International World Toilet Day earlier this year sparked a super interesting memory for me on the importance and value of daydreaming.
I promise I’m not going to put you off your lunch talking about toilets ! But I might just give you some serious food for thought (excuse the pun) on how our minds work when we think they’re resting.
I remember many years ago a teacher friend of mine telling me she always came up with her BEST and most CREATIVE IDEAS to engage her newly acquired and most raucous class of teenagers in (not during planning meetings), but when she was sat on the toilet! Now lets just set the scene here to comprehend the scale of the task, because having two teenagers myself, I can appreciate it’s very difficult (bordering on impossible) to engage them in anything, other than snapchat, cash and the occasional monosyllabic “conversation”. So not great pre-requisites to kick start the G.C.S E history syllabus… particularly since this class additionally had a penchant for purposely launching small objects at each other blown through straws (remember bags of trillions?), amongst other acts of wilful mutiny; my friend had her creative work cut out for her for sure!
At the time I thought it was strange: how could sitting on the toilet be more fruitful to gain ideas to engage the “class from hell” in (her words), than a proper planning meeting?! In addition to the planning meetings at school, she’d sit at home, pen poised, determined to think of new and creative ways to engage her class in. But the BEST ideas she had she told me, came to her on a morning whilst sat on the loo! I never understood this.
Well, fast forward 25 years and I now have the answer to that conundrum! Scientists have discovered that parts of our brain are really ACTIVE when we’re quiet and relaxed, in those moments when we’re NOT deliberately trying to come up with an answer to something.
Research by neuroscientists Marcus Raichle and Gordon Shulman (and colleagues at Washington University St Louis) in the 1990’s, discovered a major system within the brain (a system within a system), which had been previously hidden. This part of the brain fires up and burns white hot when the brain is seemingly otherwise unoccupied, using more oxygen than a beating heart (Extract from New Scientist). It’s been termed by some as the “neural dynamo of daydreaming”. This daydreaming mode, when we’re not consciously focusing on something, allows the brain to subconsciously perform an “inner rehearsal” – considering our future actions and choices. But this part of the brain shuts off the moment we consciously begin to perform a task or consciously think about something else.
When we’re nice and relaxed and not focusing on anything in particular, we think our brains are relaxed too but they’re actually working really hard to figure out our future actions and choices about things, helping us to find solutions. For example, you’ve been trying to remember “that name” all day – but it only pops into your head later on when you’re not consciously trying to think of it!
Now for some of us sitting on the loo may not instigate the “neural dynamo of daydreaming” – particularly if you have small children who are banging on the toilet door and bursting in and demanding you wedge jeans on a barbie doll (I remember those days well).
But there are countless moments across our day when we’re not consciously focusing on anything, for example driving a regular route to work (you know, where you arrive at work and you can’t actually remember how you got there!), walking the dog, or even washing the dishes (do people still wash dishes?) … all of those super familiar tasks that you’ve done so many times you now do automatically, will allow those special parts of the brain to fire up and get to work on your behalf to help you find the answers you need across your day-to-day life…
Isn’t neuroscience wonderful!