| If you are in good health, you're balanced. If you are | | | | research shows three major parts to the human |
| sick, you've lost some balance, temporarily I | | | | brain: reptile, limbic, and neo-cortex. We use our |
| hope.Hang with me here.Picture yourself swinging | | | | reptile brain whenever we feel our survival |
| between Yang and Yin over a precipice. When you | | | | threatened. (Explains continual warfare.) The limbic |
| stop swinging you see a ledge. You stand on it, | | | | system, our midbrain or early mammalian brain, stores |
| safely.Now, if you're unfamiliar with Eastern medicine, | | | | our emotions. We use the neo-cortex for thinking, |
| consider the Aristotelian Mean. Aristotle advocated | | | | forward planning and problem solving. All three brains |
| following a path between two extremes. If you | | | | are interdependent and function together. The |
| swing too far in either direction you are apt to get | | | | neo-cortex houses the right and left brain. When |
| sick.Since I have skimmed the surface of Eastern | | | | either of these is too far out of balance we |
| Philosophy, Aristotle, Stephen Hawkings' string theory, | | | | suffer.You may know, slightly, an accountant or |
| brain research, religions, meditation, and Western | | | | computer programmer who is so left-brained he is |
| medical science, I am no authority, but I can show | | | | practically a hermit. Or you may know an artist who |
| you how they relate to good health.First, Yang refers | | | | is so right-brained he forgets to pay his rent and is |
| to the masculine, left-brained energy in everyone and | | | | often in some kind of trouble.I think most physicists |
| Yin the right-brained, feminine energy. When these | | | | use all three brains in balance. I may be |
| two are out of balance, things go awry. Acupuncture | | | | wrong.Experiments with meditation have shown |
| is the medical practice of releasing blocked flow of | | | | some amazing results. Dr. Richard Davidson of the |
| energy to regain balance and good health. Obviously, | | | | W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging |
| it works.String theory, I think, says everything in the | | | | and Behavior studied the brain waves of some |
| universe consists of strings of energy. Nothing is solid. | | | | Tibetan Buddhist monks, including the Dalai Lama. |
| (Phew, wish I could understand physics!)Brain | | | | |