Have any of your personal mental gymnastics ever really changed your life? How much have your plans ever really changed your life? Who you perceive yourself to be? Improved your enjoyment of life? Have you really fixed anything in your life through your problem solving efforts?

It’s more about status quo. Is that everyone’s experience?

You have changed things in your life, I’m certain. You have solved problems. We all have, but perhaps it was from your not-a-problem decisions? When you stepped back from a frustrating train of thought and allowed your semantic mind to readjust, just let your body/muscle memory return you to centre, maybe even let yourself go on idle for a while, that the answer to your problem occurred to you? You imagine doing something that if someone else suggested it would have made you say “I never would have thought of that!”

Your semantic mind actually does reason in an intuitive way. In a much more holistic way than your rational mind. The thalamus has more connections to every other part of your brain and thus every other faculty and vastly more memory, than your rational mind / frontal lobe does. Your frontal lobe is really, at least to begin with, a very well trained monkey, dancing to the organ grinder of your environment. It looks for all the little cues to signal opportunities for the expected rewards. It’s very poor at anything creative or innovative.

Does the thalamus have a particular preference to behaviour? I mean.. Is there anything I can consciously do to invoke change as a non-problem action? It does. It prefers natural rhythms and anything that supports and strengthens that. In cases where the brain is severely challenged, this often manifests as rocking or humming or rhythmic patting of the body.

Do you think this is why feng shui works for people? I do indeed, but music works, light patterns, like the shimmer of light off of a calm lake, even the feel of wind on your skin. Also anything that’s exceptionally demanding of your body/sensory awareness. Demanding exercise, as long as it’s not painful, anything that creates a flow state, keeps you engaged without making you lapse into “problems solving.” Sex can do it, intense meditation once you get there, deeply familiar kata practice if you pursue the martial arts, drumming. It doesn’t have to be artistically skilled.

Tai chi maybe. Oh, indeed. Tai chi can do it. Perhaps one of the strangest examples is babble.

What is babble? When you engage in what they call echolalia, vocalization without structure. If your brain is engaged in vocalization without trying to interpret it, that will trigger the thalamus.

I have echolalia conversations with my younger boy. Yes, and it’s very stimulating for him. You can help him structure his thoughts more than so called structured speech can.

Is the thalamus active when the parasympathetic is? Yes. The thalamus is like the lungs, responsive to both the voluntary control as well as passive sensory rhythms.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~