By Dr. David Alter in MindMatters

Do you believe that simple problems can be solved with simple solutions but that complex problems require complex solutions?  When it comes to the brain, neuroscience suggests that relatively simple solutions are quite capable of producing dramatic change.  The secret lies with the brain’s ability to reorganize itself on a moment-to-moment basis.

The brain is made up of 100 billion neurons that form more than 100 trillion inter-connections to other neurons.  That level of “connectivity” makes the human brain one of the most complex structures in the known universe!  Out of that degree of complexity emerges the brain’s ability to safely smoothly bring a mug of hot aromatic coffee to your lips and to compose an hour-long symphony orchestra’s score that coordinates the movements of 100 musicians playing 25 types of instruments at the same time. 

The brain wires some neurons to other neighboring neurons, and wires others to far-away neurons.  This wired network allows the brain to exercise incredibly fine-tuned regulation of sensation, emotion, thought and action.  Limited inputs have far-reaching effects.  The key is that the brain is also a creature of habit: its firing patterns don’t change unless we deliberately and consistently work to change them.

What effort is required to take advantage of the brain’s ability to reorganize itself on a moment-to-moment basis?  The brain appears to be eager to learn.  It is designed to take in new experience.  New experience is assimilated into the brain’s complex neural circuitry. With repeated practice what was new and challenging becomes routine and effortless.  For example, within three weeks of practicing juggling skills an hour a day, brain imaging studies showed that people with no prior juggling experience had expanded the complexity and activity of the neuron firing patterns in brain areas that regulate fine motor movements needed for juggling.  Just three weeks!

What is the lesson for us?
• Visualize a change you want to make
•Identify the elements of the change in behavioral terms (e.g., what do people do who act in the way you are seeking to develop)
•Focus on consistently practicing one or two elements for three weeks
•Observe the changes that result

Congratulate yourself on using the simple steps to reorganize and transform your brain’s complexity to help you  achieve your goals.

           Authored by Dr. David Alter

Welcome! Thank you for taking the time to explore this site. I developed this blog to share with you practical, usable and effective suggestions for addressing specific health problems based upon what I have learned from my clinical work over the past quarter century.  In other words, what I share with you has successfully been put into practice with the patients I have worked with, and is solidly grounded in discoveries from fields of learning that span modern science, timeless spiritual traditions, western medicine, eastern healing practices, and developmental psychology.  My particular focus throughout my career has involved ways to apply mind and body resources to improve your health and enhance your life.  I will offer you condition-specific suggestions.  At other times, I will offer more basic strategies and techniques to improve your health that are useful no matter the particular condition(s) with which you wrestle.  I think of these basic strategies as a blue print for health that is not necessarily associated with any specific health problem.  They represent building blocks upon which a solid foundation for your future health can be built.  In the future, I intend to make down-loadable teleseminars or webinars available, which will provide you with opportunities to learn about various mind-body subjects in much greater depth.  At the same time, such programs will help you to develop essential health enhancing skills as you apply what you will learn to your own life.  

An ancient saying described a good teacher as someone who was forever learning from his students.  In that sense, I am a good teacher, since I have been learning from my “students” – the patients with whom I have had the privilege to work – since I first began my psychology practice in the mid-80s.  I am a clinical health psychologist and a clinical neuropsychologist in an integrative, holistic health center.  In 1999, after 15 years of working in a large health care organization, I left to form a smaller and more intimate center, which became Partners in Healing of Minneapolis (www.pih-mpls.com), the holistic health center where I have worked for the past 11 years.    

In my practice I have paid attention to how the mind, brain and body interact to generate symptoms.  Without exception, symptoms represent recurring patterns of interactions.  Sometimes those interactions are within the patient (e.g., dysregulation of muscle tone in blood vessels in the head that becomes the pattern we call “migraine”).  Sometimes the patterns involve anticipations of interactions with others (e.g., the sense of anxiety and dread that takes the form of stomach pain and nausea as a child waits and wonders whether her father will come home drunk tonight).  Sometimes the patterns represent the way in which biological, psychological, social, genetic, behavioral, and even spiritual factors interact with one another to form a condition such as irritable bowel syndrome.  And sometimes, the patterns represent the way in which past history has been encoded in a person’s mind and body to produce patterns we call post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative identity disorder.  

By helping patients discover and modify their mind-brain-body interaction patterns, I’ve helped them to discover that once you change the recurring pattern in important ways, the symptoms can no longer show up in their usual way.  In effect, change the pattern and the illness process changes – almost always for the better! Now, I intend to bring what I have learned to a new “audience”: you, the readers of this blog.  It may be useful for you to read and apply what I offer.  It will be that much more useful if the communication flows in both directions.  Therefore, the blog will offer a comment board where your questions, ideas, and reactions to postings can be featured.  

I am looking forward to opportunities to interact with you as we go forward together.  Most of all, I am excited about continuing to learn from my “students,” which will now, hopefully, include you.