Brain cleansing 1
Glymphatics and more
You clean your car to stop build up of dirt, mud, and salt that both stops it looking like brown alert, and also prevents the invasive effects of rust over time. Or you might like to defrag (that’s a bit 90’s) that hard drive occasionally to help things be remembered where they should and streamline and improve the use of your computer.
So when it comes to the brain, it’s not a hard stretch to imagine some similarities. Sleep we love, and we know without it we cannot function for very long. Randy Gardener set the record in 1963 for 11 days and 24 minutes no sleep, beaten in 1997 by good ol’ Robert McDonald at 18 days 21 hours.
Whilst these are extreme examples of human effort, the Guinness World records stopped taking records afterwards due to safety concerns. Sleep loss being associated with obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression and other problems such as suppressed immune system, and the record holders had expressed concerns about their health afterwards.
As we sleep and rest, our body and brain goes through several changes in state that enable it to replenish areas in need, detoxify, and clean out. Studies in mice show how the build up of beta-amyloid disappeared twice as quickly as they slept (its build up is associated with alzheimers and dementia).
The amazing lymphatic system of the body, which operates normally up to approximately 3mmHg pressure (beyond which its vessel walls collapse inwards, has an incredible counterpart in the brain. The “Glymphatic system” was officially discovered in 2012 (I say officially, because working with the hands and listening to the brain for thousands of hours taught me of its presence sensuously well before its identification in the laboratory).
When working with the cranium, and anywhere in the body for that matter we were always taught “transparent hands”, keep your awareness out to the horizon, and to use the lightest touch (yet confidently firm) possible so as not to disturb our patients resting state and help us feel more of what is. Apart from this training helping the mind be in that quantum state of connectivity, it also allowed for sensing of those lower pressure flows and functions of lymphatics, glymphatics, and nerve system activity (electrolyte and electricity fluctuations) amongst the trillions of other different energies and waves in our universe.
That low pressure feeling was the clue to the glymphatics for me, it’s so different to a vein/venous sinus, such as the sagittal sinus for blood at the back of the skull normally <18mmHg. Another thing this light hands and broad awareness allowed for, was to feel into the inside of a bone. Treating it as it is in its natural resting state, opened up a whole world for me. A state of life like nothing I have ever felt before became apparent, so alive, so responsive to life, like a instantaneous arrangement of cells, fluid, and body electric, it held a consciousness of immeasurable intelligence. I mean it is literally making you blood, and immune cells, as well as responding to your postural and daily efforts and your embryological growth patterns to reshape you day by day. The cranium is still making blood right into your later years even!
Through practice of meditation and countless thousands of hours of listening to patients craniums, and body, you get good at finding that sweet spot of alignment in mind/body/spirit that allows for the integration of the person quite rapidly. It’s like watching sleep on fast forward and many nights compacted into one. The brain starts to find balance in its flows, the blood in the cranial bones starts to find an equalisation with the brain, the body, and the environment, and all the multitude of different energies in the ecosystem starts to reach an equalisation point with that persons state. This feels different every-time.
Whilst there, I can check how parts of the brain are working with the body and the communication to and from such as that painful right leg, the pain fibres travelling from, and the corresponding spinal reflexes and motor pathways from the brain back to. Often, if the body is in the right state, especially if its had some direct work done to it prior, you can hone in your intention on a specific part of the brain eg, the right foot has connection with the primary motor cortex of the left side of the brain, and by honing in on and fine tuning this from here and via the spinal cord tracts, the cross-talk to the other leg via its connections in the spinal cord,
the output and coordination via the cerebellum
and the proprioceptive input into parts of the thalamus and primary somatosensory cortex, I can source a balance whereby the body literally resets itself more into alignment with its healthy state and alignment. Of course this isn’t done always by being too overly specific, as this detracts from wholeness, principles of tensegrity and the interconnectedness of all things. Sometimes it’s an ongoing input from the liver, cranking the vagus nerve into an inflammatory state and upsetting the brainstem. It’s not too hard to stop this, get the pathways balanced, and then set a descending pulse to “clean” the vagus nerve, plus ensure the flow of the cerebrospinal fluid to it for a nice “wash” and balance.
More to come on this, honestly I could write for a year not cover enough. Next article I’ll dig further into it.
Here a picture of the moon.
