• Question: how dose our body know what we want to do ?

    Asked by nancy627 to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Suzanne Harvey

      Suzanne Harvey answered on 24 Jun 2013:


      This is a very complicated subject! Your brain controls your body through the nervous system, when you want to move your hands to type like I’m doing now, the brain sends out electric impulses that move the muscles. Chemicals like hormones also play a part in this. Your brain doesn’t only control your body in a one directional way – when you’re hungry or thirsty, organs like your stomach and kidneys give out chemicals that tell your brain this. Most of the interactions between the body and brain are automatic and happen whether we’re conscious or not, like breathing and keeping the heart beating. If we had to think about this it wouldn’t work, you’d never be able to sleep!

    • Photo: Joanna Bryson

      Joanna Bryson answered on 24 Jun 2013:


      I think Suzanne’s answer is awesome. So read that first, these are just a couple additions. 1) my body doesn’t always do what I want, that’s normal, we can’t just fly or whatever, sometimes we are even clumsy. That’s because of what Suzanne talked about — controlling something so complicated as a body is very, very hard. 2) This is harder to explain, but you can’t split up wanting from your body — there isn’t one thing that wants and one thing that does. Your body & mind are all one beautiful amazing machine. The wanting is the knowing, and it’s done by your body (including the brain.)

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