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A full mental range of motion

I attend a hapkido class and often have trouble with one of my elbows when put in an arm bar (a joint lock where the elbow is levered into hyperextension). I have fine arm fitness in general, but when the elbow is fully extended the biceps is at its weakest, and only the joint itself and smaller helper muscles keep the elbow from breaking. To address my issue, lately when training I’ve been putting extra focus on that part of the elbow’s range of motion, right near extension.

I mention this because even though it’s common advice to train muscles and joints through a full range of motion, lately I’ve started wondering whether that principle also holds true in other areas of life. Is part of good mental health the ability to use the mind through a “full range of motion”?

There is a stereotype of an older person who has gotten stuck in their ways, has become narrow-minded, and is unable to learn new things about the world. Good neuroplasticity is the opposite of that, with the brain able to keep adjusting its way of thinking and functioning as it encounters new stimuli. I think most people fall in the middle of that spectrum, where some neural pathways have settled into place while others are still mutable. How can we keep the brain as malleable as possible so it can keep learning and responding to life?

I watched a YouTube video a while back by memoircomics about routines, and how each time you do a series of actions in a row your brain reinforces that neural path so that it’s easier to do it again and again, until it can be done on autopilot. He uses the image of how a road eventually develops grooves in it where the wheels have worn it down over the years. Every time the road is taken, the wheels slot into those same grooves. Left alone, the brain will also tend to react in the same way as it has in the past, along whichever neural pathway is the most well-worn. Creating a new habit or forming a new mindset is like treading a completely new path by cutting through brush, rather than letting the brain slot into its ruts.

The part of the video I’m referring is from 5:23 to 6:30.

A brain that’s stuck in its rut is just like a body that can no longer function near its extremes – the one that has lost mobility, that can no longer stand up straight, that cramps before being stretched in the morning. Practicing moving one’s body in every plane and using the muscles through their full range of motion guards against that scenario. I think it’s possible to exercise the mind through its full range of motion as well.

Some examples:

  • Listening actively to an unfamiliar genre of music
  • Taking a new route home or visiting a new place
  • Speaking in a foreign language about a topic you do not have specialized vocabulary for
  • Approaching a social situation with a different mindset than usual
  • Spending time with people who are very different than you
  • Training motor skills outside one’s expertise, like playing a new instrument or sport

I want my mind to be flexible and adaptive rather than rigid or brittle. Takuan Sōhō writes in The Unfettered Mind that as soon as the mind catches on something and gets stuck there (or, to use his phrase, when it finds an “abiding place”), it can no longer react properly to its environment. He also writes:

The mind that becomes fixed and stops in one place does not function freely. Similarly, the wheels of a cart go around because they are not rigidly in place. If they were to stick tight, they would not go around. The mind is also something that does not function if it becomes attached to a single situation.

This is from William Scott Wilson’s translation, which is available as a pdf online.

Takuan was writing around 1600 CE but this still holds true. Allowing the mind to adapt and move freely rather than fixating on a certain thing or way of doing things is analogous to keeping the mind mobile through its full range of motion.

At this point I’ve stretched the metaphor enough so I’ll leave it there, and end by saying that I want to keep finding new ways to expand my worldview. There are things I’m able to believe or accept now that I wasn’t able to in the past, and I hope that the mental roadblocks I currently have will gradually get cleared as well in the future. But I will let the White Queen have the final word since she may have said it best: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” What an expansive view of the world…