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Your Brain Needs a Break
This is an interesting recent article in the New York Times about the brain’s need for downtime.
Many of us now fill all those small moments waiting…
- For an elevator
- On line in the supermarket
- On a bus or subway
- Integrate learning
- Remember information
- Have new ideas
…with activities on our smartphones. The article suggests that the absence of all those small amounts of time “doing nothing” deprive the brain of the chance to…Hmmm. Something to think about. I know one of the things many of my clients like about their neurofeedback sessions is that there’s nothing for them to do but sit in the chair. With NeurOptimal® neurofeedback, clients listen to music that gives their brains feedback that it uses to become more resilient, flexible and stable. For more about this, visit the What to Expect page of my website.
If you find it hard to conceive of leaving those moments… empty… there’s probably a reason. You might be distracting yourself from anxiety, for example. Or we may all be rewiring our brains to think we need to be always occupied.
I love my smartphone, so I also understand the appeal. One of the things neurofeedback has helped me with is keeping balance in my life – including having my goodie-filled phone and giving my brain downtime. And I get feedback from my clients that they are more able to make good choices for themselves about all those activities and substances that can be addictive.
Please post comments here or email me.
Catherine Boyer, MA, LCSW-R
New York Neurofeedback
“Multitasking” is largely an illusion. The brain is designed to focus on just one problem at a time. When you split your attention between multiple tasks, your performance at each one suffers immensely. It’s a bit like putting in a full workday on just four hours of sleep.