Confident performance.

Confident performance is required for a fulfilling lifestyle and happiness. Personal confidence is an ever-growing necessity today. Uncertainty, stress and changing economies have caused daily anxieties in large numbers of people.

Professionalism requires confidence. Passion, excitement and admiration for knowledge leads to a professional attitude. Overlapping neural processes in the brain control self-confidence. It is the end result of mental abilities working in harmony to create positive emotional attitudes through the structure of brain maps. Everyone has their own personalized brain map influencing neural networks. These networks set up individualized approaches to life and how it is experienced.

The uncertainty of the world around us produces anxiety and stress and has thrust many into a fearful existence. We sabotage ourselves through stress released in the wrong direction. Negative thoughts gain nothing whereas positive thoughts give us success over distress and disease. Everyone should have a Personal Action Plan for mind/body connection training. Although it is not necessary to fully understand the brain's functioning role in peak performance, it is beneficial to accept that winning performance is more mental than physical.

Performing at our best is a balanced combination of skill, will and emotional arousal. Too much of any of these can cause poor outcome. It is important to realize that we must live in the now. We must cancel the past and not dwell on the future but live in the moment in a positive manner.

Performing at one's best requires many variables which include: Goal Setting--one step at a time. Confidence--self-belief--expectations can make or break a performance. Performance Profiling--pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, then design mental and physical training strategies. Zone Flow--balance between synchrony and relaxation. Emotional Control--pre-performance strategies for anxiety. Thought Control--guard against distraction through focus training. Rehabilitation--healing therapies.

One approach to performance is enhancement of the brain/body connection. The brain can be taught to process and transfer information with lightening speed. Efficient neural cells require less mental energy, thus less mental fatigue leading to distraction. Mental training can enhance efficiency, organization, and focus.

To understand the mind/ body connection we look to current research that points to a brain with tens of millions of different neural networks doing their own assigned task and interconnecting throughout the brain to create a well-honed working mental environment. The brain is divided into these main sections:

1. Back brain--needed for survival and automatic functions like breathing and heart rate. It acts very fast when its needs are not met. This is the seat of stress responses when things go wrong. It is the fight/flight response area that many utilize quickly after one poor response. Another necessary system is the Reticular Activating System located at the top of the brain stem. This system filters incoming signals and screens out all non-important data. When the brain is relaxed it opens the switch to higher brain function for focus. It is essential for full awareness and learning recall such as motor memory. It sends a message to the cerebellum that then carries out skilled, complicated movements and routine motor functions.

2. The "mind brain"--is the seat of emotion. This limbic brain is seated in the Theta brain-wave area and can render a person highly distractible and determines the intensity of the stress response. It houses different parts:

The Thalamus--monitor of all sensory information, interprets pain, temperature and kinesthetic awareness. It takes information about what is happening outside the body and filters it to the amygdala.

The Amygdala--regulates emotions, fight/flight responses and long-term memory.

The Hippocampus--transfers short term memory into long-term recall.

The Hypothalamus--controls body temperature, blood pressure. Tells our brain what is happening in our body and makes necessary adjustments. It can generate emotions that are regulated and controlled logically.

The Pituitary Gland--Releases stress hormones when we fail to respond rationally to a stressor.

The Pineal Gland--biological time clock regulating day and night cycles. It is activated by light.

The Basal Ganglion--connects fine motor functions for the cerebral motor cortex and mates it with gross motor movement. It is the key to intentional conscious action.

3. The cerebral cortex is involved with reason and insight. It interprets all of our senses allowing us to form complex memories, to reason, understand symbols and make decisions. It is made up of left and right brain halves. Information must flow across the bridge, the corpus callosum, from one side to the other. If stress occurs and is not readily processed the brain reverts to a dominant brain organizational profile. The big picture is cut off and the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing, this causes disorganization and loss of focus.

EXERCISES

1. Focus Dimension or "Where am I"--To precheck focus dimension, have someone gently push the person forward with a pressure on their back, then backward with a gentle pressure on your shoulders. Notice if they seem fully balanced and grounded.

2. Coordination dimensions or connecting the top and bottom of the brain for emotional stamina.--Stand with knees slightly bent and push the person gently down on their shoulders to see if they can remain erect.

3. Checking coordination of left and right brain together for communicating, reading and writing.--Have someone exert a gentle pressure first to one side, then the other side, to see if the subject can remain firmly upright. This signifies that sensory information/kinesthetic sense is shared equally by both brain hemispheres.

The body-to-brain communication network must be a simultaneously flowing network. The body posture shifts the mind from one emotional state to another. Research reports that body posture alters the temperature of the brain thus altering the speed of chemical body reactive emotion and outlook. Body movement deeply enhances the manufacture, balance and transportation of informational substances and flow of energy in the body. Movement activates endorphin production. Slow lateral movement stimulates the dopamine flow affecting the ability to see and learn patterns. Movement of the core gross muscles stimulates the Reticular Activating System, the wake up alarm for the brain to understand sensory information.

The confident performance issue cannot be ended without discussing vision. The brain must deal with simultaneous signals from both eyes, each one seeing differently. The visual cortex must process this information to integrate the message for each eye. When it works we have a heightened visual perception of the world. If there is imbalance the eyes switch on and off competing for dominance in the overlap area. The left eye feeds most information into the right brain hemisphere and the right eye feeds into the left.

Another highly necessary body/brain connection is hearing. To really utilize our hearing mechanisms, we must activate our sensory organs and pathways to connect to motor language, logic and memory circuits. Although 80% of one ear feeds into the appropriate brain hemisphere over the corpus callosum, sharing is the key. Filtering out extraneous noises determines what is important. Stress keeps the brain in survival mode, analyzing all sounds, constantly on alert for danger. In this, our awareness is split and total concentration by higher cortical activity is impossible. Tension in the neck can impair hearing. Keep the neck loose and stress free with short massage breaks keeping both ears activated for auditory processing.

When under stress, energy for the brain areas of higher function are blocked, communication between the left and right hemispheres breaks down and the eyes and ears shut down. At this point the survival state is activated and everything is hard to accomplish because communication between hemispheres is slowed or stopped.

There are tens of millions of differing neural connections to the brain. Each has a task. All these tasks merge to create a complete cognitive mechanism. Since all lobes of the brain are interconnected, none stands alone and each compensates for the others.

When we are functioning at our best, we receive clear and concise messages from all parts of our body to the brain, and then back to the body in a loop. The brain and body functions well together, sending and receiving messages while keeping the entire organism in a good state of calm learning and well connected for winning at whatever is presented.

[c] Rayma Ditson-Sommer 2005. Used by permission.

Dr. Sommer will present a 2-day Family Facilitator Training at the 19th Annual IMDHA Conference, Oct. 20-25, 2005 [e-mail]