If you've read my first book, Your Right to Be Beautiful, you know
my story...During my first hip replacement operation, the surgeons
lengthened my shorter leg. I was really looking forward to walking
without a cane and without a limp. But to my great disappointment,
after endless hours of physical therapy, I was still limping. I
started going to the gym daily. Three years later...still limping.
Seeing me struggling through the whole ordeal, my husband Nick was
also concerned. As if it were something I could control and
was somehow unwilling to do, he'd say to me, "Your legs are the
same length now. Why are you still limping?"
It was a good question, worthy of scientific attention: Why on
earth was I still limping, if I no longer had pain nor visible
shortage in leg length?
For the same reason an experienced personal trainer can identify a
thin person who previously used to be overweight. The person simply
moves and acts as if he is still carrying loads of pounds around.
The person's 'body language' is that of an overweight person--legs
slightly apart, shoulders forward, the walk ponderous.
On a road map, any given point on the map corresponds to some
location in the real world, and vice versa. Scientists have
discovered that a similar correspondence exists between your brain
and your body. Your brain contains a map for your body. To learn more check my article Body Mapping: Let Your Mind Help Your Body
Your brain's map reflects your body awareness and more... It also
includes beliefs you have about your body. Beliefs are created and
stored in the cells of your brain. Beliefs are held in brain
circuits and are as tangible as the brain itself. They are embedded
in the physical interconnections between neurons. Your
understanding of reality is constructed in large part according to
your expectations and beliefs, which are based on all your past
experiences.
Just as we defend our religious and political beliefs,
subconsciously we are headstrong about the beliefs we have about
our own body. In my case, as well as in that of an overweight
person who has become thin, the brain holds an old map for a new
body. It's like driving from Chicago to L.A. using a forty year-old
map--Route 66 is marked there, and still exists. Sort of. But
glaringly missing are the fast new interstate highways.
My legs were the same length, but I was still limping because of a
gaping mismatch between what was stored in the brain as past
experience--I'd had a shorter leg for 40 years--and my new,
surgically altered leg. And as this example demonstrates, my brain
was having its way. It always does. I was still limping.
Beliefs are immensely powerful. They can make you healthy and
youthful. Or they can make you old and sick. Beliefs can even kill.
Cases where a person put under a curse actually sickens and dies
offer an extreme form of evidence for this: It's not the curse
which has effect--but the belief.
Let us translate this to our raw food lifestyle. As a result of
your raw food diet your body is changing, but your brain may be
holding on tight to your previous body image. Thus you might still
behave as if you are sick, tired and unattractive.
One way to help this situation is to work on your body and on your
body's awareness of itself. It so happens that yoga practice does
just that. When practicing yoga postures, you are participating in
self-exploration. And you are getting your brain's maps
recalibrated to reflect your body's physical changes.
If you have some kind of body trauma it is especially beneficial to
practice yoga poses in a heated room. Such practice is called
Bikram yoga: series of 26 yoga postures that originally was
designed to heal Bikram's knee. For more information visit:
www.bikramyoga.com
The brain reorganizes massively after an injury. The more time is
allowed to elapse while passively letting injury to affect you not
only physically, but mentally, the more ad hoc mapping of the body
is created in one's brain and the more the body would hold on to
its limitations.
A dear friend--call her 'June'--has some shoulder and ankle aches.
She keeps telling me she will start practicing hot yoga once these
areas heal. This is a mistake. Not only would June's healing be
speeded by Bikram yoga practice, but even more importantly, her
brain should not be allowed to dwell on disabilities by creating
distorted maps that will in turn affect her body in a negative way.
Rather than delay, get to the problem right away.
Another way to change your brain's maps is imagery practice. Alvaro
Pascual-Leone, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School,
discovered that motor imagery practice led to nearly the same level
of body map reorganization as did physical practice. Do you know
you can gain good muscles by lifting very light weights, very
slowly, with many repetitions while pretending they are 50 or 100
pounds?
This year my husband and I will celebrate our 30th wedding
anniversary. We are planning a trip to our home town in Moldova. My
mom always blamed herself for my disability. She has not seen me
for ten years since my surgeries. It is of a paramount importance
to me not to limp when we meet. I have to imagine myself walking
straight again and again before it can really happen. I want her to
see me whole. It has taken a lot of hot yoga and imagining to
reorganize the body maps in my brain to allow me to walk evenly. I
think she will be very happy.
Now think about the beliefs we have about aging. Everyone is
expected to get decrepit and die. These beliefs are etched in your
brain by society. You can be sure they are there. It is crucial to
convince your mind that you are not getting old and feeble. It is
in your power to change your beliefs that would make the present
limitations of your body obsolete.
In my new book Raw Food and Hot Yoga I develop this topic further
and give you a poem--a decree, if you wish--to help you to create new
beliefs. Suggestion...memorize it and repeat it faithfully every
night just before falling asleep. Do not ignore this powerful
technique. Mark this: You are not getting healthier, more youthful,
and more attractive, unless your brain says so.
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Beautiful On Raw Newsletter (May 2009)