Tag Archives: Body Mapping

Chinese meditation IBMT prompts double positive punch in brain white matter (eh?)

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This interesting observation from the University of Oregon means something like this:

Scientists studying the Chinese mindfulness meditation known as integrative body-mind training (IBMT) say they’ve confirmed and expanded their findings on changes in structural efficiency of white matter in the brain that can be related to positive behavioral changes in subjects practicing the technique regularly for a month.

So this might be a good way to reprogram me those bad habits and possibly even Focal Dystonia, as it seems that real physical changes happen in the brain’s white matter.
As you can see from this brief explanation of IBMT, there is much overlap with Body Mapping.
There are measurable increases in axon density and myelin formation after 11 weeks of meditation.
Neural plasticity change is the key here. It is a term that refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses which are due to changes in behavior, environment and neural processes, as well as changes resulting from bodily injury. So the brain is no longer seen as a static object.

Read all about it here

The Poised Guitarist

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My first experience of mapping was failing to connect with a bar stool which wasn’t where I thought it was. Many of us have a misconception of how our joints connect and where an action starts from. The Alexander teacher Barbara Conable has done extensive research and written books on the subject of body mapping.

A while ago I wrote an article about focal dystonia and mentioned Jerald Harscher, a guitarist and teacher with whom I had an enlightening session on Skype (even though I was beginning to feel self conscious about the spelling of my name when talking to him.)