A Mentally Fit New Year: De-Emphasize the Size of Your Thighs in 2011…and Zero in on Your Neural Networks.

Along with millions of other Americans, you may have decided to make fitness a bigger priority this year. That’s fine—but don’t limit your exercises to the gym! Author Patt Lind-Kyle explains why a training program for your mind might just be the best thing you can do for yourself.

It’s time for the annual “Fitness Resolution.” (Or should it be “Fitness Delusion”?) If you’re like most Americans, you’re fantasizing about a 2011 characterized by thrice-weekly gym visits, early morning jogs, veggie-centric meals, and—of course—a sleek new body by summertime. Yes, it’s a nice goal. But according to Patt Lind-Kyle, it’s an unrealistic one. First of all, you (at least the current you) are probably not going to do those things. But more to the point, you’re focused on the wrong problem.

Instead of JUST making physical fitness your New Year’s Resolution, why not ALSO aim for mental fitness?

“You can change your life in any way you want to change it,” says Lind-Kyle, author of Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain: Applying the Exciting New Science of Brain Synchrony for Creativity, Peace and Presence and mind training guide whose voice appears on the book’s companion CDs. “That applies to getting fit or quitting smoking or strengthening your marriage or whatever. But first you have to understand what’s at the root of your problems: your mind and the way it directs your brain to function—basically, where you place your attention.”

Lind-Kyle makes two critical points. One, the lifestyle habits that brought you to your current level of pudginess have carved neural pathways in your brain that can’t be changed by sheer willpower. (That’s why resolutions so often fail.)

Also, your body might not be what’s really making you miserable. Maybe you’re actually depressed, or bored with your life, or trapped in the past. It could be that your fitness failings are just a symptom of that—or even if they’re not, perhaps you’ve made your squishy thighs the undeserving scapegoat for your general unhappiness.

“The fact that people make New Year’s Resolutions in the first place—whether they’re about fitness or kicking addictions or getting out of debt—shows that many, many of us are dissatisfied with our lives,” notes Lind-Kyle. “And the key to changing your life is to consciously rewire your brain.”

Breakthroughs in scientific understanding have shown us that the brain is constantly rewiring itself in response to events in our lives. In fact, the human brain exhibits a high degree of adaptability, and can actually change the size and function of its structures by INCREASING the neuronal connections between different areas of the brain—a quality known as neuroplasticity. Lind-Kyle’s book and companion CDs apply this new science in practical ways, giving us a training program that will literally rewire our brains and repattern our behaviors, enabling us to consciously change mental frequencies.

According to Lind-Kyle, we must literally reprogram the neural networks through which information and energy flow. The key? Mind training.

“Over the years I have come to realize what immense power mind training has,” she writes. “Our minds can essentially be trapped by the ways in which they function, which can put us into frantic and depressed conditions. Mind training helps us focus our attention, quiets a scattered mind, and brings flexibility and clarity that enable us to see other options.”

Each structure of the brain is characterized by a specific brainwave, Lind-Kyle explains. For many people, one wave dominates the others, which leads to dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors. However, focusing on each brainwave separately through mind training eventually enables all of us to be aware of the four brainwave states, and to enable them to work in harmony with one another. Neuronal circuits fire in tandem, resulting in a state of whole brain-mind integration. This is called synchrony, which balances brain disharmony and produces a heightened sense of peace and awareness. When you open to brain synchrony, you will consciously begin to change the way you do things.