I first heard of clicking your amygdala forward when a guy contacted me on Linked In and had this as part of his signature. (Something like ‘have you clicked your amygdala forward today’?’)I was intrigued and immediately Googled it. It’s all very interesting and for those of you keen to access your creativite zone, here’s the low down.
The amygdalae are two almond-shaped structures (in fact amygdala means ‘almond-shaped’) located on each side of the brain in the frontal lobes. To find them approximately, imagine a line drawn from the corner of your eye to the top of your ear and about halfway along and an inch in is the amygdala.
The frontal lobes are responsible for pleasure, emotion, psychic ability, intuition, creativity and all the ‘good stuff’ and various things can ‘click’ us into this positive states, including smelling something nice, meditating and laughing. The problem is trying to access this at will.
Neil Slade has a very interesting site about the amygdalae backed up with solid research and describes various techniques to make the brain jump into frontal lobe mode. Here are three ideas he mentions that I use when I remember!
- Imagine tickling all over each amygdala with a feather – this simple technique creates blood flow to the frontal lobes and improves with practice.
- Think of the amygdala as a switch and imagine putting this switch to the ‘on’ position.
- Imagine flicking each amygdala with your finger as if it was a pencil eraser and ‘see’ it moving back and forwards in response to the flick. This is a very good technique that I read on Neil’s forum and have used myself with some success.
Have a go at clicking your amygdala – it’s harmless, painless, free and let’s you access the best bits of your brain. What more could you ask?
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