Mindful Movement Remoulds your Brain

Bodies are plastic—well, they show plasticity.

Just as plastic can be melted and remoulded into different objects, so your body is constantly re-moulding according to need (within certain constraints).

Every cell, organelle, molecule, is constantly turning-over, being replaced, repaired, or recommissioned. Nothing in the body is static. Liver cells might be broken down because their constituents are needed elsewhere. New bone cells might form as immature cells are brought into commission. Yes, you have had that same scar on your leg for twenty years, but cells from within have changed.

There is a constant assessment of priorities. Plasticity makes us fit for purpose. If you work as a labourer, you need strong sturdy muscles with powerful lines of stable connectivity and leverage through the body. In response to mechanical load, muscle cells are recruited and given better blood supply while attachments to bones are strengthened. At the other extreme, as a professional dancer, you need to be flexible, and your strength and power needs to be built differently. They inherited some of these differences between their bodies, but much of our form and function is a response to how we live our lives—the demands we put (or don’t put) upon our body and mind.

Body and brain remould around what you actually do and avoid wasting energy maintaining forms and functions you don’t need. Economy is survival.

If I am cycling all day, every day, my leg muscles get stronger as my body’s resources are re-organised. The lines of tensile strength needed to cycle are thickened; even the bones to which they attach are made denser. On the other hand, if I give up moving altogether and sit immobile at my desk (say, writing a book), my bone density will drop and my muscles will become flaccid and weak. This is, of course, the reason for weight loading in the gym; strain it and it will get stronger. It is also the reason for the old maxim “Use it or lose it”.

The brain shows a great deal of plasticity (neuroplasticity). Although we are born with an outline organisation, it is our experiences which fine-tune structure and function to meet demands. Practising mathematics or music may not seem relevant to you in school as it may not lead to a shining career, but the mental exercise will literally change your brain such that you can use it later as an adult in useful ways. Neuroplasticity is why our early experiences are so influential; they literally mould the way our brain works.

There is a time of heightened neuroplasticity during infanthood [e.g., between birth and two or three years of age, the number of synapses (junctions) in the brain increases from 2,500 to 15,000 per brain cell], however, it continues to a lesser degree even into old age. Do not assume that, as an adult, your mind and body are now fixed in stone. We are certainly less plastic as we get older, but we can still change. In fact, studies show that doing/learning new physical skills is one way to stay younger because it stimulates the growth of new brain cells and new connections through the body.  Staying young is not about keeping your mind active but about giving your body new things to do.

Bodywork: movement therapies

Let’s say you take up yoga, Pilates or taichi and you are asked to perform a new movement which you have never done before. It will be difficult because the pathways between brain and body are either not there or are not particularly well developed. If you can almost do this new movement, the line of instruction that is already there will be enhanced in the way driving up and down a country lane will widen it until it becomes a bigger road. In fact, the analogy does not do the mechanism justice as what happens is that the country lane is automatically surfaced with thicker tarmac and nourished with service stations until you have a fully serviced motorway.

More amazing still, our body can also create totally new highways between brain and body that have not existed before. Perhaps surprisingly, this requires your attention—more specially, your engaged intention.

It is our intention (mind) our attempts to perform a new task which stimulates new neurons to head off in the right direction, travelling along fibrous pathways of supporting glial cells to their destination where they mature into new connections. Just intending, trying, is enough to set this process of growing new pathways in play.

Not only do country lanes automatically turn into fully serviced motorways just by you using them, but totally new roads are built just from your attempts to go in a new direction.

Mind moulds the body.

The importance of practice

In my experience, many of us give up when we try something new but cannot do it straightaway.

“My body just can’t do that!”

“I just can’t get it!”

We have to practise new actions even when we cannot yet do them successfully because the body needs time to redeploy resources and make new connections. It will not make such a resource redeployment wastefully. The body will not adapt to every move you make. It will only make structural reorganisations if they are likely to be needed in the future. For example, there won’t be much physical and mental re-organisation after one yoga class! But the more you include a new mindful movement in your life, the more chance there is of plasticity being triggered because it becomes apparent that this new action is now a new ‘need’ rather than a one-off event you are unlikely to bother with again.

You have to attempt the new action for your body’s remoulding to find a way. Growing new nerve pathways takes time.

Make it Matter

Physical and mental change happens faster if this new skill has meaning to you. In the martial arts it is said that you need to repeat a new move at least 1,000 times before your body has found how to do it. However, this practice may be a waste of time if you are not engaged with the new action. For the body to redeploy resources, it needs to know it is important. Engagement is the best way to do this. Therefore, you need to be mindful during practices such as tai chi and yoga. What you do with your mind is as important as what you do with your body.

Studies show that we can encourage plasticity through exploration or play. By slightly changing your practice of a new skill rather than repeating endlessly exactly the same move, speed up the formation of new connections. Your mind’s exploratory interest triggers redeployment of tissue. As you can see, there are good reasons for mindful engagement with the movement. Our body and mind will reshape themselves and reorganise their function. Plasticity is therefore one way by which movement therapies work—that is, change you physically and/or mentally.