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Welcome to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL” podcast EPISODE #29, my name is Andrea Samadi, a former educator who has been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Let’s dive right into this topic on “How to Re-Wire Your Brain for Happiness and Well-Being to Optimize Learning.”
I’m sure most of us are aware that stress is the number one cause behind anxiety, depression, low energy, work burn-out, and cardiovascular disease , but do you know how stress impacts our brain? Did you know that:
• Chronic stress and depression causes measurable brain shrinkage?
• “51% of us will have a mental health issue (post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive, personality, anxiety, addiction, or an eating disorder to name a few) at some point in their life” and
• that 1/5 students struggle with depression, while ¼ struggle with anxiety which means we have reached epidemic levels with today’s youth.
And these shocking statistics impacts society with:
• Work burn-out
• Anxiety and Depression
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Neurological Disorders and eventually leading to
• Death
Also Impacting our Students:
• A recent study shows that if the educator is stressed, the student will also be stressed
• Stress is impacting our ability to learn
• Student behavior was also impacted, contributing to more stress for educators
Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist of the Amen Clinics and the father of Chloe Amen from podcast #25 with “Strategies to Change Your Brain to Change Your Grades” explains that “if you struggle with attention, focus, sadness, anxiety, worry, flexibility, stubbornness, or impulsivity, welcome to the club—this is normal.” These days it is more normal to have a problem, than not have a problem. Most of us will have a mental health issue in our lifetime—and when it happens, we think that we are the only one and that no one else understands. Dr. Amen has a book coming out in March 3, 2020 called “The End of Mental Illness: How Neuroscience is Transforming Psychiatry and Helping Prevent or Reverse Mood and Anxiety Disorders, ADHD, Addictions, PTSD, Psychosis, Personality Disorders and More.” If left untreated, these brain disorders can have “serious personal, interpersonal, occupational and social consequences.”
In this podcast episode, we are going to look at the neuroscience of happiness, anxiety, stress, learning and retention with some ideas and strategies to naturally improve each area, so that we can get a handle on life’s largest challenges with an understanding of our brain chemistry. Our goal is to intentionally set ourselves up for success with this new level of awareness.
We will cover:
• A reminder of the recipe for peak performance (fun, fear, focus) from episode #27.
• What’s the neuroscience of happiness—and how to boost our serotonin levels to generate more happiness.
• What’s the neuroscience of anxiety (our body’s natural response to stress that can become a mental disorder when someone regularly feels unusually high levels of anxiety) and stress (which is our body’s response to a challenge or demand) with strategies to calm our limbic, emotional brain.
• What’s the neuroscience of learning and how can we be sure that our brain is primed to learn?
