Finally Discovered How My Recovery Happened

Since my brain injury 37 years ago, I have always wondered why I have done so well over the years?  At last week's Southwest Conference on Disability, I did two presentation that helped to answer that question. Creating a Quality of Life for People with Brain Injuries - Using Neuroplasticity, Mindfullness Meditation and Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction.  Recent research has determined that “Neuroplasticity has replaced the formally-held position that the brain is a physiological static organ, and explores how - and which ways – the brain changes throughout life”. Neuroplasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes due to learning, to large-scale changes involved in cortical remapping in response to injury. The role in neuroplasticity is widely recognized in healthy development, learning, memory, and recovery from brain damage. Decades off research have now shown that substantial changes occur in the lowest neocortical processing areas, and that these changes can profoundly alter the pattern of neuronal activation in response to experience. Neuroscientific research indicates that experience can actually change both the brain’s physical structure (anatomy) and functional organization (physiology). Neuroscientists are currently engaged in a reconciliation of critical period studies demonstrating the immutability of the brain after development with the more recent research showing how the brain can, and does, change in response to hitherto unsuspected stimuli". Playing baseball increased my neuroplasticity through exercise, practice and repetition. Mindfulness Therapy was how I kept my poise while pitching. Mindfulness is all about staying focused, thinking ahead and knowing the situations, staying calm, relaxed and in control (resilience in the face of adversity). Neuroplasticity and Minfulness = Baseball.