The brain is not a muscle, but it still needs to be trained for it to function perfectly. The more you use it, the more you are able to develop connections and skills capable of surprising. Suffice it to say that a real link between brain health and aging has been shown . Activating it in the right way, in fact, can bring about changes to the physical structure of the brain and therefore keep it awake and active .
The training of the mind , unlike the activities we do in the gym, can be done at any time . At the beginning it will be complex and many exercises will be tiring but with the passage of time, the mind will acquire the necessary elasticity to work better and in a more profitable and reactive way, bringing benefits even in everyday activities.
10 exercises to train your mind
Below you will find 10 tips for activities that serve to activate the brain and break the monotony to which it is often subjected. We will have new points of view and will acquire the ability to give new emotional facets to things , giving us the awareness that our brain has abilities and possibilities that until now we had underestimated.
- Combine words and colors
It is an exercise that will seem trivial but, once tried, its usefulness is understood. Just get some cards and colored markers. On each card you have to write the name of a color but using the ink of another color. Once finished, you have to read them quickly, being careful not to associate the color you used with the name. To do this you will have to concentrate, making the best use of your mental abilities.
- Swap right with left
Depending on which is your dominant hand, it is recommended that you try to write a few sentences every day using the other hand. At first you will be awkward and awkward but later on you will become more and more agile, with improvements in handwriting. And why not try to use your non-dominant hand in small daily gestures such as cooking, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, writing on your cell phone?
- Play Memory
Who does not remember one of the games that most of all entertained us during childhood and adolescence? It’s time to dust it off to play with friends, grandchildren or boyfriends / husbands. Matching identical cards, remembering exactly where they were placed, will help train memory and prevent brain aging. You shouldn’t be discouraged at the beginning, because you will improve game after game. It is also useful to try your hand at crosswords and sudoku puzzles.
- Have fun with numbers
Playing with numbers is one of the most effective ways to keep the brain active and make us more responsive to what is happening around us. In the book The magical power of numbers , the ChaSeo Rules Institute confirms how numerical codes are the basis of oriental medicine and how their connection with the nervous system has been demonstrated, stimulating the different areas of the brain and the sensory and cognitive circuits that connect them. with the various organs, thus allowing the modification and revitalization of neural connections.
“Numbers are the unit of transmission and measurement of every form of energy, both quantitatively and qualitatively. They play a decisive role since they represent the basic language with which the sensory-motor-cognitive-mnemonic circuit of the body is expressed »says the author.
It is enough to repeatedly read a few series of numbers against disorders influenced by the emotional state such as stress, insomnia, irritability, headache and fatigue.
It is also effective to count down , perhaps jumping from 5 to 5 or 7 to 7, or invent formulas to calculate in mind, or even perform simple multiplications between two-digit numbers. If this exercise is too complicated, just memorize the phone numbers , your social security number, the IBAN, or learn the alphabet backwards.
- Broaden the senses
Sight is the sense we use the most and it is also the most developed. However, it is important to activate and refine the others too, to allow us to train all the resources we have available. Just do small daily activities with your eyes closed, focusing on the other senses such as smelling nature, things and people.
A fun way is to wander around the house with your eyes closed in search of a sweater, take a shower, have lunch, or even just recognize objects that you touch or eat. The brain structures are in fact connected to our olfactory and gustatory receptors which are part of our nervous system.
- Write a short story
Reading and writing, as we know, helps to keep the mind active. But trying to write a story with just ten words, trying to make sense of what is produced is certainly not easy, but it allows you to use your creativity to the maximum .
- Observe (really!)
Often one looks but is not observed. How many times does it happen, after a meeting, to not remember how a person was dressed or the details of the place where we spent an entire evening?
To train, just take a photo from an interior magazine, perhaps full of details and objects, observe it for 30 seconds and then put it away, trying to write down all the objects you remember on a sheet of paper. Then try again immediately after with a new photo for 1 minute and you will see how the number of details you remember will increase!
- Look at objects in reverse
Cheating the visual memory allows you to give more stimuli to the brain. It is enough to take everyday objects and observe them in reverse. The brain will recognize the object in question but will notice a number of different relationships the object has with its surroundings.
- Brainstorm
Just take an everyday activity, such as opening a bottle, tying your shoes or making the bed and finding a new and creative way to do it. Indeed, not one, but at least twenty!
They don’t need to be actually feasible, just let the imagination travel. The mind, in this way, will be able to work without constraints deriving from coherence and logic, to which we are so used. The effort to construct mental images is a powerful stimulus for the brain and is a skill that hones and perfects over time.
- Change your habits
We often adapt to routine and things come automatically to us. Small tricks are enough to awaken in us that sense of alertness that makes us come to our senses from that mental numbness in which we sometimes find comfort, such as changing the path to go to work, replacing a Swiss ball for the chair or even buying “unusual” ingredients ”At the supermarket to create a menu outside the usual schemes.
