{"id":4207,"date":"2019-04-05T10:04:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T16:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manyvoices.soundstrue.com\/?p=4207"},"modified":"2020-04-07T17:47:10","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T17:47:10","slug":"resilience-applying-brain-change-to-cope-with-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/blog\/resilience-applying-brain-change-to-cope-with-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Resilience: Applying Brain Change to Cope with Life\u2019s Challenges More Skillfully"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Resilience<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. \u2013 Jon Kabat-Zinn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience is our capacities innate in the brain to cope skillfully with both everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters. Resilience is foundational to our well-being, to a sense of safety and ease in our world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And because these capacities are innate in the brain, hardwired in by evolution and developed and strengthened by experience, resilience is fundamentally learnable and trainable. We can develop the neural pathways in our brains that allow us to cope with anything, anything at all, and to learn that we can<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience is more than any one particular trait like grit or perseverance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress.<\/em>
        – American Psychological Association<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This process<\/em> relies on the neuroplasticity of the brain\u2014also innate, fortunately also lifelong\u2014to grow new neurons, connect those neurons in new pathways, to create new circuitry that can reliable support new patterns of response to life\u2019s stressors, whether:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

       \tBarely a wobble<\/strong> \u2013 we misplace our car keys and wallet two minutes before we have to dash out the door to go to work, but find them on the kitchen counter and we can re-center ourselves again fairly quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Glitches and heartaches<\/strong> \u2013 the more serious sorrows and struggles that break our hearts and sometimes our spirits\u2014we or someone we love loses a job, or loses a relationship, or loses a home, or loses health, or loses hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Too much<\/strong> \u2013 experiencing overwhelm when too many crises pile on top of each other\u2014we get a diagnosis of lung cancer the same day a pipe bursts and the kitchen gets flooded, the same week we\u2019re having to place an aging parent in a nursing home. We can feel like we\u2019re drowning and about to go under, resilience completely derailed, at least temporarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter what level of disruption to our well-being, we can learn how the brain develops new pathways of resilience<\/strong>, and even rewires old pathways when our habitual patterns of coping no longer work so well. And because we can<\/em> learn, because we can<\/em> choose the experiences that will strengthen those circuits of resilience in the brain, we have a responsibility to ourselves and the people we care about to learn to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mishaps are like knives, that either cut us or serve us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.<\/em>
        – James Russell Lowell<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We strengthen our resilience by strengthening capacities of five different \u201cintelligences\u201d in the brain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Somatic intelligence<\/strong>: using body-based tools of breath, touch, movement, and visualization to restore the baseline physiological equilibrium of the nervous system, the brain\u2019s range of resilience<\/em> that primes the neuroplasticity of the brain for learning and growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n