Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Well, we just heard that the brain is the most amazing piece of technology,
and let's just take a look, briefly, at recent history.
Back in 1981, Hubel and Weisel got the Nobel Prize
for their groundbreaking research on cortical plasticity.
That means the ability of the brain
to wire and structure itself in response to its own experiences.
They reached the conclusion
that after what they called "certain critical periods,"
the brain structures, for the most part,
are not going to be changing themselves anymore.
That was back in 1981.
And for human beings,
they observed that those critical periods,
a lot of pieces of those critical periods happen by the age of one
and then the better part of it between age five and ten.
Dr. Michael Merzenich, the renowned brain scientist,
back in the early '70s,
had a - his important teacher -
he just told me that last week -
whom he admired and respected very deeply
also advocated against the idea of brain plasticity.
So that was not too long ago either.
But in the early '70s when Dr. Merzenich did his research,
his observations, in his own words,
"Could not make sense in a world where the brain cannot change itself."
And the only way he could explain what he was finding
was through the idea of a very plastic brain throughout life.
Fifteen years after that,
I was sitting in my office with a 13-month-old infant baby
who was diagnosed by two top neuropediatricians
as having what they labeled "global brain damage."
She had a truly dire prognosis:
they said she will never crawl, stand, walk, talk
or have any meaningful functioning in adult life.
I was unaware of the Hubel and Wiesel assertion
of the rigidity, or lack of plasticity, of the brain,
and I'd not yet discovered the work of Dr. Michael Merzenich
and other scientists of brain plasticity research.
I never worked with a child like Elizabeth before.
Actually, she was the very first baby I ever worked with.
So my greatest asset at that time
was that I had no idea what's not possible.
I did have experiences, personally, of very profound changes in my own life,
and I made the assumption
that there must be correlating changes in the brain.
So I went for it.
Today, Elizabeth is beautiful, fully functioning,
independent woman.
She has two master's degrees.
She's married.
She also runs her own business.
Today, the idea of brain plasticity is fully accepted.
Research shows it in action, actually happening.
However, in daily life,
most people don't go around thinking about their changing brain,
and there are not many ways
to intentionally impact the brain in the direction that we want,
for most people.
Even in areas where it's obvious that the brain does need to rewire -
like, for instance, in rehabilitation,
where there's an injury, even brain injury,
or in certain fitness training, musical training and so on -
some of the practices of how people are trained or educated
look as if the brain doesn't even exist
in the computation of how to help people get better.
I oftentime take a hike on my favorite trail,
and there, from time to time,
I see the same people stretching
before they get ready to do their run or their walk.
They place a foot, you know, on the gate,
and they bend forward,
and they start, you know, stretching,
trying to touch their toes.
And I've observed over time
that with most of them, I do not seem to see much of a change.
And the stretching is supposed to increase flexibility
and to also "warm up" the muscles to prepare for running or hiking,
and I question whether this is the best way to do it,
and probably some of you here have tried stretching
and have found that sometimes it's not quite as beneficial
as it's supposed to be.
A number of years back,
I worked briefly with a principal dancer
from a well-known American dance troupe.
And she had - she came to me because she had a life-long issue:
she could not lift her left leg behind her, doing an arabesque,
what's called an arabesque,
as well as her - actually it was her left leg as well as her right leg -
and has been stretching, of course, her whole training years,
and that has not changed.
So how about we do an unTED-like thing here,
and I get you all up standing,
and let's give it a try.
Let's see what we can do; experiment a little bit.
Now, I know it's very crowded - it's a theater; it's not a gym.
So I'm going to ask you -
and it's going to be shown here
but just peek at it if you don't understand the instructions.
So I'm going to stand here,
and I'm going to ask all of you
to turn about 20 degrees towards where I'm standing.
That is in order to create a little bit more space.
And spread your legs a tiny bit.
I know there's not much space to spread the legs there anyway.
And now bend your knees just a tiny little bit
and just go down to reach with your hands towards the floor.
But do it gently; don't pull hard.
See if you can find space to bend down with your hands towards the floor.
And come back up.
That's it. One time. No more, no need to do ...
By the way, you're amazing.
As much as I can see, you're really doing it.
Thank you so much.
And now, if you were to want to go further down,
normally what would you do?
You would probably start pulling harder and trying to push harder,
hoping to somehow get yourself more flexible.
So how about we try something a little different?
You guys in the front row, turn around
and use the same back of the chair as the people behind you.
And all of you, just turn squarely towards me, towards the front.
Lean on both hands on the chair.
Spread your legs a little bit;
bend the knees a little bit, not a lot.
And now the movement you're going to be doing
is you're going to pull your belly in and round your back
and look down at your belly button like it's really interesting.
And then, arch your back as you free your abdomen and look up.
Show your tail,
but keep leaning on the chair with straight arms if you can.
And now, round your back,
pull the belly in,
look at your bellybutton,
and then arch your back,
let the belly free and look up.
Now, stop.
Turn 20 degrees towards me -
20 degrees quickly; we're running out of time here.
Bend your knees a little bit and reach down with your hands
and see if you're going a little further down.
Hold it, yes.
Somebody said here something.
Anyway, stand up again,
lean on the back of the chair again, just for a little bit,
and now, you're going to pull your belly in and round your back
except you're going to turn your head and peek under your left armpit.
So you're rounding your back,
pulling the belly in and looking under your left armpit,
turning your head like that.
Then you're arching your back,
letting the belly out and looking over your left shoulder.
And now pull the belly in, pull the belly in,
look under your right armpit -
I know lots of professors here and so on; I'm so sorry to do this to you -
and now, arch your back,
push your belly out and look over your right shoulder.
Excellent. Stand up. Turn 20 degrees the same way.
And bend your knees down a little bit
and go down.
Are you going a little further?
Yeah. Sit down, please.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Yeah. You're doing great.
Okay. You are doing fantastic.
Look at you.
Well, what - I hope this is still on, yeah.
What just happened?
Well, you just proved to yourself that you have a brain
(Laughter)
and that your brain can change.
And let me tell you, very briefly, some of the principles,
what I call the essentials,
that I, we used here.
One is you moved with attention - something you just heard about.
You moved with attention.
Moving with attention changes the brain extremely quickly.
The second thing, you slowed down.
Third thing you did is you reduced the force.
The fourth thing that you did is you brought a few variations,
and the fifth thing you did
is you backed off a little bit from your goal
to give you freedom to experiment.
These are five of nine essentials
that I used to help the dancer -
in a few minutes, by the way:
took about six minutes for her
to be able, for her brain to figure out how to move her lagging leg, so to speak.
And these are the same principles
that I used over many years with Elizabeth,
helping her move from and overcome one limitation after the other
to where she is today.
Now, the muscles, just very briefly,
just in the subject of stretching,
are not built to stretch, physiologically.
It's not like - it's crazy.
Muscles are built to contract and decontract.
When they're too short and interfere with our movement,
it's because the brain is sending them a signal to contract at the wrong time.
So we have to somehow communicate with our brain
to change the pattern with which it organizes our movement.
So these essentials - do not get deceived by their simplicity.
So, the movement with attention,
slow,
a reduced force,
variation,
pulling back a bit from the goal -
we use them daily to transform the lives of -
we work a lot with children with special needs, autistic children
and cerebral palsy and genetic disorders,
work with musicians, athletes, people like that.
You take this into your life,
you take this into your exercise,
you take this into your thinking, you do research.
All these principles actually wake up the brain
and give it the information,
flood it with information
with which it can do its remarkable changes.
It has enormous implications for education.
If we can take children
that are really having a hard time learning to read, write, think, move
and get them all the way through college
and get them to be, actually, extremely intelligent,
imagine what you can do with it with intelligent people.
It provides people back their human dignity.
So just remember, leave you with that thought,
that even on a bad day, you have an amazing brain,
and when you provide your brain
with what it needs to create and invent for you,
it will do it at all times.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
(Applause)