Journaling aids in making important life decisions, helps navigate hard times, allows celebrating joyful times, and provides a tangible record of your life. Journaling promotes holistic self-care and well-being and an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.

" Journaling is an example of an expressive coping method, which is a technique that helps a person process negative thoughts, feelings, or experiences by releasing them to more productive thinking doing and ultimately "being."

Dr. Sixto

Journaling and Setting Intentions for Healthful Habits: A Holistic Approach

Intention is the human ability to redirect the electricity in your brain, that would be nerve energy, and no, it is not Mad Science. In doing so one avoids nerve energy flowing down the path of least resistance, the one that loves distraction! Intentions help us execute! In simple terms having intention is a cognitive process that involves setting a goal and then taking action to achieve that goal. When you set an intention, you are essentially programming your brain to focus on a specific outcome. This helps to activate the prefrontal cortex (the executor), which is responsible for planning, decision-making, and other higher-order cognitive functions. By doing so, you can improve your ability to concentrate, make better decisions, and achieve your goals. Maintaining the executor in tip-top shape is paramount, in addition to maintaining a serious meditation practice, another task that has been shown to provide superior results is Journaling. Read on! Let’s learn another new path to better motivation, naturally!

Nerve Energy: Not only is it important to restore maximum energy to the body in our sleep (goal of good sleep hygiene), but it is also important that we are aware of the Whole Self and how that energy will be utilized, conserved, and restored during the day to maintain the body’s optimum use of nerve energy for maximum health, physical strength, and endurance. To optimize this flow, the path of least resistance is required to keep the lines of communication open, coordinated, and well-tuned between cells. When out of synch (as in when the pillars are not in balance) messages in the nervous system become delayed, crossed, or even completely misinterpreted, suddenly body function can turn into total chaos. Have you ever experienced a “Lack of Sleep Hangover?" You know, when you are just trudging along, your mind is not grounded and the day just seems to not make sense. Maximum nerve energy is the flow, the key, to healing and preventing disease holistically. Getting to the cause before the Symptoms of disease arise.

Journaling and Setting Intentions is a Holistic Health approach toward healthy living, and much like setting intentions has been shown to have a positive impact on daily living and has been recognized as an effective tool for healthy brain functioning, ergo creating healthy habits. When one writes in a journal one is scaling the thought process towards developing and implementing fruitful intentions. Expressive writing through journaling can be a powerful tool to process stress, trauma, and the onset of unhealthy behaviors and related emotions, ergo, a proven effective method for managing mental health conditions and stress. Journaling is an example of an expressive coping method, which is a technique that helps a person process negative thoughts, feelings, or experiences by releasing them. By putting these things on paper the latter have less power over us.1 We have an improved ability to be aware of triggers and “re-route” the electricity behind nerve energy to more productive thinking and doing and ultimately being. The benefits of journaling can be felt, intrinsically, done regularly, it can change your perspective and the reality of one’s life.

Besides reducing stress and anxiety, journaling also helps with sleep. Part of a regular sleep hygiene regimen writing in a journal, and getting things down on paper, not

digitally (more on this later), instantly helps you shift the focus of your thoughts on the positive and short-circuit negative thought loops or remunerating loops of “need to do.” Other essential benefits are:

Anxiety Management: Journaling can help cope with anxiety by externalizing anxious thoughts, putting them into words, and then setting them aside. It can also help explore alternatives to anxious thoughts. Studies show that regular journaling for just 12 weeks significantly reduced mental distress and increased resilience.

Depression Management: Journaling seems to be effective for people living with depression. Emotional writing significantly decreased symptoms of depression. Keeping a gratitude journal is another specific approach that can help with depression.

Emotional Processing: Writing about an emotional event can help you understand it better. The act of putting an experience into words and structure allows you to form new perceptions about events.

Emotion Regulation: Brain scans of people who wrote about their feelings showed that they were able to control their emotions better than those who wrote about a neutral experience.

Physical Healing: Journaling may also have an impact on physical health. A study found that those who wrote about their feelings on upsetting events healed faster than those who wrote about daily activities.

Awareness is key, the most efficacious way to journal “awareness” is through writing things down on paper, in other words, requires handwriting, not typing, or using a digital device (as speaking into one). Handwriting is a multisensory activity that activates multiple cognitive functions, including motor skills, attention, and perception. By stimulating cerebral circuits, this involvement helps individuals process information more effectively. The cognitive approach to handwriting is based on learning theories that involve self-instruction along with verbal mediation (using words or sentences to help associate a reaction to triggers), an attractive approach to dealing with the possibility of unhealthy thinking.

Research also shows that handwriting can have a positive impact on our cognitive performance. According to scientific studies, writing by hand stimulates the part of the brain known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS), which is a sort of filter that focuses only on the stuff you are writing, resulting in a more effective learning process and therefore more effective at changing unhealthy habits.

When we write, we are exposed to more critical thinking. Writing allows us to think more thoroughly about the information we are recording and encourages us to expand upon our thoughts and form connections between them. Writing by hand also helps increase brain connectivity (electric firing of neurons) which is crucial to memory building and information encoding. Actual handwritten notes help with memory and recall since areas of the brain associated with recall and comprehension are more engaged when we write notes with pen and paper.

Do you want to avoid distractions? Writing by hand helps one avoid distractions. When you are writing, contradictory to digital devices there are no notifications, there are no open tabs, there is no other distraction than the writing itself or a wondering day-dreaming brain! Although one may find that typing might be faster and more efficient, handwriting can offer deeper cognitive engagement and better memory recall. The choice between the two often depends on the context and the individual’s preference.

Wisdom:When we are living our life behind a screen we are living an illusion of self and how we relate to the world around us. Stunting the social aspect of life by not comforting very important stimuli that are blunted by a screen: Social connection, being ourselves around others, and not being afraid of the world outside ourselves. How does this relate to handwriting in a journal? In much the same way. When we write we are connected

Training the brain to adopt healthful habits is a holistic approach that integrates the power of our minds with our physical well-being to help cultivate sustainable healthful habits. "In our quest for improved health and well-being, we often focus on external factors such as exercise routines and dietary choices. While these are undoubtedly important, we must not overlook the incredible power of our minds." Dr. Sixto Training the Brain for Healthful Habits: A Holistic Approach In our quest for improved health and well-being, we often focus on external factors such as exercise routines and dietary choices. While these are undoubtedly important, we must not overlook the incredible power of our minds. The brain, the command center of our bodies, plays a vital role in adopting and maintaining healthful habits. As a Holistic Health practitioner, I firmly believe that training the brain is essential for long-term sustainable change. In this blog post, we will explore the basic ins and outs to train our minds and cultivate healthful habits. Let’s begin by stating my favorite saying: “Life is in Session.” The awareness that we do not always get our way in our existence. And the awareness that at the core of our processing is our Executor (our brain)… How well does [it] function when we are knocked off our healthful habitual ways by unanticipated life events? Unanticipated life events = Life is in Session. We humans function by learned habits, or automatic responses to what is and has been our reality in the past. In the path to deactivating unhealthy automatic responses to stimuli, we need to give that part of the brain, our Executor, enough time to come up with a “new plan” for how to respond to a stimulus in a familiar circumstance (to a habit) before our reward system says “embody that, “take that on.” By postponing “transacting” with the habitual, unhealthy automatic responses long enough, the executor has time to enact a new plan to avoid unsavory temptations and to consider the options for healthy alternatives. Awareness and Willpower: Awareness of the behavior that you are trying to inhibit is key before any change in said behavior can be made. First comes awareness then comes the work! To change a behavior one has to be aware of the unhealthy habit (keep it in our working memory) so that we may avoid the negative consequences of said behavior. Makes sense, by using our willpower to avoid the bad habit, we can overcome the triggers, but not so fast! Think about it, if said behavior is in our working memory, or in constant awareness, the challenge becomes not partaking in the behavior in any situation. Let me get into this: to change a behavior we have to be aware of what it is we want to change. Keep the thought in our working memory. The issue with this is that if we keep something in our working memory, our brains will include “that something” throughout the day not just when decisions need to be made about the habit, but it will include that thought (the habit) in every decision it needs to be made throughout the day. So for example, although you are “aware" of the habit and you make a conscious effort to avoid the habit and the triggers to that habit, the brain may still trigger a desire for the habit in other situations not related to the usual obvious triggers. You may avoid that “stimuli", when you see it, yet your executor may very well steer you towards putting the “stimuli” into your system when you feel tired and drained. The decision to use the stimuli is in all the decisions the executor makes, not just conscious ones. Another example: you avoid chocolate when you see it, not going to touch it; this is willpower. Yet the executor may may very well have you ingest it when you feel stressed out, a bit hungry or need comfort food (in all its decisions); takes you off guard. You may even take the opportunity to buy it! So you see willpower is not enough! You need a plan! Yes you do and read on...

The executor has no other alternative in its “hard drive” to deal with the unhealthy habit and it gets cluttered with other things that it needs to do to keep us functioning. When the working memory is flooded, the clutter will make it less likely for the executor to promptly respond to avoid an automatic response. For this reason, it is imperative that we seek alternatives to plain willpower (using our working memory to stop a behavior) and that we have a “pre-plan” of how to avoid unwanted habits in any situation. No stimulant when we are aware of it and we see it (we know the consequences) and no stimulant if we are tired or wiped out or have too much clutter in our working memory (so to stop our mind from considering how "great," as unhealthy as it was, the past results of that automatic behavior to take the stimuli made us feel). Let it be known that "willpower" alone is usually not enough to effect change to automatic responses. Cold Turkey, the act of stopping a bad habit suddenly and completely works if you have a strong, calculated, and focused plan for change. How we process a behavior: Automatic processing (responses) are habits that we enact without much thought. When the automatic responses result in unhealthy consequences, however, they can be altered through much practice, daily focus, and concentrated effort; to achieve change through what is termed as a controlled process. A controlled process requires thought, effort, planning, and lots of practice. Lots of practice to get to the place where the automatic behavior is quickly “hijacked” by the newly learned process overriding any whim or temptation to carry out behavior deemed as unhealthy. If we do not practice a new healthful process (a habit) we lapse into old ways of thinking and reacting (old habits). Lapses are normal in our existence and can be defined as the point at which a new habit and skill are compromised by unanticipated life events. Remember, “Life is in Session.” Building skills to fortify resilience is indispensable to carrying on a healthy lifestyle. To reapply and further develop healthy positive principles and fortify newly learned skills to step back from a lapse, requires much daily awareness. Changing behaviors that do not suit you can change your life, wellness, and longevity. Optimal health requires the ability to make creative, flexible decisions based on your current condition and the local environment For the Executor to learn new habits, the Executor needs to go through a process that requires it to react to the behavior in question before it has a chance to happen. This reaction needs to be calculated and requires problem-solving and critical thinking. Developing Daily Habits: The brain has the ability to reorganize and form new neural connections throughout our lives therefore evolving in response to our life experiences. This process is known as Neuroplasticity which makes it possible for us to form new habits. By understanding the principles of neuroplasticity, we can harness its potential to create lasting change through repetition and consistency in our daily practices (key to rewiring our brains and forming healthful habits). In Summary, by consistently engaging in health-promoting behaviors, we strengthen the neural pathways associated with these habits, making them more automatic and effortless over time (healthy habits). Training the brain to adopt healthful habits is a holistic approach that integrates the power of our minds to help cultivate sustainable healthful habits. By prioritizing our well-being and focusing on living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle (the 8 pillars of Holistic health), we can unlock our full potential for living a vibrant and fulfilling life. Remember, the health journey begins within. Start training your brain today and witness the transformative power it has on your habits and overall well-being. For further information on how you or a loved one could benefit from a Holistic Wellness, Whole Health path, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].

Training the brain to adopt healthful habits is a holistic approach that integrates the power of our minds with our physical well-being to help cultivate sustainable healthful habits. "In our quest for improved health and well-being, we often focus on external factors such as exercise routines and dietary choices. While these are undoubtedly important, we must not overlook the incredible power of our minds." Dr. Sixto Training the Brain for Healthful Habits: A Holistic Approach In our quest for improved health and well-being, we often focus on external factors such as exercise routines and dietary choices. While these are undoubtedly important, we must not overlook the incredible power of our minds. The brain, the command center of our bodies, plays a vital role in adopting and maintaining healthful habits. As a Holistic Health practitioner, I firmly believe that training the brain is essential for long-term sustainable change. In this blog post, we will explore the basic ins and outs to train our minds and cultivate healthful habits. Let’s begin by stating my favorite saying: “Life is in Session.” The awareness that we do not always get our way in our existence. And the awareness that at the core of our processing is our Executor (our brain)… How well does [it] function when we are knocked off our healthful habitual ways by unanticipated life events? Unanticipated life events = Life is in Session. We humans function by learned habits, or automatic responses to what is and has been our reality in the past. In the path to deactivating unhealthy automatic responses to stimuli, we need to give that part of the brain, our Executor, enough time to come up with a “new plan” for how to respond to a stimulus in a familiar circumstance (to a habit) before our reward system says “embody that, “take that on.” By postponing “transacting” with the habitual, unhealthy automatic responses long enough, the executor has time to enact a new plan to avoid unsavory temptations and to consider the options for healthy alternatives. Awareness and Willpower: Awareness of the behavior that you are trying to inhibit is key before any change in said behavior can be made. First comes awareness then comes the work! To change a behavior one has to be aware of the unhealthy habit (keep it in our working memory) so that we may avoid the negative consequences of said behavior. Makes sense, by using our willpower to avoid the bad habit, we can overcome the triggers, but not so fast! Think about it, if said behavior is in our working memory, or in constant awareness, the challenge becomes not partaking in the behavior in any situation. Let me get into this: to change a behavior we have to be aware of what it is we want to change. Keep the thought in our working memory. The issue with this is that if we keep something in our working memory, our brains will include “that something” throughout the day not just when decisions need to be made about the habit, but it will include that thought (the habit) in every decision it needs to be made throughout the day. So for example, although you are aware” of the habit and you make a conscious effort to avoid the habit and the triggers to that habit, the brain may still trigger a desire for the habit in other situations not related to the usual obvious triggers. You may avoid that “stimuli", when you see it, yet your executor may very well steer you towards putting the “stimuli” to use in your system when you feel tired and drained. The executor has no other alternative in its “hard drive” to deal with the unhealthy habit and it gets cluttered with other things that it needs to do to keep us functioning. When the working memory is flooded, the clutter will make it less likely for the executor to promptly respond to avoid an automatic response. For this reason, it is imperative that we seek alternatives to plain willpower (using our working memory to stop a behavior) and that we have a “pre-plan” of how to avoid unwanted habits in any situation.

Sleep is a survival instinct and is key to physical and mental health. "Historically, we humans followed our circadian rhythm sleep-wake cycle, this meant that as the light of day started weaning, we naturally started to wind down, and consequently, as the light of day started shining upon us, we started to feel awake for the brand new day. Even Mother Nature knew when she gave us fire as a light for nighttime use, to make it as to not interfere with our circadian sleep-wake cycle." Dr. Sixto Circadium Rhythm, cha, cha, cha! What is it about the time change in the Fall that drives me especially into a state of bewilderment until the days start to feel, or start to get longer, around mid-January? I am one who counts the number of days from the time that we go back to Standard Time, the first weekend in November until December 21st, the Winter Solstice. Countdown… from then on, let there be light! Yes, yes, time is just a construct, yet it affects my mood. In the dread of “falling back” around 6:00 pm I am ready to call it a day in its entirety. And although I am not one whose life is dictated by a clock, so I can be on to “wake up” with the sunlight and “wind down” with the onsetting sunset, the hard change to our societal clock of time does have an effect when I have to be places at a certain time. In general, this time change thing throws me off. Our clocks and watches abruptly tell us now that by 4’ish the night is coming. What time is it anyway? For my primitive self, light is light and I wake up, and dark is dark, and I hibernate for the evening. Those evenings become too long and I just can’t even see straight! Historically, we humans followed our circadian rhythm sleep-wake cycle, this meant that as the light of day started weaning, we naturally started to wind down, and consequently, as the light of day started shining upon us, we started to feel awake for the brand new day. Even Mother Nature knew when she gave us fire as a light for nighttime use, to make it [fire] at lumens low enough as to not interfere with the production of melatonin and therefore not interfere with our circadian sleep-wake cycle. It is said that “way back when” during the long nights of winter, humans would trek off to slumber when the sun went down, yes as early as 4:30 let’s say, and that they then would wake around 1 or 2 am and they would have a winter sleep sort of ritual to lull themselves back to sleep until the sun rose the next morning. And to reiterate, if there was a fire, the light emitted would not send the mind into wake mode. Very interesting huh! However, in modern-day times we have too much to interrupt our circadian rhythm. Just look around you, it is nighttime and your neighborhood could look like Disneyland, all bright and cheerful. There is increasingly more light pollution and more disruption from technology screens, and we wind up trying all sorts of sleep aids, including melatonin (naturally secreted) to help us drift off to sleep. Exposure to bright artificial light in the late evening can disrupt this process and prevent your brain from releasing melatonin. This can make it harder to fall asleep. Examples of bright artificial light include the light from a TV screen, a smartphone, or a very bright alarm clock. I for one use a mask to sleep, because one small detection that the light of the sun is coming up, I am right up with it even if I went to bed late or did not get enough rest. 23andMe says that generally, I am a night person, meaning that I am in bed by 10 and up by 7 am. Pretty accurate on the getting up part, but going to sleep, ugh. There are many interruptions. Although I have an alarm set for 9:04 pm or 21:04 to start winding down, meditate, and relax, my rewards system says, ah how about just a little bit more of doing this or watching that… Sleep hygiene is paramount, and is a habit to develop. I have a routine that most nights I do follow. Yet I still have a habit