In this chapter, we will discuss Brain Versatilizing, the process of creating new neural connections in the brain, which allows you to make your brain more flexible and to overcome resistance to changing negative habits.
In his book The Memory Prescription, Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, writes, “Research has shown that it first takes a healthv and agile brain to motivate us to treat our bodies right and achieve our highest quality longevity throughout each phase of life.”
We could not agree more. Health and vitality begin with the brain because this organ is where everything begins. Walking, picking up a child, kicking a soccer ball, stirring cookie batter in, and furling the sails on a boat at sea all begin the same way: a stimulus stirs an electrical signal between various areas of the brain that are related to the part of the body that is involved. Within milliseconds, those impulses travel from the brain, along the spinal cord, and into the branched nerves that control the arm \ve want to raise or the leg ready to be lifted into a conga-line kick. Voila—the movement happens. But it all begins in the cranium.
One of the more toxic ideas spread by modern culture is that the brain is static from birth to death. The conventional conception of the brain is that it grows in childhood and perhaps early adulthood, but at some point it begins to shed brain cells and neural connections begin to die, and this process is inevitable and irreversible. That may explain the deep dread with which many people regard aging: They assume that in their later years they will plummet into forgetfulness, senility, and finally the loss of identity. It is a fate that many of us fear more than the certainty of death: the possibility of mental decay.