Resting Brain Rate
From time to time, Myrth’s founder and CEO, Emma McLaren, will pop in with a personal post. Today, she’s talking about her experiences in building a more elastic and resilient brain.
Can you turn it off? Or at least down? Your brain, I mean.
By the age of 15, most of us have learned about our resting heart rate. You get tested in gym class after running around and learn the significance of your heart going from a really high rate to a really low one. As you get older, that heart rate is an indication of health and vigour, where a low resting heart rate generally means you are in good shape. If you can bring your heart rate down after an active workout, and then you run idle at a low gear you are in good shape.
Well, what about the brain? I think about this when my mind is buzzing and all my ideas and thoughts are whirling in my head. The brain is running in high gear. Can I turn it off or can I turn it down?
I wasn’t able to do this until I started meditating. I’ve talked here before about my struggles to get meditation into my daily routine and how I’ve triumphed in my present season. I won’t go into how I did that or whether or not you agree that meditation is key to health and wellbeing - there are ample examples in articles like this one that explains that hundreds of successful folks meditate regularly. What I will talk about here is your resting brain rate.
Similar to the resting heart rate, your resting brain rate should be in a low gear. As with the heart, it’s a sign of wellbeing if you can bring your brain back down after a vigorous “workout.”
You will have undoubtedly experienced the negative side of this for yourself or seen it in others. It’ll look like being unable to come down from high gear, a state of being constantly wired, an inability to turn off the non-stop chattering monkey brain. It can feel overwhelming, stressful, and chaotic.
Now some meditation practitioners will argue that the point of meditation is not to turn the monkey brain off - that’s impossible apparently - but to observe and be aware of it. I agree with this for the most part, but what they don’t talk about is how that changes the pace of thoughts. It’s kinda like in a big movie where they slow everything down in a fight scene as you observe the various moves. The practice of awareness and mindfulness slows the brain.
There is another unintended consequence of this as well. It’s something that I now observe, but it took me a while after regular meditation to get into my life. See, even when I am not actively, intentionally meditating, my resting brain rate is low. I can get down to slow and relaxed pretty quickly these days. I can be go-go-go and running my brain off, and then take a deep breath and a figurative step back, and then my thoughts slow down and my mind goes as blank as it can. It’s an awesome experience.
And just like with the heart rate, it gives my brain time to recoup and rest for the next burst. Instead of running the engine at full steam the whole time I can conserve energy for when it’s next needed.
Now, I haven’t talked about this widely, and I’d be super curious what other people think of this idea and whether or not those who either do or do not meditate regularly can relate. I have a suspicion, though, that it’s a pretty common experience. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve experienced it, too.
Has meditation or another intentional practice helped you slow your resting brain rate? Drop us a note in the comments and let’s talk about it.
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