Managing Pressure and Tension!

Most of you know of my passion for maternal infant health and my continuing studies to understand how to best support families. I was introduced to the term “Pruning and Tuning” by neuroscientist and author of The Nurture Revolution, Greer Kirshenbaum, PhD. Over the next months, I’ll be exploring this topic and how vital it is for living our best lives, for babies and for ourselves.

Pruning and tuning are essential brain processes that occur all life long, however they are central to an infant brain’s ability to grow and develop complexity as they begin engaging with us and their environment.

Pruning is the process of elimination of neuronal connections (i.e., synapses) that are un- or under-used.
Tuning is the strengthening of the neuronal connections, as in the adage, “Neurons that fire together, wire together”.

Well-tuned, oft-used neuronal pathways grow stronger, and their axons grow more insulation courtesy of a thicker, more well-developed layer of myelin, which increases the efficiency of transmission.

I invite you to think of the nervous system as a series of roads; imagine a well-used, well-maintained interstate highway compared to a back road, unpaved and mostly untraveled. These “back roads” will be pruned by the developing brain. In contrast, the highways will be tuned – cleaned, paved, repaved, and extended, and kept up to date to accommodate their frequent use.

This plasticity, this “use it or lose it”, is especially profound in infants, who are born with twice the number of neurons needed (Barrett, 2020, p. 51). This matters because it is this abundance of neurons that allows for the infant’s brain to respond to diverse environments.

Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy fosters relaxation, self-regulation, and efficient pruning and tuning of the central nervous system. Whether you are one (or younger!) or 100, we can all benefit from a healthy and harmonious central nervous system!

You are invited for a session in the studio on Union Square East.

New and of Note! Body-Mind Centering ® teacher, Nisha Kewalramani, and I have joined forces to offer Infant Developmental Movement classes at Stuyvesant Town’s Oval Kids for birth to walking. Please reach out if you or someone you know is interested!

Namaste,
Dr. Ellyce DiPaola