Tidbits of Serious Knowledge
My son came into the den where I was reading, he was 17 and a contrarian kid.
“If you are so smart, how come I cannot get to sleep at night, without tossing for two-hours?”
You do not have to be a relative of Al Einstein, the physicist, to know parents are the enemy when you are age 17. Now, I believe in cognitive manipulation, changing the mood, in order to maintain a relationship with demented kids and relatives.
I gave it a pregnant pause and asked, “Who is the smartest kid you know?”
“My best friend, Bob Handler, he gets a straight A in everything and has an early acceptance from MIT.”
“OK, call him on the phone and ask him if he gets to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, or spends half the night thinking about getting to sleep.”
“Dad, I thought of that and did it. He has the same problem, and so does the rest of my class.”
“Before I reveal to you the secret of sleeping on demand, you have to agree to follow my algorithm exactly.”
“You always have to show off using a mouthful of vocabulary. What is an algorithm?”
“Do it my way and go to Webster and come back with the answer.”
He scowled, and returned smirking – “Why could you not just say – step-by-step?”
“Funny, if I want something from someone, I do not complain – just shut up and listen. My way or the highway?”
“I am listening. Talk.”
“Step one: awareness and admission that your thinking brain is in control. You gotta first admit to yourself that Self-talk, also known as Stream-of-Consciousness, has you under its power. It is the master and you are the slave. Know where it is located in your brain?”
“It is called Precuneus, the structure responsible for self-consciousness
and visuo-spatial imagery – the pictures on your mental screen. Get it?”
“Will I live long enough to hear the way to instantly fall asleep before I graduate
college?”
“Maybe not. Do you know another name for the Precuneus?”
“Duh –no!”
“It is called your Minds Eye. You have heard that expression, right?”
“Professor, please get to the point – I have a life to live, unlike some people.”
“Get this – what we resist – will persist. Let it roll around in your chimpanzee
mind. Next, what we focus on – expands. Finally, emotion follows imagery.
If you get those steps you win five bucks.”
“Are you saying that what we see in our minds eye creates how we feel?
Wait – thinking causes more thinking – expands, and the harder I try, the worse
it gets – persists.”
“I handed him the fin. And for another buck what is the name of the brain structure
producing your mental-movies and site of self-consciousness?”
He held his hand out – precuneus. “I looked it up in Webster’s; it means wedge-shaped.”
“You just accelerated to Ape brain. The secret of getting to sleep is being aware and
using your breathing. Why? Breathing is part of your non-conscious mind, while
thinking (left-brain) is part of your conscious mind. Even though the self-talk is
mostly involuntary, it uses the specializations of your left-brain, and specifically
your Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas.”
“When you want to get to sleep it requires a shutdown of your left-brain, operating
at Beta brainwaves, 14-30 cycles per second. Sleep starts in Alpha Hertz, 8 to 13 cycles per second, and escalates downward to Delta brainwaves, 0.5-3.5 cycles per second. I am not going to explain dreaming, rapid-eye-movements every 90 minutes – no matter how much you beg me.”
“In your dreams. What do you mean breathing?”
“You must simply count your breaths in order to fall asleep. The countdown of
inhaling and exhaling from one to fifteen gives you relief from the chaotic involuntary self-talk, and forces you to focus on your non-conscious – your right-brain. See, breathing is not under the control of your left-brain; it is part of the vegetative processes of your body like the circulation of your blood, heartbeat and blood pressure. They are run by your Brain Stem and Basal Ganglia, your right-brain, and have nothing to do with your thinking processes.”
“How?”
“You take a deep diaphragmatic breath (inhale), hold it for a count of one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, and s-l-o-w-l-y exhale. Where is
your brain? Focusing on your breathing, and voluntarily keeping count of the number of breaths from one-to-fifteen.”
“That is it – I am asleep?”
“Ninety percent of the time in fifteen breaths, you will be asleep. For the times you are overanxious, stressed by a coming exam, interview or presentation, there is another easy strategy. It is called Look-Link-Snap, some people call it – I am a Camera.”
“Before you start the fifteen breaths and focusing on your non-conscious breathing,
you change your mental-movies from involuntary to taking control. Intentionally choose to imagine a great day at Jones beach. The hot summer sunshine, the slamming of the waves, and the feel of the sand and breezes.”
“Can you picture that in your minds eye right now?”
“Sure. It is easy.”
“Now make believe your eyes are a camera and you are going to snap three pictures of your relaxing day at the beach. First, one of yourself, laying on the white sandy beach, second of the hot sun in the sky, and third, the moving waves of the Atlantic ocean.”
“Easy. I aim my camera by focusing on the scene I want – that is the Look step. Next, I connect the idea of what I see with feeling relaxed and getting sleepy. I figured that out for myself. Finally, I use my eyeballs like a camera lens, and save the picture like on my computer.”
“Perfect, you are truly of the homo sapiens tribe, and deserve another buck.
If you do the Day-at-the-Beach before the breathing countdown, you cover all the bases. Mostly, I go right to the one-to-fifteen breaths, and am in dreamland before
I get to twelve.”
“I gotta try that strategy tonight, he said. It sounds like a fun kind of game. And I can see why it works too. Ya know, maybe you should have gone to medical school and not law school. I bet your sleep strategy helps me when I go to Miami University. Thanks Dad.”
“Last thing, see if you can get the gist of this. Nobody you know understands it, not even Bob Handler. You conscious mind – the left hemisphere which controls your
right side, produces about 40 bits of information per second. Got it? Now, your non-conscious mind and right-brain (the brain stem and basal ganglia), processes 11 million bits of information per second. Some difference, huh?”
“Sure, because it runs the big show including all the senses, muscles, blood flow, heart pumping and breathing. Yeah, but it is surprising because nobody really talks about the non-conscious, we spend our time admiring our thinking mind and its creations.”
That is all there is, kid. Remember it.
See ya.
copyright © 2006
H. Bernard Wechsler
http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
Author of Speed Reading For Professionals, published by Barron's.
Partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of Speed Reading, graduating 2 million,
including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.
Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and Fortune Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment