I've been thinking a lot about the different ways humans think.
There's that pre-frontal cortex work, the stream of consciousness constantly nattering away.
There's the subconscious work, a difficult to penetrate realm of intuition and heuristics.
What I've been think about though, is the lizard brain.
The “lizard brain” is a framework of ancient neural circuitry that developed early in vertebrates evolution.
In other words: if your consciousness is like the slick desktop of your computer, the lizard brain is the old school text terminal.
And just like you can still access that terminal on your computer, you can still access your lizard brain.
Those components of the “cognitive framework”- the pre-frontal cortex, subconscious, and lizard brain- they are not really separate things. They all work together and are all dependent on each other to work.
Which reveals a question: Where does the brain end?
If you have neural circuits that require the spine to work, then your brain includes your spine.
For your spine to work it needs connections to the organs, so your brain includes your organs.
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There is evidence your stomach has actual neurons- its own separate brain. Consider that next time you have a gut feeling about something.
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Point is, the body is the brain, the brain is the body. Separation of its parts is nothing more than a categorization game.
The deeper point is that synchronicity between all the parts of your body-brain is the path to good health.
Qigong (”Chee-Gong”, loosely translates to “Energy Work”) is a method of body-brain synchronicity.
There are many methods, but my discovery of “Dragon” came through this method.
<aside> 🐉
When I say Dragon, I mean the spirit animal. As in, the spirit of the animal.
It's a cleaner metaphor when the animal exists, like in Crane Stands Tall or Tiger Is Heavy.
That Dragon's don't exist won't stop me. In many ways, that in one of Dragon’s lessons.
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Anyways, the qigong exercise is physically simple: Standing naturally, hands hovering comfortably at solar plexus height. You take one hand, and slowly arc it behind you, allowing your body to rotate naturally as your arm completes a circle back to the starting solar plexus position.
But qigong is a body-brain practice.