| There is an energetic shift in the air this week. A shift in seasons. A shift in light. Happy Solstice and New Moon! 🌟 Whether you live on the part of the planet Earth that saw the longest or shortest day of the year this week – there are things in your world asking for your attention, asking your senses to notice. Perhaps your attention is drawn to the the temperature, or the light, or maybe something in your community? Human bodies and brains are constantly sorting and learning by noticing differences. Sensing and noticing our environment and changes in it is one the most potent and often unconsciously used tools we use every moment of our lives. We can learn to consciously use it too. Yesterday I was hit with contrast that left me in tears…and grew my heart 💜. I had spent the weekend in total glee. One of my oldest friends and her son had been visiting. We said ‘yes’ to everything and had all the fun – from a pinball museum and games, world cup watching (yes Messi won;-), hikes and delicious lunches. Ending our days watching absurd silly movies. It was an embarrassment of riches for sure. Hours after my friends left, I was hit with the news of a family member in need of support, plus the news of three families with 8 young children who arrived in my area seeking asylum. Big contrast. When the kids were interviewed by social workers and asked what they wanted, they said ‘to eat’. The social worker explained to us that this is a common answer given the hideous journey they just made, but, once they have enough to eat, and eventually when things stabilize a bit, children begin to ask for things like play and an education. Big contrasts. I spent the morning crying, talking with my husband, wondering what to do, how to show up, how to help and what is enough. I did not wish away my fun weekend, but the contrasts between my life and the people I was talking with had my full attention – body and mind. It was undeniable. It was biological. We are wired in our nervous systems, senses, bodies, and brains to notice differences. The brain pays special attention to experiences that are novel or unusual. It tries to automate as much as possible and attend to what is new or unusual. It does this by making comparisons between the new information brought through the senses and existing information stored in our brain’s long-term memory It is easy to imagine why we would notice dangerous situations and have a body and brain that sorted for that. The wiring in the nervous system is in a sense, faster, when it comes to danger and dangerous situations. All animals share this biology. Survival first, pleasure to follow. Recent research in neurobiology, adds information about our ability to compare experiences in the environment based on hormonal differences. Women and girls often have higher levels of estrogen. We also have more receptors in organs and throughout the body for estrogen and oxytocin. These hormones influence the growth of the communication and social centers of the brain making it easier to notice relationships and relational information |
| “Until eight weeks old, every fetal brain looks female-female is nature’s default gender setting. If you were to watch a female and a male brain developing via time-lapse photography, you would see their circuit diagrams being laid down according to the blueprint drafted by both genes and sex hormones.A huge testosterone surge beginning in the eighth week will turn this unisex brain male by killing off some cells in the communication centers and growing more cells in the sex and aggression centers. If the testosterone surge doesn’t happen, the female brain continues to grow unperturbed. The fetal girl’s brain cells sprout more connections in the communication centers and areas that process emotion.How does this fetal fork in the road affect us? For one thing, because of her larger communication center, this girl will grow up to be more talkative than her brother. Men use about seven thousand words per day. Women use about twenty thousand. For another, it defines our innate biological destiny, coloring the lens through which each of us views and engages the world.” – Louanne Brezendine |
| New York Times link |
Sometimes when we start reading the findings of neuroscientists, neuropsychiatrists, it is tempting to draw conclusions about behaviors that have no basis or evidence. We cannot jump from these brain scans and hormone differences to ‘women care more than men’ or some junk about doing math and science. We know that this kind of supposing does not help anyone. However, it also doesn’t help to deny that hormones affect our brain, nervous system and the lens that we engage and experience the world through. Which brings up PLEASURE. Feeling GOOD plays a role in our brain’s ability to seek and notice contrasts. For example – Moms go through hormonal change to carry and grow their babies and feed them after birth. While it is work, they also experience tremendous pleasure and surges of oxytocin when feeding the young, touching them and looking at them. The hormonal surges help them bond with the young & the bonding increases the oxytocin levels. This is also why most humans don’t tend to leave our kids for dead even when they are exhausting us and our resources. The hormones make us feel good enough and happy enough to endure the hardship of caring for them. Survival = pleasure. Pleasure = survival Fathers and Grandfathers CLEARLY experience love, care, and connection too. However, certain hormones, like oxytocin, increase at a different rate. One study began when an anthropologist decided to check oxytocin levels, in both her and her husband, when her grandson was born. They measured oxytocin before, and after they held their grandson the first time and in the days to follow. While the Grandmother’s levels of oxytocin jumped immediately, the Grandfathers took several days, eventually reached the same levels. |
“Lab tests later revealed that Hrdy’s levels of a brain chemical called oxytocin spiked by 63 percent that evening. Her husband’s spit showed a 26 percent jump after his initial meeting, but several days later, it also increased to 63 percent. There was no difference in the end result between me and my husband, it just took him a little more exposure to his grandson to get there,” she says. Now a professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, the esteemed anthropologist has written extensively about the science of human maternity.” |
| National Geographic link |
No matter who you are, and how you identify in the world, you are wired to notice contrast for both pleasure and danger. Thanks to our long dependency as children and the interdependence needed for survival, a desire to connect and care for one another is part of how we navigate both danger and pleasure. We do it together. Care and connection can happen in many forms. I’m indebted to countless people, who are not parents, that have cared for and aided me in my life. I was especially in need of care in the years after my kids were born. Most practitioners who helped me were not parents themselves. Each was able to offer me a tremendous nurturance that I so desperately needed to heal and thrive. I am forever grateful to them. Their support helped me get to a point where I could do more than just what was right in front of me. Because of their care, the scope of what I notice and what I can observe, can grow. I can think about and care for more people than just my immediate family. When I was a child I would watch my Dad write checks for donations at this time of year. I would ask him how he decided how much to give? He said “You have to give enough that you really feel it. It can’t be an easy amount to give. You’ve got to feel it.” It is necessary to take care of ourselves while also creating long standing change in the world. Please listen to yourself, to your heart – our feelings and sensations are not something to endure or get over. Let the tears of joy or sorrow come. They are happening for a reason. Our bodies know something before our rational brains have time to make sense of it all. Decision making and action, not rumination, are the biological drivers you need to work with to keep evolving. We can’t go back in time. We can only take what we have learned, what didn’t work, and bring it to the present moment. Now we can ask, what change can we make here and now so maybe it is different this time? Experiment with action. The action you take can be to help yourself, to help others, to rest, eat, drink, watch movies and sleep. They are all actions. They are all wonderful choices. “Track what your body needs, and what your heart demands, as carefully as you pursue your goals. Material success is worth nothing if your heart and your mind are playing on different teams.” Last night, after the temperature dropped 40 degrees, it snowed. Take care of yourself and your human tribe;-) |
