Announcements
-Mary Beth Harper announced that Carol Crimi had back surgery last Friday and is recuperating at home. She is not allowed to drive and anyone wishing to help can contact Carol. In addition, she passed around a get well card for all of us to sign.
-Sherry Joy announced that our annual adopt-a-spot plantings at the Gazebo is this coming Saturday. Anyone wishing to help is welcome. Please meet Joe Marken by 9:30am at the Gazebo.
-Larry Lohman announced that there will a brief meeting following our regular meeting to determine what to serve as our entry for Grill for Good, Saturday June 10.
-Roger Sidoti announced that we are looking for volunteers to pass out books to students. There are two dates in June and two in July. He passed around a sign-up sheet for those interested, pointing out that Literacy was one of our prime missions.
President David announced that the Safety Town Committee will be meeting this Thursday 11:15 at the Board of Education office. This is open to any interested members. The goal is to finalize the presentation to the Kent BOE on June 20th.
Program
Dr. Tina Bhargava is a Kent native who completed her bachelor's in human biology and a master's in education (curriculum studies and teacher education) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She completed a doctorate in public health in the department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed her dissertation on "Cognitive Interference in Response to Weight Loss Stimuli in Individuals Participating in a Structured Weight Loss Program." This work examined the cognitive resource availability (i.e., “mental bandwidth”) issues that influenced success with a lifestyle change (weight loss) program. Dr. Bhargava has been on the faculty in the Kent State College of Public Health since 2012 and has led the teaching of the Health Disparities and Advocacy and Activism courses in the Public Health undergraduate program. Her research interests focus on educational equity and social equity as a foundation for health equity. Her current work examines the impact of differences in “mental bandwidth” on academic success and designing a “Bandwidth Toolkit” for faculty, to help them to reduce extraneous bandwidth demands in their courses.
Dr. Bhargava presentation served as an overview of “mental bandwidth” and implications for all of us. Some of her key points were the following:
-Mental Bandwidth is the moment-to-moment amount of conscious brain resources that each of us possesses. After a brief exercise involving the audience’s best guesses, she indicated that only 0.1% of our brain’s capacity is used for conscious thought and decision making. The other 99.9% are automatic and unconscious.
- She pointed out how we use that small amount of bandwidth for everything else, from deciding what to purchase, refraining from punching someone who angers us, to learning new things, to refraining from eating sugar, etc.
-Once we learn something, such as a new skill or information, it moves to automatic, increasing our .1% bandwidth for more activity. She pointed out how habits reside in the automatic and are difficult to break unless new neuropathways are created. This is facilitated in our conscious bandwidth, taking up space for other things needing conscious attention or an additional placeholder in our conscious bandwidth. Too many items needing attention at the same time creates strain on the capacity of our bandwidth.
-Things that contribute to a drain on our bandwidth include worry, physical health, mental health, financial insecurity, loss of belonging, chronic stress, etc. These take up considerable conscious bandwidth in our daily lives not allowing full attention to accomplish those things necessary. For students, this may mean academic failure or the inability to perceive success. These failures are more stress on the bandwidth and triggers our brain’s stress response.
-There are three stress responses from our brain. One is avoidance. We retreat, allowing ourselves to let work pile up (creating even more stress) and shutting down. A second response is flight. We immerse ourselves in binge watching television, drinking, drug usage, overeating, etc. A third response is fight. Everything becomes an “all or nothing” with no thought. Things are right or wrong, with no bandwidth left to think.
The long-term consequences of all these responses lead to chronic stress, worsening health, and giving up. At this point Dr. Bhargava provided some thoughts on what to do to keep a health bandwidth.
These included:
Strategy 1-Streamline Bandwidth: Avoid multi-tasking. Focus on accomplishing one task before moving on to another. Create clear objectives.
Strategy 2-Freeing Up Bandwidth: Limit the information overload. This is especially true through the various technology we have.
Strategy 3-Reduce or eliminate unnecessary demands on your bandwidth: Create conditions that move conscious decisions to the automatic side of your brain. Avoid those situations that encourage discarded behaviors, forcing your conscious bandwidth to do it.
Strategy 4-Bandwidth Self-Care:
1) Respond to everything with grace and compassion.
2) Eat, Sleep, Breath, and Move
3) Connect to your values and purpose.
4) Prioritize Joy and Savor Routines.
Remember that your cognitive resources are limited, but you can control them.
Responder: Kathy Myers was the responder. She thanked Tina for the presentation and for reminding us of those things we need to do in our own lives.
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