Anat Baniel Transcript

Transcription

1 Anat Baniel Transcript Ann Wixon: Hello, and thank you for joining us. I'm Ann Wixon, your host for The Future of Health Now. The purpose of our series is to give you privileged access to useful and healthful conversations with many of the world s most respected doctors and scientists helping you to achieve the best health possible. Today, we have the honor of speaking with Anat Baniel. Ms. Baniel holds a Master s in Clinical Psychology from Tel Aviv University, and has established an international reputation as one of the world s leading authorities in finding ways to use movement as a way to communicate with the brain to overcome pain and limitation, increase vitality, and help children with special needs make the impossible possible. Ms. Baniel is the author of Move Into Life - The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. We are speaking with Ms. Baniel today to learn about her exciting breakthrough discoveries about brain plasticity and how a proven movement technique can make us younger. Welcome, Ms. Baniel. Anat Baniel: Thank you. I'm very happy to be with you, Ann. Ann Wixon: Thank you. Ms. Baniel, what is brain plasticity? Anat Baniel: Brain plasticity, basically, is the ability of the brain to change itself, to change the structures, the connections, the patterns that control our movement, our thinking, our emotions, and our feelings. The brain is the master manager, CEO of our life, and the way that it s put together, the way that it's built, and the way it works and how well it works will decide how well we move in the kind of intelligence and abilities we have. Ann Wixon: We've all kind of grown up thinking we're born with all the brain cells we'll ever have, is that true? Anat Baniel: Almost yes, but not really. They ve recently discovered that the brain cells can actually be created in the brain, also later in life. But really, the most important part that we know of nowadays about brain plasticity is the ability of the existing brain cells to create new connections, to shoot new of what's called synapses, and connect themselves to other brain cells, and that s how patterns are formed. That part is done very quickly within seconds, and we start changing the brain. So, we don t have to worry so much about how many brain cells we have unless we have some massive brain damage. We have plenty cells to work with, all of us. It's about the connections that are formed between the different cells. Ann Wixon: So we're not using all of our brain cells, and if we need to, we can ignite them with the synapses and get them working for us. Anat Baniel: Yes. We don t use our brain close to the potential that I believe it has. We can get the brain to wake up and start growing new connections anytime under the right conditions. We're talking about millions upon millions and probably more like billions new connections, if we do what works for the brain. Ann Wixon: What is your proven movement technique? I'm imagining this is something that helps our brains work. Is it hard to learn? Anat Baniel: No. [laughs] The Future of Health Now

2 Ann Wixon: [laughs] Good! We're all taking notes. Anat Baniel: Yes. Really, the movement techniques, usually, people think about the movement technique more like if you do Pilates or you do yoga or you're supposed to twist yourself or stretch yourself. The way I apply movement with my students and my clients is not just the movement that you do if you twist or you bend. But it's more of how you go about doing the movements that you do. So the first thing that you really need to do is to move. We all move, at least a little bit, or we won't be alive. The moment we move, there are ways to do things or how we go about moving, that completely changes the outcomes, both physically and mentally and emotionally. Ann Wixon: Does any type of movement work? Anat Baniel: Any movement you want to do can be a good starting point. But, the important part is if we want to wake our brains up and to get the kind of vibrant well-organized brains and bodies that we want to have, we need to spend a few moments, at least everyday, what I call move with attention. That means, bring attention to ourselves and to what we feel as we move. So, for example, just like a simple daily life example, if you walk, you walk from your front door to your car. Normally, we just do it automatically, we don t think about it. But if you just take a few steps - 30 seconds, 60 seconds - you slow down a little bit and you pay attention to yourself, to your body, to your shoulders, to your hips, to your feet, as you move. You'll be amazed how quickly your body starts shifting because your brain, the moment you pay attention to your movement, this is really a resource of new information to your brain. I like to think of the brain like an information Pac-Man. It just eats up information, it just loves new information, and it looks to always improve and shift things around for the better when it gets information. Paying attention to our movement immediately starts introducing shifts. I do it daily, with adults, with older people, with people with Parkinson s, with people who had a stroke, and also with babies and infants, or just athletes and musicians. It really, really works. It's so simple, it's embarrassing, but it really, really works, it's very powerful. Ann Wixon: How did you develop this method? This sounds fascinating. Anat Baniel: I developed my method based on my background, which you mentioned, Clinical Psychology and dance, and I also have a degree in Statistics. So I have a science-bent side to me. But, the most important influence in terms of what I do today was my teacher, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. He developed, way back in the 40s and 50s, his method, the Feldenkrais Method, to help him heal from a knee injury. He was a black belt in judo and he's a soccer player. He was an athlete and a physicist. He realized, way back then, that the thing that really needs to change in order to heal is the brain. So, if there's an injury to a muscle or to a joint, the brain has to learn how to manage the body, in a new way, so it can still do what it could do before. He was my teacher, I met him as a child, through my father, who is a scientist. Feldenkrais taught movement lessons in my parents home when I was three years old. Then I did his work as a child. Then in my early 20s, while I was in grad school, I trained with him, and worked and traveled with him. Then, I just kept working with what I learned from him and kept developing it, a lot through my work with musicians and with children with special needs into what today is the Anat Baniel Method. Ann Wixon: So what is the biggest myth about how our brain works? How does this myth hold us back from staying young? Anat Baniel: Well, the biggest myth, the most common one, is what you mentioned earlier, is that we grow early on in life and we peak in our 20s, 30s, and somewhere in our early 40s and early 50s, we start sliding down. Now, this is very true for a lot of people. But the myth is that it has to The Future of Health Now

3 be that way. The brain, when we provide the right conditions, will continue growing and improving and developing new connections, refining, differentiating, and evolving and doing a better job for us as long as we live. So that s one of the myths. The other one is not really a myth, but it's people don t actually know how brilliant and how well they can do both physically, in terms of flexibility and strength, and how to get there. Also, in terms of intelligence and vibrancy of ideas and creativity and emotional freedom. For many people, it's just not part of what they even expect to have in their life. Ann Wixon: So it sounds like we can keep our brains young. Can you explain how your method helps keep our brain younger? Anat Baniel: Absolutely. I have what I called the nine essentials. These are nine things that when you do them in your daily life, or at least, twice a week [laughs], you will really reverse the typical trend of aging, if you're older. If you're younger, or older, it will get you to function a lot better. So the very first essential, I already spoke about, and that s movement with attention. I'd like to make a distinction here between exercise and movement. Usually, when people think about physical health, they think about exercise. Exercise is really good - walking, running, judo, Pilates, yoga, dance - any kind of a formalized routine is very, very good. However, there's something I want to mention here. The brain has two equally important, competing ways in which it works. One is the brain forms habits. It has to form habits or we couldn t live. So a baby is born, it doesn t know anything to do on its own. It starts learning really, really fast and it starts forming habits. It learns language and ideas, and it learns to walk and gets its own typical posture and then handwriting. We develop habits that actually allow us to live. They re automatic, they're supposed to be automatic. That is very important and very good. But as we grow older, we learn less and less new things, and the habits start becoming more and more of our life. Movement, not just exercise, when we bring attention to our movement, the brain really wakes up and starts creating new connections, new possibilities, and brings us to the experience of being in the here and now in really dramatic ways. It's such a simple thing to do. There is research, very elegant research done by Dr. Merzenich and his people and some of his colleagues that shows that movement without attention doesn t create new mapping in the brain. It doesn t bring new possibilities for us; it doesn t change how we do things. The moment we pay attention to our movement, the brain resumes growing at a very rapid rate. With children, the research was done, the number of new connections per second when they're in that learning mode, that movement with attention mode, they build 1.8 million new connections per second on the average, about 100 million a minute. Ann Wixon: If children are doing this, adults can also do this? Anat Baniel: Absolutely. I do free presentations from time to time in my center, and I had 80 people that came, and the subject was reversing pain. You know, getting rid of back pain and neck pain, things like that. So I had a lot of people that weren t, like, doing really well when they walked into the room. Within the first session, it was probably about six minutes, and they changed how they were moving their backs and pelvises and necks so rapidly that many of them, at that moment, were pain-free. These were really adults and adults that have had trouble and trauma and all kinds of things. Very, very quick. It's like I walked around feeling like I'm holding this screaming in my hand and say, Tell everybody, you can really do a lot better very fast. So movement with attention, either daily go ahead. Ann Wixon: How do we pay attention when we're moving? It feels like what you're saying is more than, Aha! I just lifted my leg. The Future of Health Now

4 Anat Baniel: Exactly. Can I just lead you through like maybe a 30-second or a 60-second example? Ann Wixon: Please, that d be wonderful. Anat Baniel: Okay. Are you sitting right now? Ann Wixon: Yes, I am. Anat Baniel: Fabulous. So, you're sitting on a chair? Ann Wixon: Yes. Anat Baniel: Great. So if you can bring yourself more to the edge of the chair and put your feet flat on the floor, spread them. Put the feet spread, the knees spread so, you know, sitting comfortably. Ann Wixon: I hope our listeners are doing this along with us, because this is wonderful. Anat Baniel: Great. I would love for the listeners to do it. Then, simply very simple just turn your head to look to your right, and bring it back to the middle, and then turn your head to look to your left, and bring it back to the middle. All right? Now, you know, more or less, you'll see however far you see. Then now, lean on your right hand on the back, behind on the chair, or if you're sitting on a bench or on a bed, and just lean on your hand, on your right hand. Now, lift your left arm in front of you and place your chin on the back of your hand. So you're kind of like leaning on the back of your hand, kind of over your chin. It's a kind of a funny, little position. Now, very important, do very gentle slow easy movements. This is not stretching, okay? Now, with your arm and your head together, leaning on your right hand behind you, turn your left arm and your head to the right and back. Ann Wixon: So I'm resting on my right hand behind me and I'm using my left hand to gently move my chin. Anat Baniel: Your chin and your head. Ann Wixon: Yes. Anat Baniel: So you're basically twisting your shoulders, your arm, and your head to the right, and you're bringing it back. Then, you're doing it again, very gently, very slowly, and don t go as far as you can, just as hard as easy, and come back. Ann Wixon: Not very far. [laughs] Anat Baniel: Not very far. Very good! I'm very proud of you, Ann, because that s a point. Now, go just as far as it's easy for you, and stay there. Now, stay in that position a little twisted to the right. Now, your eyes only, take them to look a little to the right - not your head, just the eyes - and to the left. Usually, in the beginning, when people move their eyes, they also try to move their heads, but move just the eyes to the right and to the left, and one more time to the right and to the left. Now, come with everything together, and now once again, take everything together to the right and see if you're moving already a little more. Ann Wixon: I have much more flexibility. Anat Baniel: Yes, and back. Now, let's just do one more thing. Take everything again, just like this, leaning on the back of your left hand to the right, and now, you're probably going a little further. Now, the head, just move the head to the right, so you take it a little away from the hand, The Future of Health Now

5 and then you move the head to the left. Now, you notice that, of course, when you move your head to your right, your eyes also look to the right. When you move your head to the left, the eyes go to the left. So now, when you move your head to the right, take your eyes to the left, and when you move your head to the left, take your eyes to the right. Just do it very slowly because, in the beginning, it can be confusing. Do it again, and then turn your head to the left, take your eyes to the right, come back to the middle with everything, the chin is again on your left hand. Once again, turn everything to the right and see if you're turning a little bit more. Ann Wixon: I am, it's surprising. I just made myself flexible. Anat Baniel: Yes. Now put your left arm down and just sit, lean on your right hand still behind you. Now, simply turn your head to look to the right and see how far you're turning. Ann Wixon: Much farther. Anat Baniel: Now, sit and turn to the left and see how far you turn to the left. You feel a lot less. Ann Wixon: Much less. It's not painful; it feels very natural. Anat Baniel: Yes. Exactly. This is your brain changing, manifesting through your body, through your movement. Ann Wixon: Because my old brain was telling me I wasn t very flexible. Anat Baniel: Yes, you're right. Your old brain was telling you that you weren t very flexible. You were kind of expecting what you were used to. But mostly your brain was just turning your head the way you're used to turning your head. Now, with just these very few movements, and you paid close attention to yourself, to your shoulders, to your head, to what you were doing, and you were doing it gently and slowly, you're feeling your body, and bang, it's reconfigured itself. That s brain plasticity in action. Ann Wixon: Well, and I can feel, my neck and shoulders actually feel better and going into it, I thought, Uh-uh, this is probably going to hurt later. But, it didn t at all. I feel better. Anat Baniel: Always. Always when we improve the quality of the organization of our brain, and I can say in a few words, in a minute, what I mean by that. But when we improve the organization of how our brain works, our body feels better. That s how I help people get rid of pain. Ann Wixon: So aches and pains are not necessarily a natural part of aging. Anat Baniel: No. I mean, it's natural, depends what you do with yourself. If you get rigid and run the old patterns you developed when you were three and five years old and you haven t evolved them for the last 40 years, it's very natural to have pain. But it's not necessary to have it. It's also very natural to keep developing ourselves and getting our brains to keep growing. We get aches and pains from time to time, it's part of life, but we can get rid of it very quickly and just get better. Ann Wixon: Well, it's because it sounds like, you mentioned earlier, expectation and my expectation was I'm not going to be able to swivel my head very far. So that s my expectation, and that would hold me back. So my expectation is when I get up from the chair, I'm going to ache, I'm going to ache. Anat Baniel: Absolutely, because you're activating the pattern that has proven in the past you've learned. You've learned that you are going to hurt. We learn our experience, and we learn our limitations. First we experience our limitations and then we learn them and then we anticipate them and then we recreate them. The Future of Health Now

6 Ann Wixon: It sounds like this is applicable to every aspect of our life and not just movement. Anat Baniel: Absolutely. With your permission, I'd like to expand the notion of movement. So, thinking is also movement. Emotion is movement. Feeling is movement. Everything that we do on every aspect of ourselves is movement. Usually, people think about movement more in what we call the physical side of ourselves. Not so much the mental, emotional, and intellectual parts of ourselves. However, our thoughts are also organized by our brain, and the brain moves to create thoughts. Trust me, when the brain stops moving, the thought stops, too. Even the word emotions is e-motion, it's movement. So, the same principles, as I will go through some more of the essentials, it applies for bringing change and new possibility in physical performance, in our bodies, in reducing aches, in increasing flexibility and strength. Same thing holds through for thinking, increasing our flexibility, strength, intelligence, power for our thinking. We need to bring attention to the movement of our thinking. I remember years ago when I was a beginning psychotherapist, I was in training. There would be this weekly meeting of all the therapists and psychiatrists and the whole staff. Somebody will present a topic and then people would start asking questions. After a little while, I realized that pretty much the same people asked the same question. The content changed a little bit, but basically, I could, 100 percent, predict what each person will ask. They had the pattern in which they fit their question, fit their way of thinking, fit their belief system, and they just recreated it over and over again. Just like we recreate the way we turn our head. Ann Wixon: It sounds like a lot of business conferences I've been in, yes. Anat Baniel: Then, when you get those people who are able to come with something new, and check on their own thinking, and then move it a little to the right and a little to the left, play with the thought. Think something you disagree with, and then change it around. Then, see what new thoughts you have and you'll be surprised. Ann Wixon: How do we know if we need to wake up our brain? Anat Baniel: We do. We always do. [laughs] Ann Wixon: What are some telltale signs that we might want to be looking at so that we become aware? Anat Baniel: Oh, I understand your question. Yes. Okay. If you find yourself telling the same story to your children or to people over and over again, you need to wake your brain. If you find yourself doing the same routine, be it in the exercise domain, be it in what you eat or where you go, nothing wrong with that routine, by the way. It's fine, you can do what you want, but just know that the lights are starting to come off in your brain. You're not living nearly, at this moment, as vibrantly and as fully and as joyfully as you could. If you find that the movements that were easy to do are becoming a little harder to do I'm talking now of what people call physical movement absolutely. If you find that you're getting more anxiety, you feel more anxious, less safe in the world, find that your brain is starting to, you know, lights are starting to dim. You're running on the same habits over and over again. If this feeling of hopelessness or boredom or difficulty to understand a new idea that is harder to follow, something that you haven t heard before, or you don t even want to hear new thoughts or to try. Nowadays, there are so many new things to try, so you're not supposed to try everything because it's impossible. But the reluctance, the difficulty to shift, shift the belief system, for instance, if you get really rigid about believing what you believe, also a sign. So, the willingness to take somebody else s point of view, at least for 10 seconds, great thing to do. So, these are some of the signs you can find. Harder to stand on one leg and put your pants on. Serious sign, actually; very serious sign. Ann Wixon: Yes. Really? The Future of Health Now

7 Anat Baniel: Oh, yes. The ability of the brain to manage balance, it's a very dynamic thing. That means you have a brain that s really able to shift around and use the feedback that it's getting from the feet. The moment the brain is getting sluggish and it's just trying to keep you up by tightly contracting the muscles, you have a brain that s sluggish and pretty certain, you're getting aches and pains from time to time, and you're simply getting old. Ann Wixon: What are some of the things that can cause our brains to stop growing and changing? Anat Baniel: So first of all, automaticity. So, movement without attention, where you just go automatically, including going to the gym and doing that automatically and going to any other exercise routine and just doing it on automatic, that s going to get you to carving your existing habits more and more, loose connections actually in the brain. The more they have it deeply ingrained, the more kind of free floating connections sort of disappear, that s one thing. So, attention to our movement - very, very important. If you don t do that, guaranteed, you're downhill, even if you feel it yet or not. The other one is, again, I'm going to speak it through the essentials. Very important, especially when you want to change something or want to learn something new, is to slow down, to literally slow down. Fast, we can only do what we already know. So, when we do things fast, which is important to be able to do things fast, but when we do them fast, we can only do what we already know. We can only use the existing patterns, which are the habits, which are the automaticity. So, if you're a runner and you want to run better, or if you do yoga and you want to be able to reach farther, or if you're just a regular person who wants to live and walk better or make love better or whatever. Slow down, because slowing down gets your brain s attention and gives you the opportunity to feel what you're doing, how you're doing it, what you're thinking. Then, it gives your brain an opportunity to do something new. Ann Wixon: So slowing down will actually help us get stronger. Anat Baniel: Absolutely. Smarter, stronger, and better. I have found in my work, and I do it now all the time, is that very often, just telling a person to slow down but really slow down the movement that they're doing. So for instance, if you sit in a chair and you just bend down to reach your shoes, you want to put your shoes on. When people get older, that gets harder very often. All I ask them is just do it, but do it really, really slow; really slow. Just feel, again, pay attention to yourself. Then, already, that wakes up their brain, and then the brain is a big problem solver. It goes like, How can I do this? Can I do this better? How can I do it better? If you add to that two more things, miracles will start popping. It's guaranteed, I know the word miracle doesn t sound very scientific, however, life is pretty miraculous, so I'm using it in that sense. If you go slow and you reduce the force, you reduce the effort, exactly the opposite of what people are told to do, people are told, Stretch, try harder. Stretch, try harder. That will only shorten your muscles, and if we have time, I can explain that, it's important. It will only make you do what you do and do it worse. Ann Wixon: So, no pain, no gain is something we should all avoid. Anat Baniel: Be kind. Are you going to ask me whether if you do the way I do, life will be painfree? No. There is challenge in life, there's from time to time, pain. If you're crossing the street and a car is, just coming around the corner, about to run you over and you have to jump really hard to the side and get you a little hurt, go for it. But, in your daily life, if you want to feed yourself by just eating good food or taking vitamins, you want to daily - or, at least, twice a week - feed your brain with opportunity to wake up and grow. You want to go slower, and you want to reduce the force, and decide where you're going to do it. You can do it in the gym. You can do it around The Future of Health Now

8 daily movement. You can do it in the way you talk to your children or to your spouse. Very often, when we want something from another human being or we try to change something, we use way too much force. We go too fast and too forceful. As most of us know, what we mostly get is resistance. So, the same principle also works interpersonally because a person you talk to or work with, when you slow down and you reduce the force, they can feel safe. All of a sudden, their brain can start moving things around. Ann Wixon: So our old brain habits can actually impact relationship, and by paying attention to how we move, we maybe able to improve relationship on many different levels. Anat Baniel: Remarkably so. You know how teenagers, you know, the parent approaches a teenager, I certainly have had this experience with my child. I start saying something and she rolls her eyes, and she goes, Here it comes again. She is right. The tone of my voice, the feelings that I have when I say it, how I think, what I'm going to tell her. I mean, I can put a tape recorder and take a vacation. She knows it and she has a completely automated response to me. So, there it goes, back and forth. The radios are talking to one another, you know, the buttons are being punched. But if I slow down, I pay attention to the movement, both of my voice, the formation of my thoughts, I reduce the force. I have a great chance of doing something very different and let me put the force element in there. Ann Wixon: So let's just summarize again, because I've asked you. I interrupted you several times and asked you a lot of questions. So pay attention so the nine essentials for lifelong vitality are pay attention, slow down, reduce the force Anat Baniel: And pay attention to your movement, the movement of your body, the movement of your thoughts, the movement of your emotions. Slow down, you can slow down any one of the dimensions, reduce the force. Then the next one, the fourth one, is variations. Or another way of calling it is mistakes. I'd like to tell you here a little story, if you don t mind. Ann Wixon: Yes, please. Anat Baniel: An example. I was in Europe and a cellist from a very famous quartet came to me because he had very severe pain in his shoulders and his back. He was really afraid he wouldn t be able to play anymore. We just had one session, I was en route, there was very little time, and I watched him play. So I asked him to play, and he was just a fabulous cellist. The music he produced was great, he played a Schubert piece. When I watched him, I could see the rigidity. I mean, he had it down, he's played this way, and there was no freedom for him, except the patterns that he was doing. It worked well for a good number of years, but by now, it was grinding on his joints and on his muscles, and he was in pain. So, there was no time, and he was a very serious guy. I said to him, Can you play for me a children s song? He looked at me and he was like shocked! I said, Like, you know, a little simple children s song. I said, I know you're an amazing cellist, but I need you to play something really simple. He was like stuck, and I said, Do you have any students, little kids you teach? He said, Yes. I said, Do they play music to you? He said, Yes. Could you just take one of those little pieces? So he chose like the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star music. I said, Trust me, just go with me for a minute here. It's just fine. So he played it, and of course, he played it impeccably. He was pretty suspicious of me at that point, but that was a variation. Very few people ask a world class cellist to play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I said to him, Now, that was terrific. I said, Now, play it badly. Ann Wixon: Play it badly? Anat Baniel: Play it badly, and he went like, What? I said, Your little students, they played badly sometimes, right? He said, Yes. I said, Imitate one of them. So he played badly. I said, That was terrific! You played badly really well. Then I started actually moving him around, moving his The Future of Health Now

9 shoulders and his hips a little and stuff, and I said, Don t worry, because of course, when I moved him around, he couldn t control his bows well. I said, Now, play badly a second way. And he got interested. Then, when he did that, I said, The third way, he did that. I said, Play badly yet in another way. He said, Okay, and he did it. I said, Play badly a fifth way, and he couldn t find a fifth way of playing badly. I said, Not a problem. I said, Now, just play, and the pain was gone. Ann Wixon: The pain was gone. Anat Baniel: The pain was gone. The amount of new input to his system, to his brain, was so rich that when he went back to playing, the brain integrated all these little bits and new information, and he played differently, and he was pain-free. Ann Wixon: So you reawaken the flexibility in his brain that he had when he was younger, and was learning to play. Anat Baniel: Exactly. Ann Wixon: So we got four of the nine essentials - pay attention to movement, slow down, reduce the force, variations and make a couple of mistakes, intentionally. Anat Baniel: And gently, you don t want to hurt yourself. But, if you're told that this is the way to hit the ball or this is the way to hold yourself when there's a tangle or this is the right way to hold your fingers when you play the piano. Say, Okay, not a problem. Now, let me try four or five different ways that are not that right way. Then go back to doing it without trying to do it the right way because nobody knows what the right way really is. Go, because it's so complex that any time somebody s told to do, Do it exactly this way, that s the right way to do, it's a recipe for trouble. Either right away, limitation right away, or within a few years, absolute recipe for trouble. The brain needs flexibility, the brain needs to be flooded with new information, and be able to shift things around as we grow and change as the demands change. Ann Wixon: So what would be one, two, three, four, five what would be the fifth essential, please? Anat Baniel: The fifth essential is the learning switch. So think of your brain for a moment, as if it has a light bulb or light switch. The switch can be on and the switch can be off. When the switch is off, you're on automatic a hundred percent of the time, very good switch sometimes. Like when you drive, you want to be mostly on autopilot, right? Then, the learning switch, you can turn the switch on, and all you have to do is to say, I am interested in what I can learn right now. Decide to take five minutes everyday, where no matter where you are. Maybe you're watching a movie, maybe you're talking to a colleague at work, maybe you're doing your yoga lesson. But, at that moment, decide, I'm going to discover something new. I'm going to learn something. I'm going to figure something out in the next five minutes. It can be the simplest thing or you can discover the new biggest thing in the world. I don t care. Look to learn, turn your switch on intentionally. We can actually do that. Everything I said, by the way, is being validated through scientific research, pretty much. The brain does have what they're now discovering, it's either in a learning mode or not in a learning mode. Actually, it's not just a simple off and on, once you turn it on, you can up the volume, up the volume, up the volume. So you can think about somebody like Einstein. We would think, probably, he's learning switch was pretty way up most of the time. So, are you still a learner? And there are different kinds of learning. There's learning like you go and you learn sex, sex about, I don t know, the history of friends or art. Very good, very useful; any learning is useful. However, the kind of learning that is the most powerful and youth-producing learning and health-producing learning is the kind that is a personal learning, it's subjective learning. Your own insights, your own realizations, your own discoveries in relation to yourself and to the world around you. So turn The Future of Health Now

10 on the learning switch. Everyday, become a learner, make everything that happens around you a source of new information for you to figure new things out. Ann Wixon: Won't just doing a crossword puzzle everyday keep my mind on its toes and my brain healthy? Anat Baniel: I'm so happy you ask me this question. [laughs] Doing crossword puzzles is really a good thing, there's no question about it. However, it also can become a habit. If you do crossword puzzles just over and over and over again, and the value gets diminished. You want to move things around, you want to do different things, you want to learn new things. Just doing crossword puzzles alone is one kind of activity, but its benefits, over time, will be limited. However, if you move in your ways while you do crossword puzzles, then your brain will change more. Ann Wixon: So if I'm right handed and I try and do that crossword puzzle with my left hand, then I'm really opening up flexibility in my brain. Anat Baniel: Absolutely. Or, if you stand on one leg, and keep balanced while you do your crossword puzzle, then your brain is really getting into a higher gear. Or if you walk backwards and/or you do crossword puzzle and dance to music at the same time, then your brain is going to wake up. By the way, you will solve your puzzle a lot better and a lot faster. [laughs] Ann Wixon: Good to know. [laughs] Anat Baniel: Yes, absolutely. I tell you, with everything we do, movement, movement, movement and attention, that s like across the board. Ann Wixon: That seems to be the key to keeping the brain younger. Anat Baniel: Yes. The brain. Ann Wixon: So what would be essential number six? Anat Baniel: Essential number six is what I call enthusiasm. That is, enthusiasm as a skill. That means that, you know, we can get excited or happy about things when good things happened, so like if we win something or we get a raise in salary. But, most people have discovered that that has a very short shelf life. But, if you look at this young child, a healthy child, 2-3 years old, and let's say, it draws a picture. It's not really a picture, but scribbles on a page. Then, it runs with this thing that just happened on its page, with all these colors on it, it moves it, it held the crayon, it moved it around on a page, and all of a sudden, it has this scribble. It is thrilled beyond belief, it runs to Mommy, yanks on the skirt, and says, Mommy, Mommy, look! Look at my picture. That's enthusiasm, a child with excitement. But what does the brain do at that moment? The brain is saying, Something important happened here. Pay attention. It creates the connections and selects those connections. That s when the learning happens. You see, the brain gets, you know, excitation gets input, all the time - eyes, ears. We get a lot of it's coming into our brain, but the brain has to select what's good and what's not good. In order to learn, in order to grow, we need enthusiasm. That means the ability to look at something and become enthusiastic because we say so, because we choose to. So, a big place where I work with my people, my students, I tell them, I teach them actually, to get enthusiastic, to amplify small changes. So for instance, when you just did these little movement, exercise with me of turning the head to the right and then comparing it to the left, you can just go like, Oh, yes, okay, all right, and just forget about it. In two minutes, it will have absolutely no effect in your life. Your brain is going to go right back to its old self and it will continue aging happily and readily. The Future of Health Now

11 Or, you can look at it and say, Oh, my God. Here I did three movements or three minutes of a movement and I got such a change, that s incredible. How about I try to do that in other things and let's see what happens? That s the person, that s my student that will come to me a month later or two months later, with tears in her eyes and say, My life has changed. I am pain-free, I found a new job, my relationship is so much better, and I'm ready now to do the trip to the Himalayas I've been waiting to do for the last 20 years. Ann Wixon: So staying cool, calm, and collected, which is what most adults feel they should do as adults, is really aging our brains. Anat Baniel: Killing us, killing us, shortening our life. Just so sad, it's just so sad. Now, why do I use the word enthusiasm and not excitement? A child gets excited, it s out of control. You know, it's a child, it's very young, it is not formed, it doesn t have much control, and it's perfect. It's supposed to be this way. So if you had an adult that every time they see something new, they jump up and down and they scream and they yank on people s clothes and they say, Look at me, look at me, look at me! Maybe that won't be such a good thing. [laughs] Ann Wixon: Well, it would probably be considered a little odd. Anat Baniel: Yes, and people will start avoiding you and maybe However, you can look at it and, at least internally, just get completely thrilled. Let me tell you, my friend, every single one of the people that are close to me in my life, do enthusiasm remarkably well. Because not only does it empower them when they get enthusiastic, it not just lights up their brain, it empowers me, it empowers everybody around them. When I'm enthusiastic about you and for you, about the little change that just occurred for you, I'm empowering you to keep changing, I'm empowering you to keep growing. Ann Wixon: So you can help your whole household with this, everybody in the home, just by being a bit more enthusiastic. Anat Baniel: You can transform your home life. Just imagine, somebody comes home and say, How are you doing? Ah, okay. How was your day? Oh, it really sucked. They had one of those bad days, and you go, I'm so sorry, hon. Then the kid comes home and by the way, the physical metaphor for that is as we age, we start dragging our feet on the ground. We can't even pick them off the floor anymore. Imagine somebody coming home and says, How was your day? and you said, Oh, you know, I had some really serious challenges, but it was so wonderful how my assistant figured out the solution. Now, we're going to have a month of really hard work as a result of what happened. But really, this was just incredible, and I'm sure we can get over this challenge. Can you feel the difference? Ann Wixon: Yes. Anat Baniel: Which person do you want to have around you? Ann Wixon: I would like everybody at home to be that way with me. [laughs] It d be delightful. Anat Baniel: Yes. So that s how, and you train people to do that and you train yourself first. Enthusiasm, the capacity for enthusiasm is probably one of the most important traits of a true leader. You cannot have a leader that slouches around, has negative thinking, and you have to give them lots of good news before they're going to really step up. Ann Wixon: So this is very critical, not only to ourselves, but to helping our children prepare to become leaders. Anat Baniel: Absolutely. Enthusiasm, it's that which comes from the gods. It's like we access godlike powers. Not in terms of becoming a megalomaniac, but in terms of waking ourselves up and The Future of Health Now

12 then allowing the brain to select and discover and give us new possibilities, literally, new possibilities. I haven t mentioned it yet, but I do a lot of work also with children with special needs, and the youngest have worked with five-days old and then, you know, higher up in age. The kind of changes that happens for those children, as we work with them. You know, we have, by now, thousands of hours of video for sessions that I've done and some of my teachers have done. What you see with the small children is that they don t, like so let's say a child had a stroke, in utero, and let's say their left arm is paralyzed. When their arm just starts moving for the first, it's not perfect yet. They don t look at me and say, I'm not. I can't play the piano yet. So I'm still pissed off. The moment they can move more, the moment they can sort their world a little better, the moment they can reach the toe, even if it's far from perfect, they just come to life. They get happy, they do more, they repeat more spontaneously. The adults around them, this is one of the biggest and most challenging things I have to do in my work. I actually train the parents to be fully 100% enthusiastic long before the child is perfect. Ann Wixon: I'm sorry, it's like I can't wait to hear what the other three essentials are, because just this conversation on enthusiasm has made me feel enthusiastic. What are the last three? Anat Baniel: [laughs] Ann Wixon: It has, and it's so simple, but of course. Anat Baniel: I know, that s a part, it is so simple. I've been doing that for so many years, and I really see it worked day in and day out with so many people. It's kind of like, it's so simple that it's elusive to people, they just don t know to create those distinctions. But once you create those distinctions and start practicing them, they really work. I hope you get to interview him, I've ed him and he's so busy, but Dr. Michael Merzenich, I had the great honor and pleasure to meet with him. Now, I've been through him many times and we talk, we have conversations. It has been so wonderful for me to meet him and some of his colleagues and to learn more and more how there is really a backing in the science of neuroplasticity to that which I say to those essentials. Ann Wixon: What are the last three? Anat Baniel: Okay, I'll tell you. Ann Wixon: I can't wait to hear. [laughs] Anat Baniel: I'll tell you, I'll tell you. As you can see, it's not hard to get me to be enthusiastic. [laughs] The next one is flexible goals. Again, goals are very, very important, they organize our life. You want to go get something or do something. You know, I'm going tomorrow to China. I certainly have a whole list of goals of accomplishments I've to do today to get there. Simple goal is not a big deal. So, if you're healthy, no problem, and you say, I'm going to go brush my teeth. You just do it. But when we talk about bigger goals, like wanting to accomplish something bigger or wanting to get a child that had a stroke to be able to move its arm. Or, you want to accomplish something athletic, or you want to learn something more complex or make a little more money or whatever your bigger goal is. A very important part is to know what your goal is, to sort of keep it both in the background and sort of throw it into the future. Almost like you're throwing you re fishing, and you're throwing the bait into the water. Then, you kind of keep the goal just in the periphery and you allow yourself enormous amounts of flexibility in terms of the way you accomplish your goal, the timing of accomplishing your goal, what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like. You leave it very kind of loose. You don t get attached to the way you're going to get there, the time you're going to get there. If you knew how to accomplish your goal now, you would have accomplished it already. The Future of Health Now

13 So when we look to accomplish a goal, we don t know how to accomplish it yet. Bringing in this kind of white space of the unknown, allows your brain, literally, to start using different experiences, bits of information, things you hear, people you meet, events that happened, and movies that you saw, all to fit in, to figure it out, for you how to get there. So you keep at it, you keep working at it, but you don t get rigid, you don t get compulsive. Think about examples like Archimedes trying to figure out how to weigh the gold in the crown, and bring in scientists, and trying again to solve the problem. But he figured it out when he soaked himself in a bathtub. Now, he wouldn t have been able to predict that that s how the solution would arise. So, when we achieve our goal, we can look backwards and see the steps we took and what's said into achieving it. But, when we are ahead of achieving our goal, when we haven t achieved it yet, we had no clue how are we going to exactly get there. When we get rigid about achieving our goal, we very often simply fail. We claim that we fail because we're not talented enough, we're too old, we didn t have enough of this or that. But usually, we fail because we went for the gold too much in a direct line, in a beeline, not allowing for the unexpected and the richness of the world around us, and our internal world/brain figure it out for us. Ann Wixon: So we need to pay attention to the solutions that present themselves instead of deciding in advance what the solutions should look like. Anat Baniel: Exactly. Ann Wixon: All right. So that is number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Anat Baniel: That's it. Ann Wixon: That s seven, what would eight be? Anat Baniel: Eight will be imagination and dreams. Ann Wixon: I love that! Anat Baniel: So, Einstein said, Imagination is the preview of life, life s upcoming attraction. Imagination, your brain doesn t really know the difference between real and imagined, when you imagine very vividly. So, there's research, for instance, that shows that a piano practice, done by imagination, gives as much, and sometimes, could give even more outcome than actual real drill on the piano. I use imagination working with people all the time. I bring in imagination. So, this comes after goals, because one of the things that you do, you can do it with imagination, is you can just create lots of different scenarios in your mind, and then let it go and see what happens. You don t need to get rigid, you can bring a lot of variation in your imagination, and you can really practice stuff. So for instance, when somebody has pain during a movement lesson, I ask them to imagine doing the movement, to do that in their imagination, rather than actually move. So we bypass the pain, and they have a chance to figure out how to do the movement pain-free. That s one, for instance, example use of imagination. The other part is dreams, and I'm talking about dreams. I'm not talking about my dreams, but I'm talking about dreams more like your personal dream, your vision dream. I say, dreams give you your past from your future, show you your past from the future. So, when we have a dream, and I believe that to be healthy, to be young, to be alive, we always have to have a dream. It can be a small dream, or it can be a medium dream, or it can be a huge dream, it doesn t matter. But our brain grows into, moves into, and is guided by our dreams into the future. Ann Wixon: So daydreamers aren t necessarily lazy and unfocused, they're actually helping their brain wake up and be more flexible. The Future of Health Now

14 Anat Baniel: Yes, and you know, Ann, I've been saying for years, daydreaming is one of the best ways to figure out and find solutions, actually sleep dreaming is also. When you try to solve a problem and then you go to sleep, very often the solution will come to you in your sleep. You have to let go and allow the brain freedom to move things about, because if you want something new, something new has to be created. There is actually research that shows, I talked about it in my book, Moving to Light, there is research that shows that daydreamers actually get better outcomes, including physical fitness outcomes, than people who don t use daydreams. Ann Wixon: So perhaps we should all spend minutes a day just daydreaming. Anat Baniel: I think it's amazing, I would love to see in schools, daydream time for children. Not just playtime, daydream time. Waste your time, time. I teach my students to waste their time so they can reach their goals faster. Ann Wixon: I think that sounds fantastic. All right, what is essential number nine? Anat Baniel: You think I'm going to tell you? Ann Wixon: Yes, you must tell me! [laughs] Anat Baniel: [laughs] Essential number nine is awareness. Awareness, again, I speak about awareness as a skill, not as a state of mind. It's not something that you somehow fall into. But actually, it's an active use of your brain, and that s the capacity, it's remarkable, and I believe, it is to the extent that we can do it, the remarkable unique capacity of the human brain to observe itself. That means, I'm talking to you now, knowing I'm talking to you, observing myself, watching my hand move in space while I talk to you, realizing where I sit, knowing how I feel, knowing that I wonder what you're thinking. That means, I can be my own observer. The brain needs an observer to grow, to figure itself out, to form itself, and to thrive. We see that absolutely with small babies, infants, and young children. We know that in orphanages, when children are taken care of, like a basic needs point of view, perfectly but no one is there to observe them, to touch, to connect, to see them, to reflect them to themselves, they are completely devastated and some of them die. The child that comes to you and yanks on your skirts and says, Mommy, Mommy, look at my drawing, is asking to be seen, to be observed. To be seen is a profound, real need that we have as humans, and it gives the brain the ability to figure itself out. Now, when we are young, we really need that from others, we can't do that for ourselves. Children, initially, are not able...they are aware of their feelings and what they sense, but they don t have that capacity to observe themselves as a whole. As they get it, they actually build very quickly. But as we grow older, we feel, when we have a friend or a partner or a teacher by the way, I see one of my biggest responsibilities and roles as a teacher, is to be aware of my students and be their effective observers, so they can become more and more effective observers of themselves and do awareness of themselves more and more. This is the highest use of our brain. It's the slowest function, it's the youngest function of the brain, as I understand it. But, when we apply awareness, we are using our brains to its highest capacity. When we do that, we actually get calmer, we get wiser, we see more, we learn more, and we reach levels that otherwise are absolutely not there for us. Ann Wixon: I'm going to begin working right away on these nine essentials. It sounds like they are definitely things all of us can incorporate into our lives that would have huge benefits for us. Not only in terms of keeping our brain young, but in our work relationships, our personal relationships, and our physical relationships with ourselves. It sounds extraordinary, but I love the way that you've presented it because it's very easy to understand. Anat Baniel: Yes. It's one of those things you say, Yes. I can do that. Ann Wixon: Yes, I can do that. The Future of Health Now