Drive Your Brain Before It Drives You....

 

Drive Your Brain Before It Drives You...

It is said that it may not be easy and it might take sustained effort, but we have the ability to remodel our brains at any age, which helps us to function better. This is very much true. We work with paralytic patients who lose their speech and become paralysed in the physical movements of their hands and legs. If they are diagnosed well and receive the correct line of treatment, we see spontaneous recovery within 3 to 6 months. Those patients who have good willpower and positivity towards whatever has happened and what can be overcome are often able to recover and rewire their brain much faster. Those patients who look for pity and sympathy, start getting pampered by people around them, do not make efforts and give up, really take more time to recover. After some time, their recovery can reach a saturation point, and then it becomes difficult to rewire the brain.

When I see faster rewiring of the brain in such patients, I feel that even our illness and our future depend so much on how we grow and which environment we stay in. The environment plays a very important role. We come to this earth with an empty brain, and the way our brain gets filled up, the way the wiring of the brain happens, plays a very important role in our life. Especially when I talk about paralytic patients, once they get an attack, their brain has taken control and is not ready to function the way it should. The brain does not give commands to function the way it should. So, if at that time we do not do activities that motivate the brain to function, it can go into a saturation point. I feel the teachings of Lord Krishna are also very relevant here, he reminds us to focus on our actions and continue making sincere efforts. Sometimes, it is our attitude and the way we respond to a situation that helps us move forward.

Recently, we had an old lady, around 86 years old, visiting us. She had hearing issues. She had purchased hearing aids but was finding them very loud, so she was losing confidence and did not feel like wearing them. Even her friends who were wearing hearing aids were having a bad experience with them, so she was reluctant to work on it. Her grandson is hearing impaired, around 35 years old, and has been wearing hearing aids since childhood. He studied in normal education, graduated, is earning well for his family and speaks like normal people.

Though she saw her grandson’s growth, using good digital hearing aids and doing so well, she was influenced by her peers of the same age who were not doing well with hearing aids. After a lot of requests from her grandson and a lot of hesitation, she came to meet us. We simply did reprogramming of her own hearing aids in a better manner so that she could hear her speech clearly and the unnecessary noise could be cut off. That made her change her whole attitude towards hearing aids. She simply said, “If I would have not come, my life would have not changed.” Her statement made me think, “Still, we live so much with myths and misconceptions.”

These days, in this so-called scientific world, wiring happens with technology, but the brain still lives with the experiences of people around us. Without thinking and analysing, we just flow in the rat race. Recently, while travelling, I had luggage with just a few clothes, but at the airport counter it weighed 17 kg. I said, “Such clothes weigh so much?” After 15 kg, we needed to pay ₹700+ for each additional kilogram. I asked the manager there to see my clothes, they were very light. She said, “Those machines which are installed are calibrated, and we cannot do anything.” I mean, how many of us actually think about it? We just go and pay, and it moves on, in each and every field. We just follow the system blindly without stopping to question it.

If people are not benefitted from hearing aids, they do not go back and ask or try to find a solution. They simply think that hearing aids are like this, they create nuisance and are not good, and they stop using them. In doing so, they may also allow their brain’s listening and speech-processing abilities to deteriorate, because we hear through our ears but understand through our brain. Hearing aids today are so good and technology-driven that, when correctly fitted and programmed, they can help a person hear speech much more clearly and come close to a natural listening experience.

Recently, we got one elderly person who had hearing loss for many years. He was hearing louder sounds but was not hearing speech clearly. Apart from that, his ears were very sensitive towards sounds, so he himself and the people around him felt that he was hearing and that he could not wear hearing aids because loud sounds gave him irritation. Many years of not hearing speech clearly had made him withdraw from people. He stopped communicating, went into depression and was on medicines, whereas his brain rewiring was still possible by simply fitting the right hearing aids for him.

I feel, after narrating and having so many experiences, that we humans have become more like machines. Though we have a brain, our brain drives us according to the way things are happening around us. We have stopped using our own potential to make our brain function better. The place where we need to spend money, we do not spend, and where it is not valued, we spend. The brain is driving us crazy in its natural flow. We are not taking a pause to think about what is happening around us. Is it right? Or wrong? Let us pause, drive our brain and also consciously shape the environment around us, with lots of positivity.