Monday, October 3, 2011

Best Exercises for your Brain

Brain, the thinking organ of the human body, has the ability to incessantly adapt, learn, and rewire itself from beginning in the womb to the entire life. The growing and the learning abilities of the brain are due to its interaction with the world through acuity. Nowadays, there is loads of importance on staying physically healthy. However, we should also be worried about our mental well-being. The more we pay attention to our brains, the superior thinkers we become. It is essential to exercise our brain in order to remain sharp. Brain stimulation improves the brain function; in fact protects us against cognitive decline. Brain stimulation or brain improvement exercises are a well-liked way of getting up to speed in this modern world of high technology.

Best Exercises for your Brain

Exercises for Brain

On aging, the memory retaining power of the brain gets reduced; one becomes more forgetfulness and absent minded. To keep the brain active, one should perform brain exercises, which boost the memory and sharpness of brain. Most of brain training exercises stimulate our brain to strengthen old neural pathways or grow new ones. To stimulate new growth in the brain, the most important key is to try new things. Here are some simple brain exercises that will surely increase your memory and acuity.

Physical Exercises

All of us know that physical exercises are good for overall health. However, they are also good for our brain as they increase the blood flow to the brain.

1, Walking
As you walk, more oxygen and more glucose reaches to your brain along with the blood flow. It increases the energy production and the removal of the waste. That’s why it helps you think better by clearing your head.

2, Chill Out
Brain has more catching ability when it is in relaxed state. From your busy schedule, take some time every day to breathe deeply or meditate. Meditation raises the thickness of the cerebral cortex and promotes more connections between the cells of brain; all of which boosts the memory ability and mental sharpness.

3, Morning Exercise
In each morning or after sitting for an extended period of time, do this exercise; slowly start to move your toes - wriggle, scrunch, and stretch. As you wriggle your toes, it will activate nerves which stimulate your brain and internal organs.

4, Play ball
Ball playing is very beneficial for the brain. Throwing a ball in the air and then catching it improves the hand-eye coordination of person. Trying your hand at juggling offers extensive brain health benefits.

5, Peripheral vision exercises
Acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter of the brain is very helpful to improve the memory. You can reinvigorate the release of this neurotransmitter by practicing peripheral vision exercises. Stare straight ahead for quite a few seconds without moving your eyes. Try this exercise when you are sitting at some place such as the local park, a restaurant, or a bench at the mall.

Mental Exercises

Similar to the muscular strength, memory needs you to “use it or lose it”. The more you exercise your brain, the better you will be able to perform. The best brain exercising activities are those which break your routine and challenge you to develop and utilize brain pathways. The activity should be new and challenging that takes some mental effort. Additionally, it should be more interesting so that you can stay engaged in the activity.

1, Learn a New Language
Learning a new thing either a language or new computer system can stimulate development of neurons and enhance your brainpower via several ways. Learning a new language boosts your creativity, mental flexibility, memory, speed, and problem solving skills as it is one of the most complex subjects that challenge your brain.

2, Engage in Debates
You will have to think creatively when you involve yourself in a healthy discussion or debate as you have to analyze different points and concentrate on what everyone else is saying. It strengthens your nerve cells, stimulates blood flow as well as activates both the logical and the imaginative aspects of your brain.

3, Play Chess
The most popular and olden form of strategy games, chess is also a scientifically suggested brain exercise. Application of logic and creativity, careful analysis; all are required at the same time while playing such games. To enjoy chess and such kinds of strategy games with other players, you can join social clubs or even play these games online.

4, Dispose of your calculators
Don’t use the calculator or computer to do simple calculations; in its place use your mind to do most of mathematical calculations whether it is calculating your daily expenses or calculating the total cost of your groceries.

5, Memorize your shopping list
Use your mental notepad for making a proper list of all the household items that you require for the month. The best way to make a mental note of things is to go into each room of your house, and take note of each thing you need to buy. For example, imagine yourself in your kitchen, cutting vegetables; visualize that you are replacing the toilet paper and so on.

Simple Ways to Remember Things:

To make memorization very easier and simple, you can use mnemonic devices that help us to remember the information with a visual image, a sentence, or a word.

Visu­al­iza­tion
5-minute visu­al­iza­tion with reg­u­lar and deep breath­ings, remem­ber­ing times in our past or see­ing beau­ti­ful land­scapes in our mind’s eye is very helpful to manage the stress. Also, you can associate a visual image with a name or word to help you memorize them better. If you want to remember the name Rosa Parks, visualize the picture of woman sitting on a bench of park encircled by roses.

Acrostic / Acronym
If you have difficulty to memorize any sentence, then create a sentence in which the first letter of each word represents the initial of what you desire to memorize. Similarly, you can use an acronym to remember some key words or ideas. To memorize the names of the Great Lakes such as Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior, remember the word “HOMES” only.

Chunking
A long list of numbers or other types of information are broken into the smaller with the help of chunking. To remember a 10-digit phone number, break it down into three sets of numbers; for example: remember 555-867-5309 instead of 5558675309.

Brain Exercises video from Youtube:

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