How the Brain Helps and Hinders in Stressful Times

Sitting there inside your head is about three pounds of the most complex material in the whole of the known universe.

All the more reason for taking care of it and for it to take care of you.

This is an ongoing mission for the brain - survival, safety and protection. The brain also looks after the very complex tasks of speech and communication, all kinds of cognitive abilities from the mundane to the extraordinary, memory, spatial awareness, provides a place for appreciating music, generates ideas, dreams and imagination etc etc.

When threatened, the brain, more particularly, the reptile brain and limbic brain automatically respond by moving into “fight, flight or freeze” modes depending on the level of threat and the individual perception of it. The perceived danger is recognised and the brain is set to response ready.

The same areas can alert you to an opportunity, like a promising prospective partner for continuation of the species, which is vital for any species. Yes, this is a fairly unsophisticated level of cognitive function, survival and mating, although you might know people that seem to operate mainly at this level.

So far so good, the brain responds to danger and keeps the individual safe. But the helpful reaction to threat starts to be an unhelpful continuation of the stress response if we perceive an ongoing safety issue that doesn't cease. We can experience extended periods of anxiety, restlessness, feeling tense all the time, or exhaust ourselves into depression, burn-out and withdrawal.

The top layer of the brain, the neocortex, is the key area for mitigating these unhelpful reactive responses. It can assess and rationalise the level of danger and can adjust the threat level down. In evolutionary terms, the cortex and in particular the frontal lobes (yes at the front of your head) are in evolutionary tems, more recent and able to perform the higher cognitive abilities – assessment, planning, reflection, judgement, imagination, awareness of actions within context of others and the amazing ability we have for creativity.

If these parts of the brain were humans, the prefrontal cortex would be a kind of intelligent guy with charm and wit, appreciating the finer things in life whereas the reptilian and limbic brain would be a pretty basic Neanderthal man.

We can understand that the brain can hinder us if it is continually caught up in the stress areas of the brain. Then there is no access to the tremendous power of the frontal cortex lobes to make all kinds of informed and aware decisions, to make reasoned judgements and to scale back the stress alert. There’s no access either to the ideas, imagination and creativity which could potentially help move us out of the stress in ways that we don’t automatically see. Basically you get the Neanderthal man level of thinking!

It seems unfair that these potential avenues of more sophisticated thinking, the really useful ones where there are ideas and flair, creativity and fun, which could be so helpful in moving out of a stressed situation, aren’t available – unless and until the brain feels that it is in a place of safety and security.

You’ll be pleased to know that these positive areas of the brain can be accessed. It may take time to learn and pratcise, but yoga is an excellent way of reaching the higher thinking parts of the brain. Yoga uses the body, breathing, relaxation, sound and meditation practice to reduce the over- responding stressing, evolutionarily early brain and using breathing and meditation in a relaxed safe environment to enhance use of the creative cortex.

That’s one good reason for using pranayama and meditation at the end of the yoga sessions. And another good reason is that these enhancements improve with practice.