Here’s an additional link about the related topic of Candy Crush addiction. You can stop. I believe in you. http://candycrush-cheats.com/candy-crush-addiction-science/

I didn’t have a day job or much of anything to rush off to in the mornings.
I was sleeping by myself.
The room was quiet until I woke up (no alarm, pet noises, noisy neighbors)
I was able to sleep for long periods of time (around 8hrs)

Ok now it just sort of sounds like I’m bragging… but really, I just want to keep a record to remember how it happened!  Additionally, the fact that I was in a city that I love and see as a sort of escape and refuge probably had a lot to do with feeling free enough to relax and listen to “the mornings”. Something seemed to pop out of the muckedy muck. I’d been stewing on some of the questions for a long time but others were just from the day before. I’m noting this experience as somewhat of a tool for myself to try and reinforce in my regular non-touring/visiting life. I want to be able to bring it in to my everyday sleeping. Although, vocabulary like this (taken from the aforementioned post) makes me nervous,

“But some scientists are pushing the notion of enhancing learning through dreaming even further, asking sleepers to mentally practice skills while they slumber.”

To me there is a sense of “Good god! Just sleep and frickin’ RELAX! Thats why it’s working!” I get a bit riled up when it sounds like this process is going to be taught and packaged as just another get smart fast or “train your brain! buy our $300 software!” performance enhancement trick. I want to give my brain space for congealing, not force it. Because who knows what you are inhibiting by trying to control your dreams.

But Hildegard had a completely different idea than our mechanical model of the body. The idea was that the body is like a plant and that the doctor is a gardener of the plant — this, as opposed to the idea of the body as a machine and the doctor as a mechanic. The fundamental difference is that someone has to fix the broken machine, but a plant can heal itself. And that healing power of the plant is what Hildegard called it its ‘greening power.’ She thought that human beings had the same kind of innate healing power and that, therefore, the doctor was more of a gardener whose purpose is to cultivate that healing power — to nurture it, remove obstructions to it and fortify it.

I was brought back to the story from The Brain That Changes Itself and how Paul Bach-y-Rita stayed with his father after his father’s stroke. He helped him to rehabilitate and learn well, basically everything again. How to walk from crawling. Have you ever met a doctor who seemed like they had that time? Let alone to follow up on that weird thing on your back? I believe that they exist and this interview (and sounds like, book!) supports that theory.

Anyway, that paragraph echoed the beauty I felt when I first read about Neuroplasticity. Bodies knowing how to heal themselves, but needing time, space, and help to do it. We are awesome! Brains are awesome!!! Onward!

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To more communicating soon and often,

Becky