Category: Ask An Expert

Honestly, if you are feeling a bit down on yourself, struggling with your horse, or finding that the Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee is speaking to you today with particular ferocity, the best antidote I can provide you with is to learn a bit more about what actually makes you tick. And I mean that literally.

Let’s talk about your brain for a moment.

Your brain has a series of maps that are dedicated to a specific set of functions. You have a map for more tangible things, like the position of your bones and your organs, and you have maps for more abstract things, like language, or specific skills, like riding your horse.

To keep it simple, a brain map is a network of neural connections in the brain that are dedicated to a particular function. Scientists used to think that each map or location was fixed and that if that area remained unused or got damaged it simply withered away but the reality is this is very far from the case. In fact, the nerves and neural networks of your brain go out of their way to make themselves useful. So, if you aren’t using them for the purpose that they are designed, they simply… find another job. They go to another part of the brain where they CAN be used, or at least help support the part of your brain that is serving a particular function or purpose.

It’s because of this that some brain maps get bigger (we are simply paying more attention to them and using them more) and some get smaller (for the opposite reason).

This phenomenon actually has a proper, grown-up name. It’s called Competitive Plasticity. It’s the reason that if we have a break from riding and come back to it, it might feel like we’ve lost our edge. And it’s also the reason why the art and process of becoming proficient at a new movement or skill is more about unlearning than anything else.

Let’s break both of those down…

In the case of having a break:

If you stop riding for a while (which essentially is exercising a certain skill), the brain map dedicated to that particular function gets handed over to something else. It’s not that you’ve forgotten how to do it as such. It’s more that your brain is very functional, and uses that brain map real estate for something that you are currently using more.

The question of “how often do I need to ride to keep things ticking over in the same way?” is essentially asking “how often do I need to ride for my brain to preserve its current brain map dedicated to riding before it gives it to something else?

If you or your horse is “rusty”, you’re looking at a brain map change.

In the case of learning a new skill:

In many cases, we think of learning as dropping new bits of information into a container, but it’s moreso about adjusting brain maps. The information that you hold onto and value currently takes up a certain real estate in your brain, and in order to learn something new, we have to be willing to let something go. I don’t mean this metaphorically- it’s very literal. You have to be willing to hand over a part of your brain map to something new, which means letting go of the real estate it currently takes up.

That’s why learning is as much, if not more, about un-learning. The maps that are currently dominant need to move aside to let something else take root.

How amazing, and fascinating, is your brain.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

{This week, I asked my JoyRide members if they had any questions or thoughts they would like me to share in my daily posts. My musings this week are based on what they presented & the inspiration they provided.}

“Can you talk about raising kids & helping them to develop a healthy way to deal with emotions from day one?”

In my opinion, raising healthy kids has everything to do with taking care of your own nervous system & emotional health. I really believe that’s the biggest service that you can provide for your children.

This is the trajectory that I consider:

Each child is gifted with their mother’s nervous system. The experience of a natural birth provides a reset of sorts as the pressure & squeezing of the birth canal provides enough stimulus to give the system a reboot.

From there, as my child grows & develops, they are mimicking, copying my motor patterns; the way I hold my body, the way I walk, my gestures, my responses. If I understand that every motor pattern has its own emotional imprint, I can see that as a child bases its physical patterns on mine, they also “inherit” my emotional patterns.

Our children then not only base their own systems on ours, as the process of unconscious development unfolds, but they react to ours also. So as we both move through our lives together, the more, as a mother, I can understand myself; the more I can move myself into a mode of parasympathetic dominance, the greater influence I will be. The more stabilising, the better model, the healthier presence.

So if something is presenting that I find upsetting or challenging, the liberation exists in being able to identify myself as the change agent. & within that, I have to unravel any survival patterning that lives within the people-pleasing realm, or sets up a victim/rescuer dynamic so that I don’t play the part of seeking to “fix” someone or something else; I empower myself, & in that process, I empower others.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

{NB: I recognize that childbirth & raising are loaded issues. I have mentioned natural birth here from the standpoint of the physiological effect it has on the nervous system; my opinion is that any birth that results in the safe delivery of the baby & the health of mum is the best one. There are also some specific factors that sit differently in this discussion, so please take this as a general overview. & what’s more, the plasticity of our brain & the way our nervous system is wired means that nothing is fixed; everything & everyone is changeable at each & every point).

As someone with an active and enquiring mind, an important part of my day involves feeding myself in ways that satisfy my intellectual curiosity. When it comes to navigating stress cycles, we hear a lot about the importance of movement and exercise, but less so about the energy created (and stored) by the build-up of mental energy that isn’t channeled to productive purpose.

Searching minds who love to learn need outlets to direct their energy too. Without them, the residual energy builds in the same way that it does in a body that needs to move and finds it can’t, and then… it mutates.

If you are frustrated, anxious, feeling out of sorts, as part of a holistic process of enquiry, I would ask if you are tending to your “thinking needs” in the way that they need to be tended to? Do you have an outlet for your energies, for self-expression and for creativity?

What I’m speaking of here is very separate to the compulsion to keep busy. Instead, it’s the recognition that for those of us who love to learn and seek and question, the energy that presents is very real and needs to be tended to as such.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane