When I was in school, they liked to tell you that any damage you do to your brain is forever damage. This was all party of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign against drugs; they included alcohol too.

There was this classic ad on TV, it showed an egg and they said “this is your brain”. Then they cracked the egg into a hot skillet and said “this is your brain on drugs”. This visual completely persuaded me, I was terrified of drugs. 

Research into the brain, and the entire concept of brain plasticity hadn’t become mainstream yet.

Now we know the brain is constantly changing. We’ve learned that the brain can become stronger or weaker depending on how you use it. 

This means that we can deliberately make our brain work differently than it does now. We can help it default to different thoughts than it defaults to now. We can lower our sensitivity to frustration and anger. 

Meditation is the most direct way to cultivate new brain patterns. As many of you know I teach a meditation course. My course uses what I’ve found through Eastern teachings and combines that with scientific research to help people succeed at meditation and become less reactive to stress.

When I come across additional information, I need to adjust what I teach because I want the best for my students. I want the best experiences, the strongest brains, and the most recent information to inform how we achieve that.

What this means for you is my online meditation course is always going through updates and upgrades to reflect new information I’ve learned. I’ll give you a quick summary on the latest tidbits, I’ve learned that it takes the brain about 30 days to create new neural pathways.

Let’s use the image of building a road to understand these neural pathways. Even better, let’s look at a road built over a long time in a place where people have been living for thousands of years, let’s pick Greece (because if we can’t travel for real right now, we can imagine it).

Imagine you have a village, and people are walking the same route again and again. You get a well-worn path and it’s easy to follow, it even begins to make a groove in the land. Then imagine adding carts, or something with wheels. The path gets wider, even more established, it’s really easy to find and follow.

It’s actually the easiest way to travel the route, going off the path is more work than staying on the path. Over time maybe someone lays cobblestones or something that keeps that path from becoming muddy, now this path is really lovely and welcoming.

This is how your neural pathways work. The more you use the same pathway, the more solid and substantial it becomes. When we have a negative pattern, it gets really hard to think differently, because that negative thought highway is the path of least resistance. It’s familiar and easy.

Creating a new thought pattern, one that helps you be happier and more productive, takes time to build. This new highway needs the time to go through the stages of becoming the new path of least resistance. Knowing that it’s normal to go through periods where meditation feels weird, or uncomfortable, makes it a lot easier to have the patience needed to build the new pathway. Just knowing the path gets easier helps us keep going.

The next step is my meditation course is going to be changed from 10 days to 30. The format is going to be adjusted, so it’s a nice easy journey, and all the same information will be there. 

It was shortened to ten days to give you a way to absorb the content and get on with your life, but a lot of people benefit from having the support while they build those new pathways. We’re going to hang out together long enough for you to get the maximum benefits.

Anyone who’s taken my course will be invited to come along on the 30 day journey, and this new format will offer an updated evidence-based approach to becoming successful at meditation. I can’t wait to share it with you. It’s coming this fall (2020). More info to come on exact dates. 

Be sure to sign up to be notified if you’re not already on my mailing list, you can click below this post to sign up. And also keep this information in mind when you’re working to develop a new habit or skill, 30 days is key to the brain forming the structure to support the new thoughts and actions.

I look forward to sharing the keys to successful meditation with you.

*typos and errors provided for your entertainment.