Colombian psychiatrist Pablo Gómez combines neuroscience and spirituality in his book ‘Train your brain to be happy’

With cases of anxiety and depression on the rise after the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as suicide in the world, especially among young people, mental health is an issue that is becoming more important, and more, after the alerts launched by the World Health Organization (WHO), for countries to take ‘urgent’ actions in this regard.

However, the health systems of countries like Colombia seem not to be prepared to face a crisis of these proportions, with short patient care times; Medication is usually the main and quick alternative, but without attacking the real problem in depth.

But, Specialists do not sit idly by, they look for alternatives to improve the quality of mental health.

This is the case of the Colombian psychiatrist Pablo Gómez, who has been sharing his knowledge through social networks, and now, in his book ‘Train your brain to be happy’, where he shows how neuroscience and spirituality can coexist, intertwine in a profound and transformative way.

In the book, he shows how in his consultations he explores the use of spiritual tools such as meditation, conscious breathing, compassion, forgiveness and gratitude, and demonstrates, with scientific foundations, how these practices impact the brain and improve people’s well-being.

The book is written as a conversation, explaining things to a patient, in the simplest way possible but without losing depthmanaging to create a guide on how to shape the brain, reprogram limiting beliefs and train the mind to establish positive habits.

It has been a lifelong discussion and we have always thought that spirituality is part of the kingdom of heaven and science is from Earth, but we are living in a very beautiful time because renowned researchers say that today neuroscience is not discovering many things, rather it is verifying or reaffirming, through new technologies, how all those practices that help us connect with what we call spirituality, really have an impact on our physical and mental health.

Gradually, science will have to open up to consider things that perhaps are not tangible and that we do not yet have enough tools to measure, but we are going down that path.

At the end of my rural year I saw a television program in Peru in which a man appears doing hypnosis, and although I thought it was all a lie, I bought a book on hypnosis, which was also written by an American psychiatrist, who at the time He was director of one of the most important psychiatric departments in Florida.

In it, many of the hypnotized people talk about experiences after death, which captivated me and I decided to study hypnosis, especially regressive hypnosis, focused on past life therapies. That is where I fully connect with the spiritual, which I define as being absolutely certain that I am not just a physical body, but that there is an energy within me and that it never runs out and has a purpose. A spirituality that is a powerful tool to help my patients.

The most valuable asset we have is the mind. If we use it well, it can turn us into whatever we want, but it is determined by all that history we talked about, so the proposal is to train the mind to be happy, and when I talk about training the mind it is to train attention, where the neurological part comes from.

There are established neurological pathways, like a so-called default network, which is in charge of generating thoughts all the time. When we believe that we are not doing anything, that network is doing a lot, with a lot of thoughts, which have their own characteristics.

Many of them are thoughts of the future but negative, loaded with anxiety and fear. Also thoughts from the past remembering the pain, and many times we deceive ourselves into believing we are thinking about the present, but we are criticizing and judging ourselves.

There are practices that allow us to observe thoughts. When I start to train my mind, have the ability to not be hyperreactive, to breathe, to observe and have the ability to look at what is happening, I can give a different interpretation and generate more productive behaviors that can help me be happier. .

The issue of attention is serious with all the technological stimuli that we have today, they have sold us the idea that we can do several things at the same time and that is a lie.

Multitasking is for computers, not for us, what we end up doing is dividing our attention, we do not do two things at the same time, we just jump from one to the other, which generates a lot of discomfort for the brain, unnecessary energy expenditure and increases the possibility of having errors.

When we activate the neural network of attention and are aware that we cannot maintain attention for more than 20 minutes, we can begin to generate the necessary changes to achieve greater attention, which means greater productivity, quality of life and greater happiness.

Techniques such as breathing, meditation and oriental practices such as Yoga and Tai Chi, which we saw as crazy or strange things, today neuroscience is saying that they do work a lot.

Meditation, for example, what it does is slow down that default network and activates the attention network, and to the extent that I activate it, I am modifying structures in my brain that have to do with that impulsivity.

Meditation has an impact on the prefrontal cortex, which is attention, and structures called amygdalae, which are not those of the throat, and which have the function of being attentive to the environment, to see where the threats come from, which is why , I always say that we live with tonsillitis, in a hysterical, hyperreactive, very dramatic way.