“Static on the Brain” – What It Is, What It Does, and What We Can Do About It

“If You Can’t Be a Good Example, Then Be a Horrible Lesson”

There’s a woman in my life who is fundamentally sweet.

She’s intelligent. She has some sense of life-purpose. She has a number of very admirable habits, not the least of which is that when she puts herself together, she’s remarkably polished and attractive.

Yet she has a “habit” – actually a set of habits, all drawing from a single basic thought-pattern – that have (until recently) driven me to distraction. (Not to mention to a bad temper, etc.)

She has what  I call “static on the brain.”

“Static on the brain” manifests in many different forms.

For example, when she built a fire in the fireplace this last December, she ignored the word from myself and others that the fire needed to be built slowly. She put together a huge bonfire’s worth of logs, and lit the match. And yes, the flue was open.

But in this case, with a cold winter’s day and a two-story, very cold chimney flue, the fire caught just fine. And billowed smoke into the entire house. I’m still cleaning and repainting the living room (including the ceiling) as a result of her efforts.

If this were a one-shot thing, that would be one situation. But it’s not. This is a woman who can’t learn how to recycle, despite repeated demonstrations. (Throwing out an entire bag of limp spinach, instead of putting the spinach into the compost and the clean bag into the garbage … one of a couple dozen examples.)

Her common response is, “I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”

Right. Thinking. It’s a survival skill.

So What Is “Static on the Brain”?

“Static on the brain” happens when we have so many conflicting, low-grade, randomly-jumbled but non-productive thoughts that what would seem to be “common sense” simply isn’t common any more.

Another Horrifying Example (Especially for Dancers)

Years ago, I had a student. This woman was very intelligent; she held a high-status job. She was pursuing her Ph.D. She had a sense of elegance, flair, and drama. In short, she had a lot going for her.

But when it came to dance – she simply couldn’t “get it right.” When doing any choreography, if she was supposed to turn left, she’d turn right. Or vice versa. Or simply – stand there in the midst of “brain static.”

This wasn’t a matter of being clumsy. It was a matter of having so many little interfering thoughts going on that she couldn’t function well in dance. And if we stripped away the protective cover, it was (sadly) obvious that she wasn’t functioning well in life, either.

How Do We Get “Static on the Brain”?

We get “static on the brain” by having a chronic pattern of not only lots of distracting and undisciplined thoughts, but also a pattern of negative thoughts.

When this latter woman was in class with me once, she said, “Let me tell you about this horrible thing that happened to me recently.”

“It’s really important that we focus on positive things,” I said.

“Yes, of course,” she replied. “And let me tell you about this horrible thing … ”

Sigh.

This was a woman who just wasn’t going to get it. No amount of coaching, no amount of pointing the direction, was going to make an impact in her life, simply because she didn’t want to make a change.

She didn’t last long in dance.

And today, she is probably making left turns when she should be making a right, or getting into a situation in which an intelligent response is required, and simply – sputtering in static. Now that is something “horrible.”

How Do We Deal With Static on the Brain

We’ve all got it. To some extent, each of us has “brain static,” and it affects our lives – more or less significantly and profoundly.

If we’re going to dance fluidly, gracefully, and effortlessly, we need to minimize brain static. (Sure, we’d like to eliminate it completely, but let’s focus on goals that can be achieved within this lifetime.)

I’ve had (and undoubtedly still have) “brain static” as much as the next person. A while ago, my life was going “down the tubes.”

After more than a year of teaching myself marketing (post launching my latest book), I’d had a whole lot of discouragement. My self-talk reflected that. There were more stressful situations – a tooth that looked like it would need a root canal. Financial challenges. Housemate challenges. And then – my daddy died.

Shortly after, there was the fire that “smoked us all out.”

One of my students – wise and compassionate beyond her years – pointed out that that the fire was necessary in my life. It was “cleansing.” It was “purifying.” (She is deeply steeped in the Hindu religion, and I was learning a lot from her about what profound wisdom and insights this religion offered.)

I sighed and agreed with her, and tried to keep what she was saying in mind as I scrubbed and repainted yet another wall in the living room.

But she was right. The fire was cleansing and purifying, because something within me had to get burned away. It was my own “static on the brain.”

I knew that I had to make a change; a real significant one.

So (and wow, doesn’t the Universe/Source/Higher Power/God really provide for us?), I was commissioned by a very dear friend and renowned spiritual teacher, Alice (“Alicja”) Jones, to help her get her latest book ready for publication. This book – soon to be available – changed my life. Own Your Power is like an approachable, easy-to-read-and-assimilate version of A Course in Miracles. And the core lesson in both?

Forgiveness.

Yup, hard-core spiritual stuff. Forgiveness. And also gratitude. And giving love.

The lesson from all of this?

The basic, fundamental spiritual lessons (forgiveness, gratitude, giving love, etc.) have a powerful influence on our energetic anatomy.

Specifically, forgiveness can remove “static on the brain.”

It’s like bathing corroded electrical parts in a solution that washes off all the corrosion, leaving them sparkling-clean and highly functional once again.

So an immediate result – from both my daddy’s death, the fire that “smoked us out,” and what I’ve learned through spiritual teachings – is that to be effective dancers (and effective in life), we need to bring spiritual principles into action.

We need to forgive, have gratitude, and give love.

Believe me, I am still learning and re-learning these lessons.

Because of this, I’ll be including them in curriculum and reference materials, on an ongoing basis. After all, “We teach that which we have to learn.”

In the next blogpost, I’ll provide links to and summaries of some of the books that have been most influential and useful during this turn-around time for me. These have held the core lessons that have helped me start washing the “static” out of my “brain.”

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Very best wishes as you use Oriental dance (belly dance) to create an increasingly calm, centered, focused, and totally glorious springtime, with little (if any) “static on your brain”!

Yours in dance –

Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!

Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!

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