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Last weekend, as usual, I was watching the morning news channels with my coffee—not the best formula—coffee increases heart rate and wakes me up to all the negative stories and images of a world in chaos. My mirror neurons and emotional centers naturally get triggered and increase my ‘freeze-fight-flight’ response that cascades the powerful emotions of fear, anger, and confusion.

Playing on another channel are the Rio Olympics. In a moment of mindful, wish-driven action, I refocused my attention to click my remote button and transport myself from the bloody battle ruins of Syria, the floods in Louisiana, the wild fires in Portugal to the start line for the 100 meter trials and watch Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, take an easy qualifying sprint. Next came my favorite, the discus throw—watching Christoph Harting (Germany) win the event with a lofty heave of 68.37 meters (224+ ft) was amazing. I was a track and field athlete, specializing in the discus throw, as a high schooler—and for a moment my mirror neuron system allowed my brain/body to re-experience winning the Gold Medal for my district in Texas and taking 5th at the Regional meet.

After that very brief mindful input of positive stress in sport—watching human bodies that have trained so diligently win their competitions—my freeze-fight-flight physiology was switched to excitement, motivation to do better, and wonderment at the human miracle.

Our brain craves novelty, challenge, and is driven by curiosity. The ‘voyeur’ brain is easily drawn to destructive action—hence the popularity of War Gaming and the motive for news media to stream endless hours of human destructiveness and misery.

The consequences to the brain for chronic consumption of stress imagery on TV loaded with negative emotions can result in toxic stress—a hormonal imbalance that compromises virtually all of the vital organs, especially the brain.

Transforming negative stress to positive stress is literally a brain circuit switch that requires mindful input to refocus away from the negative stress toward a positive stress.

Another way I protect my brain/body from the TV’s mindless stream of political negativity and conflict is with a store of recorded programs on art, nature, food, culture on my DVR. After Rio, I turned to a program I had recorded, ‘Brilliant Ideas,’ featuring Ahn Kyuchul , a brilliant Korean artist-author-philosopher, who inspired the artist in me to write this blog post.

Art and sport offer us creative ways to use human stress hormones and mindful practice for global connectedness. The ranting politicians, mindless terrorists, and destructive use of our inventiveness to hack each other demonstrates that more attention is given to human destructiveness than to human creativity.

There is little doubt that the future of our individual bodies and our global culture is teetering at the tipping point between mindless toxic stress and its emotional twin—anger, fear, confusion—and mindful positive stress with its radiant glow of excitement, connectedness, and creativity.

What state is your body in? With your mindful effort, you can always flip the switch!