The Bottom-Up Brain Changes The Game of Mental Health

How we perceive and experience our inner and outer worlds; is both Top Down and Bottom Up.

Your mind changes your body and vice-versa.

The Top Down Approach

You hear a loud noise. Your sympathetic nervous system springs into action. You tense up, ready.

You scan the room and realise that it was just your steel flask clanging on the floor.

Telling yourself this changes your fear and psychobiological state (the hormonal, chemical and physical milieu of your mind-body in that moment).

This is done in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

You reappraise a stimuli cognitively using language.

It Has Limitations

Our garden variety emotional life is mostly non-verbal and unconscious.

We have neither the awareness nor the time to reappraise each stimuli.

Thankfully, it’s not the only option.

The Bottom Up Way

Change what happens in the body and the brain -thoughts, beliefs, emotions - changes automatically.

Try this: Dance for 5 minutes right now.

Don’t you feel different? Is your emotional state the same as before?

Whatever changed, moved wordlessly.

Your body just changed your brain!

It’s Far Easier to Tweak Things From The Bottom Up

• It’s quick
• Intuitive and effortless
• Accessible universally - irrespective of education or life-circumstance
• Accommodates varying bio temperaments and predispositions

Why is it better?

Most of the time, you aren’t aware of the cause of your distress.

You can’t reappraise what you don’t know.

But you can rework your experience.

There are many ways to do this.

I’ll talk about them in coming essays : )