5 Ways Brain Training Is Like Spring Cleaning for Your Mind
You’ve been avoiding it, but desperately need it. You don’t have time for it, but somehow, it HAS to get done. Spring cleaning. It’s time.
Spring cleaning is one those traditions that defies common sense. It’s as if someone said: “Wow; it’s warm; the snow’s melted, flowers are blooming! Let’s spend this weekend inside and move my dusty CD’s down to the basement!”
Spring cleaning is the ultimate ode to the puritan work ethic of joyless tasks. But for those of us who profoundly neglect our cleaning duties the other 11 months of the year, there’s no getting around it.
But what about your other residence? The place where your consciousness lives? Yes – we’re talking about your brain. It’s probably suffering from lack of attention and needs some cobweb busting too. Spring break helps, but you need something more long-lasting and definitive. You need brain training to clean those dust bunnies from your mind, but without all the time and effort. Is that even possible? It is now.
If training your brain with neurofeedback were like your household spring cleaning, it would look something like this:
The Closet
Every time you open the door, you’re in danger of decapitation by a precariously balanced box of clothes from 1992. You’re forced to wade through a stale swamp of neglected junk to reach the thing you actually (might) want. Closets function a lot like our brains: they’re full of things we’re attached to, but have no practical use for. Seems less than optimal, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t if be better to rearrange the space so you can access the items you actually DO use and jettison the junk you don’t? That’s how brain training works: it prompts the brain to reorganize itself in ways that prioritize your neurological resources. Your brain – at its best – works like a smart algorithm that keeps you on-message. Do you really want to dwell on the moment fifteen years ago when you accidentally hung up on your firm’s biggest client…with your boss in the room? What good is that?! You’re better served knowing today’s presentation backwards and forwards. Your current promotion depends on it. In sum, important stuff: organized and in the front where you can access it. Everything else? Back corner of the closet where it will hopefully stay.
The Refrigerator
Stale thoughts are like that moldy cheese on the bottom shelf: they’re offensive and distracting. And the science experiment in the lettuce crisper left over from your St. Paddy’s Day party? It’s infusing everything else in the ‘fridge with an unidentifiable odor and taste. Your thoughts – especially if they are negative – can infest your brain in the same way. You might have a recurring, obsessive feeling that nothing is ever going to get better, for example. Without neurofeedback training, the brain remains in a “loop”, tethered to those pessimistic thoughts. The un-optimized brain is more vulnerable to penetration by shocks, stirs and unpleasant speculations. Neurofeedback can help the brain be more flexible and less permeable to negative or catastrophic thinking – the stinky cheese of your emotional life.
The Windows
Now that days are longer and the sun has returned, you’re noticing the view out of your front windows is a little, well, murky. There’s a residue of winter, inside and out. The central nervous system is your mind’s front window; your view out onto the world. When it’s “hazy” or occluded by emotional residue, neurofeedback essentially gives those “windows” a good scrubbing and polishing. Just like a freshly cleaned window, brain training can make things in your life clearer. Difficult tasks and decisions can become easier because your central nervous system is able to work at full capacity with a clear view of the terrain ahead. Sort of like Windex for the brain.
Those Difficult to Reach Spots
The most labor-intensive part of spring cleaning involves getting at those difficult-to-reach spots: under the refrigerator; behind the bookcase, that wall behind the couch. You have to muscle-up; move heavy objects. You get down on your hands and knees; stretch and reach like a Kundalini yoga class. It’s exhausting. Your brain has difficult to reach spots too. These are the “recesses” that hold onto things you’re not even conscious of, but are ultimately bound by. Sometimes, it’s tough to know what could be slowing you down and corroding your confidence. That’s because you’re NOT the expert; your brain is. It knows how to get into those deep crevices and clean out the gunk that’s keeping you from being all you can be. You might even crawl under your stove and use a mirror to find dust that has collected on the bottom of the frame. Similarly, neurofeeedback training holds up a “mirror” to your brain to show it where the “dirt” is. Then it leaves it to your brain to “clean up”. When provided pertinent information, the brain will naturally self-correct. Wouldn’t it be nice if that four-month-old spaghetti sauce stain behind the couch cleaned itself up? Sigh.
Call the Spring Cleaning Service
OK; here’s the smart play: instead of spending every weekend until July in the garage sorting through your Hot Wheels collection, you could just hire a service to do it for you. Or bribe your 10 year old with free movie tickets. The other option? A good neurofeedback system like NeurOptimal®. It is THE spring cleaning service for your brain, because it requires NO effort. You hook up to a computer with sensors, sit back, relax, listen to music and let the software do all the work. As you’ve seen, your brain is its own best “cleaning” service. Neurofeedback just helps your central nervous become its most efficient without changing or altering anything. And even though it’s not brussel sprouts or beet juice, NeurOptimal® is 100% naturopathic. What’s more spring-worthy than all-natural and naturopathic?
There’s no need to be glum about your spring cleaning chores; at least when it comes to your brain. With NeurOptimal®, spring cleaning for the brain is no chore at all. The canned goods from the Bush administration lurking in the back of your pantry? Well that’s another story.
