More and more people are becoming familiar with the term “mindful” or “mindfulness.” Being mindful is exactly what it sounds like. It’s what you’re consuming your mind with at that time.
When it comes to brain health, being mindful during our daily activities has many positive benefits. On an average day, our brains can be bogged down with to-do lists, family, career, and all the other things that compete for our time and take up space in our mind.
We can add to this the fact that many people spend a lot of time sitting in front of their computer, with multiple browser windows open, and their cell phone right by their side waiting for text messages.
With our brains being consumed with processing too much information, we often don’t take the time to be mindful of the basics of our body. Taking some quiet time to be mindful of our breathing can have a positive impact on the brain that goes beyond simple stress management.
The process itself doesn’t need to take a great deal of time out of each day. It could be as short as two minutes, five, 10, or 20 minutes at the maximum for beginners. A simple breathing exercise is a good place to start.
All you need to do is find a consistent time at some point in your day where you sit in a quiet place away from phones, browsers, kids, pets and all of your usual distractions, and simply listen to your breathing. Try to be mindful of your breathing. Feel the air coming in through your nose – how does it feel? Is it cold? Usually, it’s a little bit cooler coming in and a little bit warmer going out.
Let your breath out through your mouth. Be mindful of your lungs inflating. Where do they inflate? Is it the chest? Is it near the level of the stomach? We should be inflating at the stomach first and then the chest last (diaphragmatic breathing). Ahhh, feel better?
There is significant evidence that being mindful and taking your attention away from the distractions of the day and putting them on body processes like heart rate and breathing can be incredibly powerful. Shutting the brain down for a short amount of time helps it to heal and learn more efficiently. It’s about more than just sitting and listening to your breath. It’s about healing and pushing your brain in a positive direction.
Contributor: Dr. Michael Trayford is a Board-Certified Chiropractic Neurologist and Founder of APEX Brain Centers in Asheville, NC.
The opinions expressed by contributing authors are not necessarily the opinions of the Dementia Society, Inc. We do not endorse or guarantee products, comments, suggestions, links, or other forms of the content contained within blog posts that have been provided to us with permission, or otherwise. Dementia Society does not provide medical advice. Please consult your doctor.
Exercising with someone might sound simple enough, but there are profound benefits from having an exercise partner that are worth exploring.
Some people just go the gym, hop on the treadmill, throw in their earbuds, and do their thing. Others like to take a power hike or mountain bike trip alone in nature. Sometimes that meditative experience is important and they don’t want to necessarily share that special time in their mind with someone else. There are certain martial arts traditions that encourage you to work out alone just for the meditative quality of the experience.
If your workout time isn’t engaged in some meditative aspect, you should strongly consider and seek out someone to work out with you.
One of the biggest benefits of having a workout partner simply boils down to having another person offering you encouragement. There are days when it’s really easy to just stay in bed and you don’t want to get up and put in your workout. If you have somebody you’re meeting up with, it holds you to a higher degree of accountability and a certain amount of social peer pressure.
For some people there’s also an element of friendly competition. People can push each other, in a well-intended manner, to go that extra tenth of a mile, or an extra 10 miles.
There could also be an element of safety involved. People that lift weights routinely need another person to spot them during a wide variety of exercises. It allows them to safely lift a little bit more weight and push a little bit further through the wall than they are used to pushing. Many martial arts involve doing forms to master routine movements. Some of them, like aikido, are greatly improved by having another person relate to the form or even to provide added dynamic motion.
There is a social aspect to it as well. Talking to someone through the course of your workout is in itself added stimulation. Just be smart about it and make sure that your conversation isn’t taking away from actually completing your workout in a timely and effective manner.
Social interaction is critical to brain health and development. When you combine this with other activities like exercise, the compound benefits are something we can’t even measure, but are incredibly helpful to the brain.
#brainhealth #exercise #lovemyrunningbuddy
Contributor Author: Dr. Michael Trayford is a Board-Certified Chiropractic Neurologist and Founder of APEX Brain Centers in Asheville, NC. For more information, please visit www.ApexBrainCenters.com/memory.
Posted by Sandra DeHaven, DSA Board Member aka "The Sandstriss." Sandy is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She has more than 35 years experience in the writing and public relations fields, working recently for newspapers and online news services. During her news tenure, she earned a handful of Keystone Press Awards presented by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
The opinions expressed by contributing authors are not necessarily the opinions of the Dementia Society, Inc. We do not endorse nor guarantee products, comments, suggestions, links, or other forms of content contained within blog posts that have been provided to us with permission, or otherwise. Dementia Society does not provide medical advice, please consult your doctor. www.DementiaSociety.org
