Appreciating Exceptional Brains

When I was a junior in high school, one morning I got picked up for truancy at the local pool hall.  Recalling my brunch club visit to the vice-principal’s office, two things stand out. One was Mr. Kennedy looking at my three foot long, thin leather cue case and asking, “What’s in there?” “A pool cue,” I answered. His response, “Mighty short case for a pool cue, isn’t it?” I somehow managed not to roll my eyes at his cuelessness (sic), which I guess made him show mercy – rather than have me sit there bored for two hours, he handed me a test booklet. “Take this test,” he ordered. I opened it and finished it quickly and got a perfect score. “You know, no one’s ever done this test so quickly before,” Kennedy remarked. The test he gave me was a Spatial Relations Inventory. For me it was a very simple test to take. Nothing special, no big deal. Somehow my brain has always been able to easily rotate spatial objects in my mind.

Since the time of that test, I frequently find myself drawn to stories of people, especially children, with exceptional abilities. There is little doubt that such people have brains that are different from yours and mine. But were they always? Take for example, the Russian journalist, Solomon Shereshevskii, a man with five-fold synaesthesia who had a photographic memory capable of recalling complex mathematical formulas fifteen years later after only being briefly exposed to them a single time. This is different than how my brain works.

Triumphant Action

Or take Jessica Cox, the first person to earn a pilot’s license without having any arms! If you watch a video of Jessica flying a Piper Cub, from the perspective of a brain educator, it’s clear that neural connectivity and brain plasticity are marvels for developing human spirit. My guess is that the neural real estate we normally use for our arms and hands – and on a percentage basis, these are very large amounts – Jessica has managed to transfer to her legs and feet. Jessica’s birth ”defect” has become part of her greatest triumph.

Then there’s controversial Nobel peace prize nominee, Sri Chinmoy, who’s reported to have written 1,500 books, 115,000 poems and 20,000 songs, created 200,000 paintings and given almost 800 peace concerts. Any one of those accomplishments would be more than a life’s work for most of us. Apparently, part of what permitted such accomplishment is Chinmoy’s gift of being a “lark” in the sleep research literature – his brain apparently worked at very high levels after only 90 minutes of sleep each night. This is a brain that works much differently than mine and most of the people I know.

Another exceptional example is Evy McDonald, the registered nurse I’ve mentioned before who began a course of profound self-loving and self-listening and used it to become the first person to cure herself of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the progressive neurodegenerative condition also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS is the same disease that has afflicted Stephen Hawking, the British theoretical physicist for more than 40 years. Hawking wrote the runaway popular science book A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.  Evy’s brain and Stephen’s brains are also different than mine.

Collaborative Connection

The point isn’t to go on and on listing such people with exceptional brains and exceptional experiences – The Guinness Book of World Records is full of them. But we might want to consider what might allow for such accomplishments as these? If I were to offer an educated guess at one piece, it would be … increasingly well-integrated individual brains operating in an environment of connection and collaboration with other increasingly well-integrated brains. (As the operative word here, brain = heart-brain-mind-body-spirit). People and environments actively open to and able to wholeheartedly welcome and embrace diversity and divergent thinking.

Best for the Children

But there are other questions to consider as well. For example, can synaesthesia be taught to children?  Is there a window in development, similar to language acquistion, during which such a skill might be optimally introduced and cultivated?  Is such a skill something useful and worthwhile that we even should be introducing to our children? Should children be taught about the possibility for learning to deeply listen to their bodies and honoring what they hear, particularly things that go against the family or cultural grain? These are not easy questions to answer. Perhaps Alice Walker’s decision-making template: “Is it best for the children?” is the one we should individually attempt to deliberately apply? Might that allow us to tend to our own and our children’s development much like we might tend to a prized flower garden? Do everything we can to prepare the most healthy, fertile environment we can, and then turn it over while we simultaneously tend it with mindful compassion?

The Tao of Listening

I’ve been researching, teaching and practicing listening skills for more than a dozen years now. In that time, during which I’ve published five books on listening, three things have become abundantly clear. First, most people are surprised to learn how profoundly different simple hearing and deeply listening really are … and how poorly most perform the latter. Second, aspiring clinicians and counselors are equally surprised to discover just how challenging  listening skillfully actually is – it requires us to pay close attention to ourselves and others on many levels. And finally, while people generally understand that direct benefits result from being listened to – from being able to give honest, authentic voice to our experiences to a significant other – they are often genuinely surprised to discover that even greater benefits actually accrue to the listener themselves!

The Einstein of the Ear

Hearing is the first sense to come online and the last of our senses to leave. This isn’t an accident, it turns out. Alfred Tomatis was a controversial medical researcher known familiarly among the French as “the Einstein of the Ear.” Tomatis postulated that hearing first becomes listening for a five week old fetus as it learns to discriminate between the many sounds it hears in utero – heartbeat, digestion, breathing, etc. Eventually, it begins to pay special attention to the intermittently reinforcing sounds of mother’s voice. This voice has been confirmed to drive early brain development and will have special healing (or disruptive) properties for a child across the lifespan. How many of us still bristle at our mother’s disapproval? Interestingly, recent research by Danish bio-physicist Thomas Heimburg seems to confirm that it is the energy of sound propagation that apparently underlies neural transmission and development.

The Enemy of Compassion

I started a career as a volunteer grief counselor as a pretty poor listener. What made me less than skillful was something pretty basic – anxiety. And anxiety, it turns out, is a product of our neurology. Anxiety is what we feel most often in response to threat, and strangers – especially strangers who are dying of cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease, or who are grieving a child who has died from leukemia or been killed in a traffic accident. These people all pose a threat to a greenhorn grief counselor. But fortunately there’s an antidote to anxiety: repetition and familiarity. Knowing this, Kara, the Palo Alto grief counseling agency where I volunteered for many years, kept me working with clients until finally, after about six months, my anxiety lessened and the clients finally began to stick.

What changed over those six months? First of all, I was part of a support group of experienced grief counselors who met together weekly to discuss clients and had permission to tell the truth about their challenges. Rather than the regular condemnation I delivered to myself, this support group was compassionate and understanding – they’d all been beginners initially themselves.

Next, was a requirement to develop some practices to help calm myself down. Exercising before and after spending time with a client helped. So did doing 7-11 breathing – an in-breath to a count of seven and out to a count of eleven. Smart Moves developed by biologist Carla Hannaford, also helped. These are a series of movements that cross the mid-line of the body. While I know of only anecdotal accounts, this cross-body movement is believed to help brain neurons fire across brain hemispheres, helping with what Dr. Bonnie Badenoch identifies as the Nine Pathways of Neural Integration. An integrated brain appears to be much better able to manage anxiety.

Teach What you Most Want to Learn

Another thing I did to help improve my listening, was to take the advice of Jim Fadiman, one of my graduate school professors. Jim advised that if you really want to learn something well, teach it. And so I did. Through the local University Extension program I designed and offered a course entitled “Deep Listening.” And people actually paid good money and showed up for it. We mostly explored all the ways they were poor listeners, and I began to even more fully appreciate just how challenging this craft really is. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who struggled.

I found and presented a number of interesting research studies on listening to these classes. One was done by Carolyn Schwartz and Rabbi Meir Sendor. Patients with multiple sclerosis were split into two groups. Members of one group were the designated listeners, the others the designated speakers. They were given pre- and post-tests designed to measure “response shift” – changes in internal standards, values, and the definition of life quality. The patients who were listened to improved significantly, but surprisingly, it turned out that the patients who did the listening improved even more! This dovetails well with Stephen Post’s empirical research on altruism and health, by the way.

I also introduced the students to Fran Peavey, a San Francisco-based community organizer. Fran developed a series of facilitative questions that she identifies as strategic, change-drivers. They were formed out of her “field research” in foreign lands where she would simply stand on a street corner with a big cardboard sign that read: “American, willing to listen.” As Yogi Berra might say, “You can hear a lot by listening!”

Another interesting account is provided by Colorado psychologist and former ISSSEM board president, Christine Hibbard who found that the local healer in a community of Māori in New Zealand had a 98% cure rate. When someone was sick, he simply gathered the community together, put the sick person in the center and asked them one question over and over: “What is it you’re not saying?” 

Finally, a prospective study by Stephanie Brown at the Institute for Social Research as the University of Michigan indirectly suggests that becoming a skillful listener and effectively using those skills in support of others actually works to extend your lifespan! Who knew?

Generative Listening

So, what is this seemingly magical power that listening holds? I’m not sure, but Peter Senge and his colleagues at MIT in their book, Presence, describe something they call generative listening. Generative listening asks us to examine what lies at the heart of our work and our lives. The power of such inquiry is wonderfully captured by pastoral counseling professor, David Augsberger who observed: “An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart” and “Being listened to is so close to being loved, that most people don’t know the difference.” Might listening skillfully somehow activate the energy of the heart, which researchers at the Heartmath Institute tell us generates a magnetic field 5000 times stronger than any other organ in the body? I wouldn’t be surprised. In my estimation the work of becoming skilled at listening is learning any number of ways of putting the strength of this organ into optimal service. What’s your best sense?  If you think this human enterprise is worth exploring further, I cordially invite you to take a look at this piece I was recently interviewed for by the L. A. Times, or you might check out this recent compilation …

To order this book of skills that includes recent research from trauma, somatic psychology and social neuroscience, simply Click Here.

How a Good Chief Executive Brain Goes Bad

When I was a kid, the great dream was to one day grow up and become President of the United States of America. Little did we realize the stress inherent in the job as inferred by this open letter from Alice Walker to our new president-elect. She apparently realizes, much like working neuroscientists, that if you’re in the Chief Executive business, first and foremost, you’re in the brain change business. Your job is to influence and change the brains of the legislature, opinion-makers, the American people and assorted international leaders. However, when you agree to head up arguably the most powerful nation in the free world, by the end of your first or second term, your brain is the one considerably changed – most often for the worse.

Protection or Damage?

There have been numerous scientific studies showing how stress serves a growth and protective function … up to a point. Beyond that point, which few of us are easily able to identify, good stress turns into damaging allostatic load – the term for stress that wreaks havoc on the body and brain. Before he knows it, the fine kettle of fish a President has aspired to since childhood, is at a full, roiling boil; suddenly he finds himself sitting inextricably, stinking and sweating, right in the middle of national and global events over which he has surprisingly little real control. If prior national and international events haven’t already done so, a stressor like the threat of the complete collapse of the American financial system might reasonably be expected to toss a President’s brain over onto the damaging side of the allostatic line.

J. Douglas Bremner, a neuropsychiatrist who conducted extensive studies on stress and brain damage at Yale University, and Robert Scaer, M.D., author of The Body Bears the Burden, detail some of the many ways that stress becomes the enemy of intelligence. Stressors are never static, and as they mount, functional memory becomes increasingly impaired. It might become difficult, for example, to show up in public and to speak to the nation or the press extemporaneously, or to conduct policy meetings of depth and duration, or keep track of the deadline for issuing final Executive Orders. Past traumatic memories can begin to intrude into present-moment activities, and varying degrees of dissociation can interrupt and confound clear thinking. The difference between millions and billions begins to blur. Even your bowels are negatively impacted, as Michael Gershon so eloquently argues in The Second Brain, turning your gut instincts into untrustworthy allies.

Once Burned, Twice Shy

Of course, not all brains are susceptible to damaging allostatic load in equal measure. One man’s neural Armageddon is another man’s Battle of Issus. There is growing evidence, however, that a prior history of trauma leaves one more susceptible and less resilient to later stressors. Insurance companies and risk managers, for example, know that if you crash one jet fighter, you’re significantly more likely to crash another, and the most prudent among them act accordingly.

What else happens, when a good brain goes bad? Dan Siegel, a neuroscientist at UCLA, might argue that when a President first takes office his brain and thought processes are most likely as flexible, adaptable, coherent, energized and stable as they are ever likely to be. As pressures mount, the opposite of these things begins to take hold. Stress-generated neurotoxins begin to affect actual connections in the brain, diminishing neuron numbers and disintegrating nerve fibers used to connect say, the prefrontal cortex with the fight-or-flight-controlling limbic structures. These connections are critical for so-called Executive Function.

Executing Executive Function

According to the Executive Function Fact Sheet published by the National Center for Learning Disabilities, prefrontal connections are responsible for things like: making plans and effectively executing them in a timely manner; keeping track of more than one thing at a time; meaningfully engaging in group discussions; effectively evaluating your own and others’ ideas; being able to ask for help and seeking more information when we need it. When Executive Function becomes compromised, we are very likely to have trouble comprehending how much time a project will take. We struggle to tell a story coherently, and have trouble communicating details in an organized, sequential manner. We also demonstrate difficulty in memorizing things or retrieving information from memory, exhibit an inability to generate ideas independently, and have difficulty retaining information while doing something with it – for example, remembering a budget item while eliminating it.

Home on the Range

Since the brain is an associative organ, an environment that the brain associates with stress – let’s say Washington, D.C. or The White House – could become a place to avoid as much as possible. A restful ranch out in Boondock, Texas might very well become a preferred place to spend nearly 500 vacation days. As the stress continued to mount – say, the stress of large populations of people who used to like you, now not liking you very much at all – a President’s capacity for dealing with complexity might very likely become seriously compromised.

This decline of neural flexibility, adaptability, coherence, energy and stability is the primary reason, I think, that so many Presidencies in recent years have turned out so poorly at the end. If you hadn’t suffered significant damage before running for office – and many of my friends think you have to be brain damaged to even want that job – by the conclusion of his term, a President’s brain has very likely suffered significant neural damage. To test my theory, pre and post-presidency brain scans would be interesting to compare, wouldn’t they?

Thankfully, four or eight years eventually pass, but unfortunately, as we’re able to infer based on the evidence from recently expired Presidential terms, extensive damage appears to have been done over the duration. Hopefully, Alice Walker’s prayer will put all of us on notice to take supremely good care of each of our brains, including our childrens’ and our newly-elected Chief Executive’s.

 

Easing a Mind that Binds

In the mid-sixties, the comedic actor, Peter Sellers played the role of hapless French  detective Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the popular Pink Panther movies. In those movies, when he would least expect it, Clouseau would be unexpectedly attacked by his man-servant, Cato Fong (Cato has since been replaced in the 2006 Pink Panther remake by Gendarme Ponton). Coming home from a long, hard day of detective work, Clouseau would never see Cato pressed up against the ceiling in the foyer, for example, until he was fully pounced upon. A ferocious mock-battle would then ensue. Cato’s role was to help train Clouseau for the unexpected, unpredictable events destined to befall him out in the real world. (One of my favorite real-world stories: Special Forces martial arts trainer, Richard Heckler tells of a similar, real-life attack on him at a detention camp for teens in California. When Heckler quickly subdued the attacking teenager, the kid jumped up and earnestly pleaded: “Wow! Will you teach me how to kill people!?” Heckler immediately agreed, provided the teen do everything he was told. As you might guess, when the training in aikido was complete, the kid was no longer driven by the fear that made him want to kill people in the first place).

Invasion of the Attack Thoughts

Most of us carry around our own version of Cato-Mind inside our body and brain. It shows up most often in the form of unwelcome, surprising thoughts that are triggered by people and events we encounter at home, on the job, or on our computer screen; or by things we might see on TV, or when we open our bank or brokerage statement. They are just like Cato, seemingly coming out of nowhere, attacking our peace of mind. Often, we may not even realize we’ve thought any thoughts at all – we simply find ourselves inexplicably overwrought by bodily sensations or images very likely originating from memories stored in implicit memory. These stored memories, often traumatic with few or no words associated with them, are what attachment researchers call “the unthought known.” Finding ourselves upset for good reason can be challenging enough. Being upset for “no good reason” can literally drive us crazy.

Whatever thoughts or non-thoughts that might be the drivers lying at the root of our experience, the end result is what mostly matters – the upset we feel in response. The familiar feeling of amygdala-triggered adrenaline and cortisol running through our bodies and brains, the sense of ominous threat all around us, the inability to think clearly or focus sharply – all of these can make life more than a little stressful. In my experience, knowing the unthought known is alive and well in what University of Virginia professor, Tim Wilson calls the Adaptive Unconscious – that knowledge alone brings appreciable relief. It’s not me, it’s my brain!

Email Assassins

These days, at the same time that I’m upset, I’m also simultaneously curious. For example, I get an occasional email from someone really hating this column. That’s often good for an adrenaline rush – email threats are often good triggers. Within seconds though, on a good day, I simply smile and move on. At home, safe in my cozy office, little black symbols on my computer screen can’t really hurt me. These words, mostly sent to me by someone I don’t know and probably wouldn’t want to spend much time with if I did, don’t really pose much of a real threat. I can assure Amy (my pet name for my amygdala) that it’s okay to relax and that it’s safe to return to sentry duty.

Amygdala LeDoux

The amygdala, primarily responsible for memory and emotional learning, has been extensively researched in neuroscience. Joe LeDoux at NYU is one of the nation’s leading authorities on this part of the brain. He likens Amy to the smoke alarm in your house, sounding at the first sign of real or perceived danger. Since it’s better evolutionarily to be safe than sorry, very often – as in the case of a grumpy email assassin – Amy sounds a warning unnecessarily. My work, and I think this is primarily a work of spiritual direction, is to not immediately form what nonviolent communication expert, Marshall Rosenberg describes as “Enemy Images.” (This is not really name-dropping here – my intent is to refer you to people whose work I really respect). Any time we find ourselves upset about anything whatsoever, there’s a good chance that Cato-Mind has been busy at work forming Enemy Images. Our work then, and it is work I think we need to also model for friends, family and children, is to find ways to compassionately turn towards such images, either in ourselves as they appear in the form of self-condemnation or self-loathing, or as they appear out in the world as politicians or bill collectors or citizens of “foreign countries.” Quelling our own Cato-Mind is where the first work of peace on planet earth needs to begin in earnest, I think.