The Neural Rain Forest

Categories: Blog May 11, 2016

You really were made to move and moving really does keep you healthy. It especially keeps your nervous system healthy. I am going to oversimplify how moving builds the health of your nervous system and what that means to your ability to enjoy and live life, OK?

When you make a movement for the first time, or when you learn a new skill, you create a neural pathway for that movement or skill. You grow "branches" on the neurons in your brain that transmit the signals of this movement. The more you repeat or practice this movement, the stronger these branches grow and the more efficiently (faster, stronger) they receive information.

The more branches you grow and strengthen, the more potential you have to move and express your body in new ways. Think of it as mastering the basics, or the "bigs." When we become good and efficient at making and owning big, basic movements like crawling or walking, we have many strong branches on our neurons and we have very healthy and strong neural pathways transmitting and receiving information. All these branches and pathways afford us the ability to now learn and develop skills, or the "smalls."

For example, if you own the ability to walk, your ability to learn how to perform a new skill like the Olympic Snatch is going to be easier to acquire than it would if you didn't really walk all that well - the way you are intended to walk. Remember, people "walk" all the time, but they aren't necessarily walking the way they were designed to walk.

Anyway, when you own the basic movements and you've established a plethora of neural pathways due to all the branches you create from moving, your potential or ability level is greatly increased. You have a healthy nervous system and your body can move and be as it was designed to move and be. You can learn new things more easily and you can become very good at many things.

Conversely, if you don't move a lot, your branches don't have any information to receive and they start to weaken and even erode away. Lack of movement makes the "neural rain forest" turn into the "neural desert." Yes, movement is the rain that keeps your neural branches, trees and roots healthy. The less you move, the weaker your neural connections and the fewer you have. This can lead to no even being able to master the basics, the big movements, that you should downright own. This can lead to not only having a difficult time learning or acquiring new physical skills, but it can lead to difficulty in holding your head up properly, standing tall with strength, or even moving well enough to prevent injury from simple things like tripping over a curb. We all trip, but we are not all supposed to fall.

The more you move, the better and stronger your nervous system is; ESPECIALLY if you move often on a solid foundation of the basics like breathing properly, having good head control, rolling well, rocking, crawling and/or walking. The stronger your nervous system is, the stronger you are - globally. All of you, everything and every system in your body, is affected by the health of your nervous system. Your nervous system is affected by how you move. So build and grow your branches and build a neural rain forest.

It is an oversimplification. But don't miss it. You have a great deal of say when it comes to your health and your ability to live this life.

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