Hey everyone, my name is Rosie and I'm one of the new hosts of Radio Headspace.

I'm an author and a yoga meditation teacher and my new episodes are debuting February of next year.

I can't wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, I'd like to let you know about a new show from Headspace Studios called Dear Headspace.

It's a call and advice show where Headspace teachers answer questions each week about anything and everything.

We talk about family, relationships, mindfulness and so much more.

You can find Dear Headspace on the Headspace app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening.

Hi, I'm Sam and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday morning.

So for a while I trained in neurofeedback as a technician at this great place called the Peak Brain Institute.

And they offer neurological assessments and then they use things like neurofeedback to help retrain the brain.

And it was absolutely fascinating. Everything seemed like magic to me.

Clients would come in with pretty serious issues like not being able to make eye contact or speak and after a few months they were able to express themselves clearly.

The neuroscientist I worked with for years would always say that the brain was a dumb organ and this always caught me off-card.

After some time I finally realized what he meant by this.

The brain is highly trainable and we can condition it using the same methodology that we use when training dogs.

If the brain receives a reward for a certain pattern of activity it will continue to do it and when there's no reward that same activity decreases.

And this made me think about what we're actually seeking from meditation.

We spend minutes and hours sitting still observing our thoughts and feelings with the strong urge to eradicate our thoughts so that we can get to a state of ease.

But what we find over time is that the thoughts quiet down on their own.

We can let go of trying to get rid of our thoughts and the busyness of our minds and just watch as they get quieter when we practice.

I remember going to see an acupuncturist for some anxiety I was feeling during a transition in my life.

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