The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Richard J. Davidson

Author:Richard J. Davidson [Davidson, Richard J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101560570
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Embodied Mind

The mind is “embodied” in the sense that it exists within the body—specifically, in the three pounds of tofulike tissue we call the brain—and engages in bidirectional communication with it, so that the state of the mind influences the body, and the state of the body influences the mind. Emotions, too, are embodied, and given their power to affect physiology outside the skull they are arguably the most embodied form of mental activity. The brain circuits that underlie Emotional Styles have extensive two-way connections with the immune system, the endocrine system, and the autonomic nervous system. Through traffic in one direction, from brain to body, the mind influences our health. This suggests that knowing someone’s Emotional Style may be as important to a health-care provider, in terms of assessing health risks, as knowing whether the patient smokes, and that altering your Emotional Style can be beneficial to physiological systems and thus overall health. Through traffic in the other direction, from body to brain, changes in our patterns of movement can affect how our mind processes emotional information. That has implications beyond warning Botox users that paralyzing some of their facial muscles runs the risk of limiting their emotional range. It also suggests that the body can become an ally in transforming emotion, meaning practices that emphasize the body, such as hatha yoga, have the potential to modulate emotion. This research is barely off the ground, but there are tantalizing hints about how this body-to-brain connection might work.

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