Brain, Mind & Mental Functions
“Be brain warriors — remember, mental chatter is fake news.”
— Srikumar Rao
Our brain is the organ of learning, loving, and behaviour. When it works coherently with our chemistry, we experience greater vitality and quality of life. Mental Fitness Education has arrived to help us understand and care for this system through curiosity, awareness, and repeated practice.
Brain, Mind & Mental Functions
“To feel our own vitality, our own aliveness — that’s as close as we can get to understanding the authentic self: to be alive in a living, sensing, feeling, knowing body.” — Peter Levine, PhD
When our brain and nervous system is working coherently — in a sweet symphony with our chemistry — we experience our humanity more fully and enjoy a higher quality of life.
We are born with our own human-wide web: the nervous system. This extraordinary system gathers vast amounts of information, sorts it, stores and retrieves it (as memory), and continually directs healing, reconditioning, and regeneration — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These systems are designed to work remarkably well when we take responsibility for their care.
Mental Fitness Education exists for exactly this reason.
The Recipe for a Healthy Brain
1. Oxygenated Blood Flow
Sufficient oxygenated blood flow is essential to deliver nutrients to the brain and remove metabolic waste. We begin with correct nasal breathing, using the lower lungs to increase volume and flow. Movement and exercise further enhance circulation and brain vitality.
2. Curiosity & Awareness
Loss of curiosity — and the absence of exploration and novelty — is associated with brain shrinkage over time. Curiosity and awareness are beginner tools in mental fitness. Exploring new ideas, sensations, and experiences is not a luxury; it is fundamental to brain health.
3. Practice That Builds Capacity
Education, mental exercises, and regular practice create a stable foundation. Think of it as a three-legged stool:
Kindness/Deep care
Awareness
Repetition
Remove one leg and the stool becomes unstable. Awareness without kindness becomes harsh. Kindness without awareness lacks direction. Repetition without either loses meaning. Mental fitness, like physical fitness, is built through practice — and the outcomes are the same: strength, flexibility, and resilience.
Reframing Pain
Acute pain has a clear biological purpose: it alerts us to injury or potential tissue damage. Chronic pain, however — often described as pain without purpose — carries no such benefit. It does not aid healing, even though it may persist for months or years after the original injury has resolved.
Chronic pain is best understood as a system issue: a wiring or signalling fault. Signals fire at the wrong time, in the wrong context. Much like sunburn that continues to hurt after the sun exposure has ended, the nervous system holds the memory and replays the experience.
Mental fitness approaches chronic pain through education and skill-building. By learning how mental functions operate — and by practising intentional mental activity — we can influence neurotransmitter patterns and reduce chronic muscular tension. Over time, any patterns that do not serve us begin to loosen their neurological grip.
With patience, care, and repetition, new neural pathways form — and with them, a shift in lived experience.
Don’t be surprised if, as mental fitness grows, your personality begins to change. Personality is simply how we think, feel, and act — and all three are shaped by the brain.