Brains, Bodies and Behavior
Given my line of work, that I daily deal with bodies and minds, I continue to be enthralled by the research that tells us so much more about how they work. The nature vs. nurture debate has been endlessly fascinating, and depending on what I’m reading or who I’m listening to at the moment, I can easily find a home on either side of the equation (which, TBH, is right where I want to be).
My training in yoga for the classroom was by an Occupational Therapist who was working in classrooms with all types of students and first introduced me to the role of our biology in our brain-based endeavors. It’s where I first learned about stress and the effects of hormones. She would say that before we can open the minds of children for learning we must create a container that is ready to receive it. She worked with children, but it’s true of all humans.
What we know is true by experience is being proven by science: we behave in ways influenced by our experience of being in bodies. There are now scads of studies that people will behave differently (make harsher judgments, etc) based on their environment – if there’s a putrid smell in the room, for example. And then there’s the hormones – not just at the time of their development (need I remind you that I’m raising 3 teenagers right now?) but how our brains’ receptors to those hormones are formed early in their bodily experience. (See Dr. Bruce Perry in What Happened to You? for some big insights to how our earliest days shape our entire existence).
The hopeful part of this research is the neuroplasticity – our ability to rewire our brains, which has much to do with the behaviors we practice. (Remember how I wrote back-to-back newsletters about how change can begin with either behavior or belief? Opportunity has so. many. doors.)
Specifically with young people, the part of our brain that helps us make decisions is wide open to suggestion until the mid-twenties. Parents around the world both love and hate this age of opportunity – on the one hand, teens just don’t have the wiring for quick, easy, wise decisions. On the other hand, they’re not done yet. Then again, neither are us 40-somethings or even 80-somethings. Come to a chair yoga class and WITNESS.
If this is the brain region central to doing the right thing when it’s the harder thing to do no genes can specify what counts as the right thing. It has to be learned the long, hard way, by experience.
-Robert M. Sapolsky
So what do we DO with this? If it’s in our wiring and our biology, are we just done? That’s a hard NO for me. Because our biology is shaped by our environment. And guess what?
We are the environment.
I always strive be a loving container for my kids to grow up with safety and acceptance always available – that our home allows them to be their whole self. But one of my biggest goals as a parent has been to put my kids in places where there are other adults who love them, provide them safety and freedom of expression, because our community is part of their container. Our interactions with one other create the biological wiring that help us to decide these questions of right and wrong. When my kids shop here, work here, get cheered on and off the field/court here it changes who they are at the cellular level.
If you think your yoga practice is just about that zen feeling you get post-savasana, I’m thrilled you love your experience. But it doesn’t stop there. When you change your container by lessening stress hormones, expanding your window of tolerance for mental and emotional stress, and practice setting intentions for your day, you then go out into the world and shape the containers of the people you encounter. Whether you asked for this role or not, we’ve been born into bodies of social creatures and we now take our place in shaping the world where we want to live.
So let’s do it, friends. Show up, Work hard, Shine bright, Love all. Create the world you want to live in.
