Hi, and welcome to the In The Cortex podcast.
We are your hosts.
I'm Paloma Garcia.
And I am Danny Parakoni.
And we're the founders of In The Cortex, an online community with programs that show
people the tools that they need to change their lives, their brain reorganization, no
medication, just movement.
When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start
to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life.
And now, on to today's episode.
Let's start out with a quick cortex moment from one of our members.
My name is Louisa.
I am a mother of four boys.
And my in the cortex moment was when I realized how much the program had given me and how
much it had helped me.
I was going about my day when my seven-year-old at the time burst into the room and he was
just having a huge reaction and all the big feelings were coming out.
And normally, I would feel like having a big reaction to my child's big reaction.
And then things would just kind of spiral.
And instead, I found myself kind of checking in calmly on how I felt it would be best to
help my son work through the situation that was causing big feelings for him.
I was able to stay emotionally regulated and then help him come to that place with me peacefully.
And in that moment, I was realizing that I was being the parent that I try to be, that
I've always wanted to be, and whatever the outcome was from there, that I was going to
be able to deal with it with feelings of peace and resolve and in a way that I could feel
happy about and feel like I had been the parent and the person that I wanted to be in that
moment.
As a parent, life can just be so overwhelming, but I didn't have to feel overwhelmed anymore.
The chaos didn't just take me down and I felt peace and steadiness and the ability to make
decisions and have solutions.
And it's just made all the difference in my life and in our home.
Okay, today we are talking about why brain reorganization.
So let's do a little recap of how the brain organizes itself, how the primitive brain
develops and what movements are necessary.
If you've been following us for a while, you've probably heard this spiel before, but we're
going to do it really, really quick, I promise, in the first year of life.
Actually, from the time babies are in the womb through the first and sometimes second
year of life, we're all designed to do certain movements that develop the primitive parts
of our brain.
The primitive brain is super, super important for a bunch of our automatic functions.
So that goes from everything from producing dopamine to blinking, digesting, just so
many things that we have to do automatically on a day-to-day basis.
Why do they have to be the automatic so that our higher centers of the brain can focus
on what we're doing here and now?
All of the things that we want to actually do in our life, our logical brain, that's
what we wanted to focus on.
So the movements that are necessary in that chunk of our life are creeping, develops the
ponds.
Creeping is when you're on your belly, you do that kind of army crawl situation.
Then crawling develops our midbrain.
If you want to learn a little bit more about those two, go back and listen to our two previous
episodes.
And then at the same time, babies are constantly doing all these really, really important movements
that integrate their primitive reflexes.
We'll touch on that more in detail in a different episode.
But that's just kind of to get kind of light of foundation, so to speak, for the episode
is really so much of our primitive brain development is dependent on movement.
And that is what the rest of our brain development is dependent on.
So it goes movement, develops a primitive brain, and that makes it so once it's fully
developed, your cortex, your logical brain and higher thinking is able to take over,
want to live your life, which is in the cortex.
Exactly.
So now we're going to talk about what are some of the things that could be interfering
with those movements Paloma just talked about.
And let's be honest today is a totally different world than we have ever experienced as humans.
We've mentioned this before.
And it's something to really help everyone understand that it's nothing that we're doing
wrong as a society on purpose per se, but there are consequences to some of the things
that we are doing.
And we're going to list some of them out here.
Real quick disclaimer before we get into that, we don't want anyone to feel any shame or
any hurt if they hear any of these things that we address and come across as being,
you know, pointing our finger at you and telling you should know better by now, because there's
things that Paloma and I find out every day, we're like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know that's,
you know, when that I could have known that information.
So please take this following information as just information.
It's we're educating you on what is getting in the way of natural brain development.
And there is something that we can all do this as a collective.
And so that's our goal here.
We are not to shame, but rather to educate.
So here we go.
The number one thing that we are doing differently is, and this is the kind of like the umbrella
to it all.
And so the first thing is we're so stressed, right?
In general, we are overly stressed in this world today.
We have so it's information overwhelm coming at us.
There is just so many things that we have to be doing to keep up with whatever's happening
in the world around us.
We're putting on so much stress into our lives.
So then we start turning to other options to reduce that load.
But when we start turning to other options, let's bring in the containers really quick.
The containers are a situation where we put babies in apparatuses to keep them entertained
so we can go work, so we can go clean the house.
We can go do all the millions of things that are being demanded of us because we don't live
in those villages anymore.
We don't divide up the workload.
So now us moms, dads, caregivers, we're taking on five jobs that should have been passed
down to the whole village, right?
And we all have our part to make it easier.
So now we're like, Hey, what can we do to shortcut this so I can go get all those things
done?
And then the other thing is happening.
If you walk into any baby store, you see you are completely inundated with the options
of what you can put your baby in so you can carry on with your life.
Now that's great in order to help what I just mentioned for you to be able to carry on with
your life.
But what's happening is that that baby is now neurologically upside down from the moment
a baby is born.
It is super important that a baby is on their belly.
That is the default position.
We shouldn't be clocking tummy time.
We should be putting babies on their bellies as much as possible.
Now we get it.
You don't always want to put your baby on the floor because it could be dirty, whatever,
but it's really important to know that that is the default position.
As soon as you put a baby into an apparatus, they are using muscles.
They are not supposed to be using at certain timeframes.
They are kind of just jumping over a giant developmentally.
But before we are needing to have babies go into apparatuses, let's talk about when babies
are coming into the world and how that process is looking.
We as a society are very disconnected from our bodies.
We are not able to feel and understand that.
So now we have lots of interventions in place, not saying that interventions are important
because there are definitely a time and place for it.
But I do think that it's another quicker way to just move the process along.
And I think that's the biggest thing is that we are just trying to speed things up because
it works better for our timeframe to keep up with the daily stressors.
And we cannot speed up the process of what humans were intended to experience.
And that is so important.
And the brain needs the time to experience all of these natural things of how we are
wired.
Coming through the birth canal is a super important process that sets up your proprioceptive system.
It gives you that time period to get acclimated from the comfy womb to now wherever you come
out into the world.
Things that are just getting sped up and there are consequences to it.
And we also want to talk about the toxins in the world and talking about the environmental
toxins, the food toxins.
We're talking about them being everywhere around us because again, making things shinier,
better, taste better, faster, all the things we have to keep hitting.
There's like a threshold that now we're surpassing as humans.
Like it doesn't taste salty enough.
So now we have to add more, whatever.
So there's going to be that constant increase because we've now lost.
We're at a touch really on feeling and connecting.
So we're always amping it up, right?
But this also is really careful because we don't want to go too far into all these things
because I know a lot of you hear a listening thing, oh my gosh, I didn't have a vaginal
birth or yes, I put my baby into a container or oh yeah, we don't eat the cleanest at home
and we do have Wi-Fi going on around us as like an environmental thing that's disrupting.
So our whole thing here is you don't have to go live in a bubble, okay?
Because I used to feel like that.
I was very much afraid of the world when I was pregnant with my first.
I was like, how can I bring a human into this super toxic place?
It's just so dangerous for him.
And I had to do a lot of emotional work and really tap into what was the root driving
my fear.
And I was really rooted in safety, which we'll talk about more later in other episodes, but
really that's the subconscious coming through.
There was other things that were really the root of that and I had to go there and that's
why I was so fearful on the surface of everything around me.
And now I can live at peace and harmony of knowing that we're living in 2023 and our
world is full of lots of different things and we're not accustomed to, but now I'm
at peace with it.
So that's one little quick bit.
We'll dive deeper into that later.
Yeah, and I think also in terms of all this stuff that's happening, like you said, we're
shedding light on it.
We're not, I mean, I was a total container baby and lots of people that I know have had
babies that were not delivered naturally and you have to do what you have to do at the
end of the day.
And that's the whole point is that we want to give people the tools and we'll talk about
that in a little bit later in the episode, but that's kind of what we're trying to say.
Because for example, another thing is screens and technology.
We've never grown up.
We didn't grow up as a society having this from the beginning of time.
This is something really, really new.
And the full effects of having screens at a young age has not even been fully 100% studied,
because not that many people, it's just time.
We have to wait until they're older and older and older to see what's going on.
But we know that that definitely has an impact on neurological development.
And then Trump, we're going to talk about that in another episode.
It's capital T or lowercase T trauma, but things that happen in our lives impact the
way that our brain is perceiving the world and whether or not our brain is going into
that survival mode or able to stay and rest and digest.
So our brain is constantly learning from our experiences.
So if we have traumatic things that happen, that always is going to interfere at some
point with our development or with our subconscious beliefs.
And a lot of the time, we don't know how to get out of it.
And what we do is we go to doctors and they prescribe things and that's great because
it makes you feel good in the moment.
And it makes you be able to operate in society and it makes you feel like, okay, I'm getting
rid of the challenge that I had.
The trouble is now you feel like you don't have any power, right?
You feel like you don't are not able to get to the root of things yourself.
And so you're putting your hand, throwing your hands up and just saying, okay, I'm going
to leave it to the experts, right?
And we're saying, I mean, we're experts in what we do, right?
We are the experts, but we don't want people to have to depend on us and have to spend
all this money going to all these different modalities and having to be in doctors offices
all the time, taking medication all the time, because the truth is that stuff wears off.
Whatever it is that you're doing, if your brain is still in survival mode, it's going
to wear off.
It's not always going to work a hundred percent, right?
And so that's another thing we wanted to talk about.
That goes hand in hand with all the increase in diagnoses and challenges that we're seeing.
So from one side, of course, diagnostic parameters have improved over the past years.
But on the other hand, the challenges have really, really increased as well.
Way more people have these challenges nowadays.
And we have to be realistic about, okay, yes, we had to do what we had to do.
Yes, whatever has happened has happened.
And now it's all about, let's get into how we can change, because this is the whole point
of our company is to show people that the brain can change and life can get easier.
You can take it into your own hands.
So no matter what it is that happened in your past, right now, if you decide, I want my
life to be better.
I want things to be easier for me.
I want ABC to not be my go-to MO, right, anymore.
I don't want to have the tantrums.
I don't want to have trouble with reading.
I don't want to do this and that.
This is the moment where you can take charge and that's neuroplasticity.
Yes, I love neuroplasticity with a passion in my whole being.
That's why we've committed so many years to this because we are products of it.
We have experienced all the things of the challenges and neuroplasticity has come to
the rescue in the sense that that's all wired into us.
We all have the ability to change our brains.
It is what our brain is designed to do is adapt.
And as our world is changing, so we need to step into that place of adaptation as well.
So the biggest piece here, and this is when Paloma and I go out and we share what we do
for work and we're like, oh my gosh, it's so amazing, cool.
You can change your brain at any time.
Oh, you can do this at home.
You don't need anybody.
You know, you can just do the videos that we provide.
Yes.
But the biggest part is then we're like, well, why aren't so many people doing it?
And the big thing is, is because change is scary.
Change is scary for so many people because we're stepping into an unknown because we
tell you, holy cow, you're going to start laughing more, sleeping better, staying more
focused, getting your stuff done, watching everybody around you go into a state of dysregulation
and you stay calm and regulated.
That's going to be the reality when you do brain reorganization.
And some people are like, I don't understand what that really means because for so long
when you go get diagnoses, when you go experience your challenges, you just become that.
You think that's your identity.
I always thought I was just an anxious person.
That's who I was.
But now that I've come out of it, I'm like, oh my gosh, I was never anxious.
That was just my brain responding to the stimuli around me because I didn't have the automatic
functions in place to do their job.
So then I had to compensate and I had to work harder.
And that was because I was a container baby.
My parents put me in a container because I had an older brother and we were living in
stairs and then we had carpeting in our house.
So we never had the slick flooring.
So I couldn't develop that certain part of my brain.
So that's the cool part is that you can go back at any time and change your brain.
The hard part is that you actually have to look at you and you got to put the spotlight
on you and you actually have to look at your behaviors, your patterns in life and say, is
this serving me, do I want to continue to be my story?
And that's where you really get to decide, do I want my life to be easier?
Do I really want to live my authentic life?
Do I really want to let my true self shine through or do I want to stay in the same patterns?
And we're here to tell you, you get to decide, but we're here to share with you that there's
options and there are choices and we can help guide you on that.
Yeah.
And that doesn't mean that once you're going to, once you reorganize your brain, life is
going to be perfect.
We're just talking about the options and our option works because we're going back to what
the brain always needed.
We're going back and setting that neurological foundation.
And we always say, we wish there were like a catalog of things you do to feel better,
to help yourself, to help your brain.
And the only appetizer is brain reorganization.
And then the rest are just up to you.
You can do any modality you want.
We do different modalities ourselves.
We do so many different things, right, to help ourselves be the best version of ourselves.
But we've seen it time and time again with our members and even with ourselves.
Even you can read the story of my brother.
It's on our blog.
It's on our website.
We've seen how if you try to do the other modalities with a disorganized brain, usually
parentheses, that means if the brain is disorganized, it's in survival mode.
Okay.
That means it's not regulated.
If you try to do the other things with a disorganized brain, it's just not going to work or it's
going to work for a little bit and then it's not going to work long term.
And so we're all about getting to the root so that we do see lasting change.
And that again, it trucks up to different personalities, right?
Some people are like, no, I'm good, like this way.
Thanks for nothing.
Bye.
But for us, it's about sharing the message that when you do decide to take that leap,
because I do believe, and you and I've talked about this, Danny, that people are getting
into this space where they're really wanting to feel better and really wanting to change.
I think we've said this before, the pandemic really changed the way that everybody looks
at everything.
And we're all kind of like, oh, okay, that's me.
That's the real me, right?
Because if not, you're distracted by school, by work, by your friends, by all the things
you have going on.
And we have this moment to kind of like, right?
Like retreat from all of society and people were like, whoa, okay, this is, I get to know
the real me and I will want to be able to show it to the world.
That's all those like memes about like, oh, I wish, I wish we had another pandemic so
I had an excuse to never leave the house again, like that kind of stuff.
Because you do feel more comfortable.
It's a safe space for you, right?
And there's just so much that we can do ourselves.
And so that's why we're all about not, you know, not looking into the fancy and expensive
treatments that, that that's not for everyone, right?
Some people can do that.
But again, if you don't get to the root, it's not always going to work 100%.
So we're committed to the growth.
And that's what brain reorganization really does.
It initiates that journey and it gives you that drive, right?
And in case you're wondering, brain reorganization, our program, and there's some modalities
out there, other programs out there that do the same modality or similar one is getting
back to the floor and doing those movements that you might have missed as a baby and looking
at which ones help with which different challenges.
And there's so much research out there about how our brain is meant to develop.
And so going back and doing that at any point in your life is an option because of neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is a reality throughout our entire lives.
It decreases, but it doesn't go what you're doing and deciding that is that helping me
or is that hurting me, right?
In the big picture, looking at yourself today and saying, okay, is this helping or is this
harming?
And sometimes you're going to say something and do something.
You're like, well, that's harmful, but I'm going to deal with it later.
And that's okay.
We have that space.
And we have that's, that's why we love doing it online.
If you're not able to do it right now, if you're like, this is too much for me, take
a little break, come back to it in a couple of weeks, couple of months, couple of years,
whatever it is, the point is we're putting this out there so that people can learn and
understand that life really can get easier.
And I'm going to share as I've been doing this work for 13 years, Paloma and I just
overhauled the program.
We've committed ourselves to going back and doing it with our members.
We have an accountability group that we are keeping everybody on track and doing our
brain work daily for.
And we're even blowing our own minds with like, whoa, I just noticed all these crazy
changes.
Like I just did, wow, my communication just improved.
I really was able just to let things go.
I noticed that in the past, I would have had this emotional reaction and now I just stayed
calm and I let that person let it out.
I didn't take it personal.
I knew it was their stuff.
My speech got clearer, it was more organized, more efficient, more focused and it's always
after I do my brain work and we're talking no more than 20 minutes a day.
So it's so doable, but it's really something where when you put in the time of doing the
20 minutes a day, then all of a sudden you catch yourself not having to go do the things
that you were doing before.
And we all fall into it.
So there's not any shame attached to it.
It's that here's another option to look at.
Here's a way to say here, I can go take control of my life.
For me, some of the changes that I've noticed are specifically with my perfectionism.
Because I have very, very, you deal with this all the time, Danny, perfectionist tendencies.
And I had already started to let go of it a little bit, but now that I'm restarting the
program, I'm like, whoa, like I'm surprising myself at the way that I'm dealing with things
and not even, it doesn't even cross my mind to like do the perfect thing or like do it,
you know, wait until it's like the specific moment that I wanted to do this perfect planned
out thing, whatever it is.
And I honestly hadn't even noticed how much I was doing it.
And then I started not doing it.
And I was like, oh my God, that's huge, because that's a big thing that since a little kid,
I used to, I've always done that.
So I'm really happy to be getting away from that because it did create a sense of like
dis, not discomfort, but disappointment in myself when things didn't work out perfectly,
right?
And I wasn't able to set something up perfectly and do it in a certain way.
So getting away from that has been huge for me.
And I mean, there's so many different changes that I felt throughout this entire thing,
not just now from restarting, but I think something really interesting is to look back
at kind of the way that society has evolved in this, in this way that we now want everything
to be instant.
We want it to be faster.
We want it to be bigger, faster, stronger, not to quote the song, but we want it to be,
you know, we want, we have these expectations and we keep talking about the expectations
from society in every episode because there just really is such an expectation.
And this is where we see the parents, for example, who are like, oh my God, my kid walked
at eight months.
That's amazing.
And so from that perspective, you're like, that's great.
So they're ahead of everybody.
They're going to be so smart.
They're going to be this and that.
But from a neurological perspective, we're like, no.
And it's funny because we made a tick talk about that and people were like, well, what
am I supposed to do?
Push my kid down on the floor and I'm like, no, we have different strategies.
And like we said, it's never too late.
So if your baby starts, you can wait for them to walk, do their whole thing.
And then once they're a little bit older, then you start to bring in the crawling, right?
Because you know that that's a milestone that they missed.
And that's kind of like the whole thing is like with, even with the containers, right?
Like it's, it's convenience.
And at the same time, it's reality, right?
A mom or a dad or a caregiver nowadays is going to have work.
They're going to have more than probably more than one can.
They have to clean the house.
They have to go get groceries.
They have to cook.
They have to do so many things.
And then the other, you know, parent, however the household works, you have to go off to
get make a living or go into your home office to make a living.
Like that does require your attention.
You can't also be hanging out with your kid all the time.
So we understand the reason for those things to exist, what we want is to show that they
are hindering certain parts of development and that there's something that we can all
do about it, right?
So that's the whole point of like talking about all of this is we are just so, so, so
go, go, go, go, go as a society.
But I will say I have noticed a very large trend all over the, you know, social media
everywhere.
And in people wanting to go back to those roots and truly trying to understand what it is
that they, they do still need and going back to movement, going back to being more intuitive
with who we are and more patient with ourselves.
I think that's another thing we learned from the pandemic is having patients for ourselves,
having grace for who we are and how we show up in the world and saying, okay, this is
me.
Now let me figure out how I can feel better and what I can, what I can do to help myself.
I love that.
It's like the pendulum always swings really hard one way and then it has to swing back
the other way.
So COVID like really got us to swing one way so far out of touch where we like literally
lost touch with everything.
And then we're like, well, let's get back to our roots.
And there's a giant like homesteading movement that everyone's like, let's go buy farms
and like start over.
Like that was a huge trend going on and it still is.
And so now we're starting to come back to like, but wait, we still want the conveniences
of every like modern day life.
And that's important.
We're not telling you to like never open a whole to screen, never let your kid go watch
a show.
We're just talking about let's look on the emotion you have towards it.
Cause I had a ton of fear of, oh my gosh, if my kids watch that movie, they're doomed,
they're going to be ruined.
They're never going to see life the same.
And I'm not saying go watch rated our movies, but I'm also like, I had to check my emotion
behind it.
And that's where I really worked on my fears and became at peace with there's balance to
everything.
You're never going to get the balance perfect, but you can say, Hey, we can do our brainwork.
We can go outside.
We can go do all the things, spend some quality time together.
And then we can watch a movie at the end of the week.
You know, so it's like, and it's not like we're only watching shows or, but if that doesn't
resonate with your family, then don't do that.
You know, or if you're a person who's like, no, this is how I want my kid to be.
That's fine.
We're not telling you how to parent your kids.
We're telling you this is the way that the brain needs to develop.
And if we skip it now, we're going to see it later.
We're going to see it when they're 20, when they're 30, when they're adults.
And that's our message now is that's what we've always said.
A dysregulated child with an underdeveloped brain goes into the world becomes a dysregulated
adult with an underdeveloped brain.
It doesn't just magically, magically come online.
I don't just magically end up not having these symptoms.
They shift and morph and become compensations to how you handle life and you can handle
life forever as long until it comes crashing down on you.
And like, and sometimes it happens sooner for people than others.
And that's that expectation piece.
That's the piece about like how you are expected to go from a child and you have certain, certain
things as a child that you're allowed to do that are maybe signs of a disorganized brain,
right?
But once you get to a certain age, you're supposed to just like automatically always
operate a certain way.
And that's where some of the compensations really start to fall apart for some people.
And for some people, it's sooner.
And honestly, sometimes we say it's a little bit of a blessing when you do start to notice
those challenges in a kid because you can address it now, right?
Because you can get to the root of it right now, get them to do their brain work now,
and then they won't be, they'll be set up for success later.
And we did our brain work 24 years old.
I mean, it's, you know, and your dad's doing it right now at 77, my dad's 66 and doing
it.
The point is that we want to create that space where you can go back and find what works
for you.
For you.
That's something we've gotten away from in this whole instant gratification society
is like, we have these standards and it's like, well, let me find out what works in
my life, in my brain.
I don't have kids.
I'm not worrying about that right now.
What about me?
Right?
I'm not even going to balance the brain work, the work, the social life, whatever it might
be, right?
And that's the whole point is it, if you have a disorganized brain, even finding that balance
is going to be really, really hard.
And looking at what we can do as a society to hold more space for people when they're
younger, hold that space for them to get, get it done, you know, spend time on the floor,
get that movement in when they are meant to do it.
You can always do it later.
But of course, it's going to be better if they get it done in the beginning of their
lives.
And I would just say, if we could wave a magic wand and get everybody's brains to where
they would be ideal, it would be looking at where are you, the person wanting and intending
to bring a new life onto this planet?
Where are you emotionally?
Where are you with your life?
How are you feeling with your brain before you bring somebody else on board?
And I thought I did a pretty good job of this before I had my first child.
I did not do any of the emotional work yet.
I did all the brain work, but turns out, surprise, you need to do a lot of emotional work on
yourself before you bring in kids into the world.
And oftentimes you don't even know what that means until you have kids.
So that's kind of tricky because your kids bring that out in you.
But if we could were, if we were to help this process of society, understanding what's going
on and slowing things down and helping us feel like we don't need to seek validation
to keep up with the pressures of the world, we would love for everyone to do this program
first before they have kids because it helps just to open up your minds to what's going
on with you, what's driving you.
And that does not mean all of a sudden, then parenting is easy.
That does not mean you don't face challenges.
It just means you're equipped now to work through them differently.
So we hope that that message comes through in this and we hope this was insightful.
And you just learned a little something here and there about brain development and our
mission here at In the Cortex.
So thank you for listening today.
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