Train your Brain - Yoga for the brain
Let's start with brain training in our guide to becoming a super-ager. You might think of brain yoga as something like brain jogging or number puzzles. However, brain yoga is a far more powerful tool in your journey to becoming a super-ager. Here you can learn how to stimulate your brain individually, effectively and with pleasure.
On the one hand, there is the possibility to train special functions. These include, for example, the following components:
- Thinking speed
- Absorption capacity
- Language ability
- Analytical thinking
On the other hand, there is the opportunity to train the brain as a whole in addition to these specific functions. This is where the term "Brain Yoga" comes into play. This puts the brain in a more open, harmonious and efficient state overall. Here we have the tried and tested breath and mind yoga: this is yoga with and for the mind, using mental techniques instead of yoga postures. If you want to be particularly effective, you can also choose newer methods that combine the best of different mental techniques, such as the "Superbrain Yoga" method, which combines acupuncture and prana activation training (via the breath). Click here for the exercise!
NeuroNation: The latest craze among apps
In recent years, intellectual brain training via app has become popular, which is quite practical. This means that the smartphone sparks another new benefit for the advanced age group. When it comes to intellectual brain training, the NeuroNation app offers an incredible number of options that can be customised. The courses and exercises for concentration and increasing skills are already great, but what has high special value is the following: You can even test yourself for cognitive dysfunction and learn more about current scientific studies on the impact of brain training on various cognitive performances. Other free apps hardly offer you this service. With all this, there are even six different brain training courses:
- Memory & retention training
- Training to increase concentration, attention & mental flexibility
- Working memory & increase logical reasoning
- Intelligence course to learn new things & make good decisions
- Primus" & "Equilibrium" courses to train language skills with a different focus each time
How long can you remember something?
We always talk about one memory, but actually we have three of them; at least three memory spans:
- Ultra-short-term memory
- Short-term memory
- Long-term memory
I beg your pardon? You only remember things ultra-short-term?
Then you have a particularly well-developed sensory memory span. The ultra-short-term memory takes in a huge amount of auditory and visual information. But much of it is immediately erased again. Otherwise there would be too much information.
Only the relevant information passes into the next memory: Into the short-term memory, into our working memory. This can hold about seven objects - for example, five to seven numbers in a row - and unfortunately not for very long; 20 seconds at the most. Anything that needs to be stored for longer must be repeated in thought - or better, out loud.
Information that seems particularly interesting and important to us enters the third memory; the long-term memory. Only here is it stored for an unlimited period of time and with unlimited capacity.
If one can no longer remember contents stored here, it is more due to a kind of blockage than to the fact that they are no longer there. The memories are there and can be retrieved. Blockages can be caused by stress - as in the case of excessive demands - or emotionally, as in the case of fears and traumas.
Brainwaves- the other activation training
Our brain generates waves in different frequency ranges: There are alpha, beta, gamma, delta and theta frequencies. The beta range is perfect for getting things done, work, analytical thinking and, of course, crossword puzzles. Here we are very focused, but don't get much of our world.
Good for learning and creativity in the sense of grasping and recognising is the alpha area and partly also the theta area. The theta range is borderline because it belongs to the unconscious. Dreamtime! We enter these realms through music, relaxation, nature, art, etc.
As a prospective super-ager, you definitely want to dwell in the alpha realm more often. Here, negative thoughts and beliefs (perhaps about you and your future?) can't last long. Good news: This also increases your ability to concentrate! Also, our perception of pain is not as strong here, and this is because we simply go through the day happier. In the alpha range, we are open and attentive to our environment. Psychologist Dr. Amishi Jha and her team of researchers found that the test group that received mindfulness training had a significantly higher ability to concentrate.
You can also become more mindful through meditation. Simply sit quietly and perceive without reacting or following your thoughts. Be aware of yourself: physically, emotionally, mentally. And your surroundings, the listening room. But you can also meditate while walking and in the middle of life, at least if the situation allows it. This is a wonderful way to enter the alpha and theta realms and activate the potential of your brain. People who sit in silent meditation for a long time also enter the delta realm. Delta waves normally belong to sleep. They are also very important for health, regeneration and memory.
The best exercises for concentration and brain jogging...
... can be found here. Because remember: It's the combination that makes the difference. A prospective super-ager trains both sides, the fluid and the crystalline intelligence. In the alpha brainwave range you train more the crystalline. In the beta range, the fluid. So most of the brain jogging techniques take place in the beta wave range. These include the classic brain exercises: Mental arithmetic, solving puzzles, discussing, playing chess, learning languages and so on.
And that's exactly why it makes sense, when your head is smoking or even before, to take a break or go for a walk; to somehow swing over into the alpha wave range - into your holistic, more intuitive side.
We remember that the brain is made up of two halves: One is more for the analytical things, the other for the intuitive. The latter is that perceptual area where everything is connected to everything else, which often gets short shrift. At least in this country. If both hemispheres come into harmony, you definitely have good prospects of becoming a super-ager and happy to boot.
