By Truett Jackson
Staff Reporter
As Wellness CNM continues to expand across CNM, opportunities are arising for students, staff, and faculty to not only keep themselves and their families safe, warm and fed, but also to understand how to take care of our minds and become better learners.
On a warm, beautiful Tuesday in mid-September, Donna Lucero, the Director of Training at All Faiths Children’s Advocacy Center, gathered with CNM students and Wellness staff in the Ted Martinez building at Main campus.
The lecture, presented by Lucero, which ran over the span of a long lunchtime, was an incredibly informative, deep dive into cutting-edge brain science on the human stress response system, and the importance of keeping said system regulated.
The way the brain is constructed, explained Lucero, starts from the bottom up, and from the inside out. There are essentially four parts to it: the brainstem/cerebrum, the diencephalon, the limbic, and the cortex.
Lucero taught that all information is essentially screened by the lowest parts of the brain, like a TSA agent does before letting someone fly, for any danger or possibility of threat.
If any threat is detected, be it real or perceived, the brain will go into either a fight/flight mode, which has us produce adrenaline and heightens senses, or it will go into freeze mode, which basically routes blood flow and energy to our core, putting us into a survival mode.
If our brain is in standby mode, or it is busy scanning for threats, the gathering, storing, and learning of information by the cortex is put on hold. Simply put, you aren’t going to retain any of the stuff you showed up to class for today if your mind is frazzled.
Through Lucero’s lecture, we learned that when we feel calm and safe, our brains are open to connection and ready to process data. This is known as being ‘regulated’, while a mental state of chaos, fear or paralysis is what is known as being ‘dysregulated’.
Lucero educated the group on what trauma cues are, which can be anything — a noise, a smell, a color; whatever our brain associates with a perceived threat, and that trauma comes back as a reaction, not a memory. Fundamental to Lucero’s philosophy is the idea that you need to first regulate, then educate.
Lucero went on to give the group tools to close the stress response cycle, and highlighted the importance of keeping one another regulated, as two dysregulated people trying to solve a problem together is difficult at best.
Regulating yourself via exercise, breathwork, laughter, or even a good cry keeps us open and ready to learn and developing ‘trauma-sensitive lenses’ that can help our student mind respond to adversity with empathy, compassion, and skill-building.
Lucero ended the lecture with a reminder that encountering a kind face and a soothing voice can dramatically alter the way we feel, and that aligned, focused attunement with others can shift us out of disorganized, fearful states and help us advance in life and thrive at CNM.For more information, or to request future guest lectures, students can contact Wellness CNM at 505-224-3000.
