Who Wants to Be a Sharp, Sassy 85-Year-Old? 🙋‍♀️

Welcome back to Part 5 of our brain health series.  Let’s do a quick recap:

• Part 1: Hormones & Sleep
• Part 2: Exercise & Movement
• Part 3: Gut Health
• Part 4: Brain-Building Activities and Supplements

Today, we’re going inward – into the mind itself – to explore how your thoughts, beliefs, and focus are shaping your mental health and overall well-being.

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🧠 Meet RAS & DMN: Your Mind’s Operating Systems

Think of your mind like a computer. Much of what’s running—your thoughts, habits, and beliefs—is happening on autopilot in the background. These unconscious patterns drive how you feel, what you notice, and how you respond. Let’s explore how to bring more mental clarity online and start using your mind to create a life you actually desire.

• The Reticular Activating System (RAS)
  This part of your brainstem acts as your personal gatekeeper, filtering which information makes it into your conscious awareness based on what it believes is important. And what trains it? What you focus on, repeat, and believe.
  
  If you’re scanning for problems, your RAS will show them to you all day long. But if you focus on opportunity, connection, or joy—it will start spotlighting those instead.

• The Default Mode Network (DMN)
  This is your internal narrator—the mental monologue that kicks in when you’re not actively focused. It connects past, present, and imagined futures. But if left unchecked, it can get stuck looping old fears, regrets, and limiting beliefs.

Together, RAS and DMN act like your brain’s background software. Unless you intentionally upgrade the programming, they’ll keep running yesterday’s version of you.

🔧 Tools to Rewire Your Brain

🧘‍♀️ Meditation

Meditation isn’t about clearing your mind—it’s about becoming aware of it. It’s a practice of observing your thoughts without judgment and creating more space between stimulus and response. Science shows meditation:

• Increases grey matter and strengthens the hippocampus
• Helps regulate the DMN, improving emotional resilience and presence
• Enhances memory, focus, and overall brain structure

➡️ Try Insight Timer, Calm, or a simple 5-minute guided meditation on YouTube.

🫁 Breathwork

Your breath is a built-in reset button. Breathwork activates your parasympathetic nervous system (your “rest and digest” state) and helps calm anxiety, stress, and even stored trauma. Studies show breathwork may support DMN regulation, working memory, attention span and cognitive flexibility. 

Box Breathing (4 count breath in -hold for 4 – exhale for 4- hold for 4) is an easy way to begin. I practice Wim Hof breathing regularly and love pairing it with cold plunges. I also recommend checking out Breath With Sandy on YouTube and my friend Rich’s breathwork app.

📳 Sound Therapy & Frequency Healing

Sound isn’t just soothing—it’s somatic. Binaural beats, crystal bowls, gongs, tuning forks, and even your own voice can gently guide your nervous system into new states. One study found that just one 60-minute sound meditation with singing bowls significantly reduced tension, anxiety, and fatigue.

🧬 Brainwave cheat sheet:

• Delta (0.5–4 Hz): Deep sleep, repair
• Theta (4–8 Hz): Meditation, creativity
• Alpha (8–12 Hz): Calm, focused flow
• Gamma (>30 Hz): Peak awareness, insight

➡️ Try this:

• Listen to binaural beats (search by state: theta, alpha, delta)
• Attend live sound baths or gongs (2x/month is my personal goal)
• Buy your own tuning forks or crystal bowls to play at home
• Or just lie down outside and listen deeply

📝 Journaling

Journaling is one of the most powerful ways to process, clear, and reprogram. I write 3 pages each morning—unedited—and I’m always amazed by what shows up. Science shows journaling:

• Activates the prefrontal cortex (executive function + emotional regulation)
• Lowers cortisol, blood pressure, and improves immune function
• Strengthens memory and helps integrate new beliefs, especially when handwritten

➡️ Try these prompts (Let it flow. No edits, no filters.): What story am I telling myself right now? Is it actually true? What would be a more empowering thought to hold? What am I grateful for right now?

💗 Practicing Gratitude and Visualization

Thoughts aren’t just “in your head.” EEG studies show that different emotions and thought types are associated with different brainwave states. Fear, stress, and anger = high beta wave activity (linked to anxiety and overthinking), while gratitude, love, and joy = alpha and theta waves (linked to healing, calm, and creativity)

🙏 Gratitude Is Medicine.

A consistent gratitude practice has been shown to activate the medial prefrontal cortex (empathy, decision-making, and learning), boost dopamine and serotonin, reduce inflammation and cortisol, and improve sleep, resilience and mood

➡️ Try this nightly ritual: Write down 3 things you’re grateful for—and feel each one in your body as you write. That’s how you rewire your neural pathways

🧠 Visualization and Mental Rehearsal.

Visualization activates many of the same brain regions as real-life action. fMRI scans show that imagining a scenario stimulates the motor cortex, prefrontal cortex, and limbic system—your brain takes it seriously. Combine that with gratitude, and you get a powerful mental cocktail:

➡️ Try this: Visualize your best outcome and feel deep gratitude for it as if it’s already happened. Feel the gratitude expand out of your heart and into your entire body. Breath deeply. Follow with some journaling. This practice primes your RAS to spot opportunities and starts shifting you from survival mode to expansion mode.

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💡 Final Thoughts on Thoughts

Your thoughts are not random. They’re powerful biological events with ripple effects throughout your nervous system. If you’re not actively recalibrating your thoughts, your thoughts are running you.

Next time, we’ll explore the science of psychedelics, plant medicine, and brain health (one of my favorite topics 🍄🥰).

Until then, protect that beautiful brain of yours – it’s the seat of your consciousness, your creativity, and your one wild and precious life.

xo, Tracey

P.S. Yay for science! Here are some great studies I’ve seen recently: 

• Glp1s and lowered risk of dementia 
• Magnesium intake and lowered dementia risk
• Shingles vaccine and lowered dementia risk