — having an awareness and openness to what is happening in the moment without being swept up by judgments and criticisms — is key to support your child’s growth and development.
Another important principle is this: Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows. What this means is that how you learn to focus attention enables you to literally create a specific kind of brain firing state which then, with practice, can lead to a change in brain structure that allows that state to become a trait in your life. When the states — and subsequent traits — you create are focused attention, open awareness and kind intention, these become the foundation for healthy changes in your physiology.
In addition, the mind becomes stronger and your relationships can become more rewarding. How rewarding? With enhanced kindness, empathy and compassion, the mutually rewarding experience of connection and understanding enables close personal relationships like the one you have with your child to support a positive, productive pattern of communicating.
[Read: 6 Tips for Talking to Your Teen About Anything at All.]
Finally, the mind becomes stronger with these three pillars of mind training because each contributes to the strengthening of what the mind actually is. In a series of professional texts I have suggested that the mind has four facets: subjective experience, consciousness, information processing and self-organization.
What this fourth facet basically involves is the regulation of energy and information flow — like when we focus on sound or light, or when we think of certain topics, like the nature of the mind. Self-organization optimizes that flow toward a flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable — or FACES — pattern of harmony with integration, the linking of differentiated parts of the brain, the body or even our relationships. In this way, the mind happens inside the skin-encased body, including the brain, and it happens in our relationships with other people, and the world around us. In other words, the mind is fully embodied and fully relational. With this view in mind, we can say that this fourth facet is an embodied and relational, emergent, self-organizing process that regulates the flow of energy and information. To regulate that flow, we need to do two things, like when we ride a bicycle: We monitor and we modify where we are going.
Essentially, the three pillars of the mind training that make health possible build both of these foundational skills of the mind. We learn to monitor energy and information flow within and between us — our inner mind and “inter-mind.” And we learn to modify that flow toward integration, like being kind to ourselves and others, and being open to whatever arises without pushing things away or clinging too tightly to things.
The three pillars of mind training strengthen the mind’s capacity to monitor with more stability so that we see with more depth, focus and detail — and enhance the integration in our brains. This is how we can become the parent we truly want to be — being present for our children, and facilitating the growth of their own strong and resilient minds.
[Read: Teaching Children to Be More in Tune With Their Minds.]
One term used for a practice that trains the mind is meditation. There are many forms of meditation, and one I developed that combines all three pillars that science has shown are helpful to promote well-being and integration is what I call the “Wheel of Awareness.” I invite you to consider trying out the Wheel practice as a reflective meditative practice. A very accessible training, the Wheel of Awareness can be used as a visual image to systematically differentiate and then link the “knowns” on the rim to the “knowing” of awareness in the hub. The image of the wheel places the knowing of awareness in the hub of the wheel while the knowns are on the rim — like what you sense with hearing or sight, the feelings of your body, mental activities like thoughts and emotions, or even your sense of relational connections with others and with the world. This image, and the practice of the Wheel as a meditation itself, helps you distinguish these various knowns from each other and from the rim itself by the systematic movement of the spoke of attention itself.
As you do that for a while, you may find that some of those changes we’ve discussed will begin to happen in your life. Your inner life will be strengthened, and your relationship with your child will be enhanced as well.
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Enhance Your Awareness to Improve the Well-Being of Your Family originally appeared on usnews.com
