Tara Swart – Where Neuroscience Meets Spirituality and Her Three Tips to Rejuvenate The Mind
FROM MEDITATION TO MINDFULNESS, DR. SWART KNOWS EXACTLY HOW TO HACK YOUR BRAIN.
The brain is a powerful thing. That’s brilliant when it’s on our side – but when it’s not, that’s where day-to-day life can get tricky. Doctor Tara Swart has spent her career trying to help others sit in the former category.
Taking the practicalities of neuroscience and weaving them into the nuance of tried-and-tested spiritual tools, Swart’s holistic approach has made her a superstar in the wellness world. Not only has she held coveted residencies at London’s exclusive member’s club Annabel’s and the Corinthia Hotel, but her book The Source has helped thousands of readers hack their own minds to find their authentic selves.
Today, Swart balances hosting her hit podcast Reinvent Yourself with Dr Tara with her role as a professor for MIT Sloan Executive Education. No biggie. A bonafide brain guru like herself is, unsurprisingly, in high demand – as are her lessons for reshaping and rejuvenating the mind.
Do spirituality and neuroscience really mix?
First thing’s first: sometimes, spirituality is no match for cold, hard, 21st century medicine. But Swart isn’t pretending otherwise.
Her ethos is that several spiritual concepts are actually rooted in scientific fact. She’s all about mindfulness and the idea of neuroplasticity – AKA the brain’s ability to change throughout our lives, impacted by our daily experiences. By remaining mindful and reducing stress, we can make our best selves a reality; and it just so happens that several spiritual practices do both of these things.
Ready to tap into your mind’s true potential? Here are Swart’s three biggest tips to give your brain a boost.
Tip 1: Connect with your body
Turns out there may be more truth to the phrase “you are what you eat” than we thought. Swart is a huge proponent for taking a step back and looking at how the rest of your body – particularly your gut – links to your brain.
“If you’re stressed, that has a big impact on your gut. If you are malnourished, or you eat processed food, or you drink alcohol, or you take antibiotics, then the impact that has on your gut then affects your brain just through the nerves. It’s through chemical messaging, it’s through hormones, it’s through other nerves.” – Dr. Tara Swart, PhD
Swart’s number one recommendation is something you’ve probably heard before: eat more vegetables. However, unlike your parents’ vague reasoning that “they’re good for you,” her reasoning is backed by a far more scientific explanation. Eating foods that ‘feed’ the brain will help it function better in the long run. For example, the brain is primarily made of fat and water, so we should eat more foods rich in good fats – such as salmon, avocados, or olive oil.
Connecting with your body goes far deeper than eating well. Swart is big on the idea of listening to your gut emotionally, not just physically. “Wisdom and lessons that you have picked up throughout life, but cannot consciously remember, are stored in neurons in your limbic system (intuitive) and your gut neurons – hence the term ‘gut feelings,’” she previously told Symprove.
Swart stresses that these instinctive responses to situations in your day-to-day life shouldn’t be ignored. Instead, we should try to think about our body’s response with a logical mind, and use techniques such as journaling to hone our intuition.
Tip 2: Meditate, meditate, meditate
Anyone who’s ever been stressed, ever, has probably been told to meditate at some point in their life. Swart wholeheartedly endorses the practice, but has a very specific preference in technique: vipassana meditation.
Unlike other kinds of meditation, this ancient Buddhist practice encourages you to focus only on your inner self. No reflection, no explanation – just a true, impartial observation of you. Swart explains that this can “reduce stress and anxiety by modulating the amygdala, the brain’s fear center” and “enhance connectivity between the prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive functions and emotion regulation.” Or, in layman’s terms, it can quiet the mind, help you live in the present, increase awareness, and even boost your physical health.
Tip 3: Manifestation and visualization
The internet is obsessed with manifestation – and, so it turns out, is Dr. Swart. Her approach, however, has much less to do with the sudden, magical realization of your wildest fantasies, and more to do with combining your actual goals with the right actions to make this a reality.
“The law of attraction is strongly connected to us aligning all of our brain power. It describes the way that we can create the relationships, situations and material things that come into our lives as a direct consequence of the way we think and the subconscious beliefs that underlie that. We ‘manifest’ them by focusing on them, visualizing them becoming true, and directing our energy towards them through our actions.” – Dr. Tara Swart, PhD
In other words, things won’t just happen because we want them to and use a manifestation sound on TikTok. Instead, we need to keep our goals in mind and consciously take small, productive steps to achieve them – thus eventually manifesting them into existence.
The Bottom Line
Swart recommends aids like action boards to make the process easier (not to mention more fun). Think of this as an über-functional scrapbook, made up of images of everything you want to achieve. These visuals have a habit of sinking into our brain, which then starts to make subconscious decisions with these goals in mind. Smart.
WHATS UP NEXT …
