Dear <<First Name>>,
Welcome to my summer newsletter. I hope you all are well wherever you are in the world.
I will soon be returning to Europe for the summer holidays. I will have two clinic days in London on July 19 and 20, see below for details. My last day of appointments in KL will be July 12, but I will be available for distance sessions throughout the summer.
In this newsletter I would like to share some exciting information about a topic I’ve been studying lately: The three brains. This is a hugely exciting field, it comes up in my sessions all the time and I am seeing some great results in my clients.
Most of us would say that we have only one brain, the one in our head, but we actually have three! In addition to the one in the head, we have a heart brain and a gut (or enteric) brain. Each of these three brains has different abilities. The three brains’ activity level and their degree of collaboration is very important for our health and wellbeing. By focusing only on the one brain inside our heads, and not utilising the two others properly, we can get stress, anxiety and compromise our immune system, brain processing power, decision-making, quality of relationships etc. There is an enormous potential for our overall health in getting the three brains working together as the team they are meant to be.
I did my first training about the three brains in 2014, and many of you will have heard me talk about it over the years, but my latest training with the founder of BodyTalk, John Veltheim, takes my understanding and clinical application to a very new level. The results I have seen after working with this in the clinic are very wide ranging, from back pain going away, anxiety and depression subsiding, improvements in marriages, sinus issues clearing up to great progress in communication skills of a young autistic child.
What constitutes a brain?, might be a good questions to start with. A brain consists of large numbers of sensory and motor neurons. Brains have support cells, such as glial cells, astrocytes, proteins, etc. The neurons have sophisticated connections and coordinating abilities to enable coherent functions and response to stimuli. They have to perceive, process and assimilate information and act upon that information in a logical way. All this is true for all three brains.
The Head Brain
The head brain is like a computer. It downloads information from the body and the environment and responds by running programs that support and informs the body. The head brain also handles a certain amount of analysis and conceptualisation, and it is the control centre of the autonomic nervous system (all the involuntary processes) including “fight or flight” response. But inherently it is not capable of being the origin of a single new and creative thought.
Our historic and cultural evolution has led to an over-emphasis on the importance of the head brain, and the head brain has ended up taking on a lot of work it is not designed for. Our reliance on the head brain is similar to a sailor relying on an outboard motor to move his sailboat on a beautiful windy day. In both cases, the power of nature is underestimated, there is unnecessary fuel consumption, and a peaceful journey remains elusive.
The Heart Brain
The Heart Brain’s main role is as a harmoniser, both within the body and between our environment and us. That is a preeeeetty important role, if you think about it. It is also the seat of consciousness of self, which is why we instinctively point to the heart to indicate self. Intuition and inspiration come to us through the Heart Brain and joy is experienced through the heart brain. Recent research has shown that the Heart Brain secretes neuro-hormones, such as dopamine, norepinephrine and oxytocin (formerly considered only a head brain function). The heart's role as merely a pump is herby greatly extended, and Roxette were right back in 1989 singing "Listen to Your Heart".
The Gut Brain
The gut brain is primarily about decision-making. If we look at decision-making in a wide sense it will include the immune function because a weak immune system can be seen as a weakness in cellular and microbial decision-making. It is even in our language "my gut tell me to..."
The whole intestinal tract from top to bottom contains at least 500 million neurons that make up this large, very significant brain. The gut brain is a neuro-hormonal and chemical warehouse and utilises every class of neurotransmitter also found in the head brain including serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, nitricoxide and glutamate. Dr. Michael Gershon, an expert in neurogastroenterology, advocates that 95% of the serotonin used and produced by the body happens in the gut brain (serotonin regulates mood, social behaviour, libido, sleep, memory, and learning). The gut brain is also a large source of benzodiazepines, which are psychoactive chemicals used in popular drugs like Valium and Xanax. This means that in acute stress, both long- and short-term, the gut plays a major role in calming the brain and relieving much of its stress.
Recent research shows that 80% of this informational flow is from the gut brain to the head brain not the other way around. (So who is in charge?!!).
Despite being studied intensely for centuries, the head brain is still not fully understood. The heart brain has been recognised by modern science for about 60 years (especially studied by HeartMath Institute since 1991), but is also not understood fully. The gut brain was discovered in medicine early in the 20th century, but very little research has been conducted until during the past decade years. The gut brain is still entirely ignored in most medical colleges.
There are however many historical traditions that have studied and understood the three areas as centres of primary energy in the body. For instance, Chinese medicine considers three primary energy centres in the body: The upper, the middle and the lower Tan Tien. There are also parallels in Indian philosophy, in the Jewish Kabbalah, Hawaiian tradition, and the teachings of the shamans of Mongolia, Siberia and Central Asia.
Being aware of the fact that we have three brains is a good start to better 3-brain integration. If you have a meditation practice you can try to meditate on the three brains – activating each, connecting them and harmonising the communication between them. A simplified version could be to take 3 deep slow breaths with the hand over each of the three brains, one after the other. Or book a BodyTalk session with me to see what the new 3-brain tools can do for your health and wellbeing.
With Love and gratitude,
Britt x