by wildcherry on Friday, October 10th, 2008 | Knowledge, Life

1. Take Deep Breaths. By breathing deeply through the nose you can improve the functioning of your brain immediately. Deep breaths put more oxygen in the blood and, therefore, in the brain. Low oxygen levels in the blood have been shown to decrease brain function. You can try the breathing exercises suggested by Andrew Weil, who has devoted the past thirty years to developing, practicing, and teaching others about the principles of integrative medicine, by going here.

2. Keep a Journal. Catharine M. Cox, author of “Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses”, studied the habits of 300 geniuses — such as Isaac Newton, Einstein, and Thomas Jefferson - and discovered that all of them were “compulsive” journal or diary keepers. Also, keep in mind that Thomas Edison wrote 3 million pages of notes, letters and personal thoughts in hundreds of personal journals throughout his life.

3. Learn As Much As You Can. As we learn new things, we create new neural pathways. A “smart” person is someone who has more interconnected neural pathways than others. In addition, the human brain will create new neural pathways in response to external stimuli — such as through learning new things; the more diverse, the better.

4. Learn to Speed Read. PhotoReading is an easy-to-learn technique that will help you go through large amounts of written information faster and with a higher retention rate than using the traditional reading method taught in school.

Although most speed reading techniques simply teach you how to move your eyes faster across the page, PhotoReading is a whole-mind reading system that teaches you to use both the conscious and the subconscious mind when reading. Basically, it involves several quick perusals of the material following a different technique each time. The first perusal involves using your subconscious mind to rapidly absorb material visually. Subsequent perusals involve the conscious mind and use other methods to help memory retention and understanding of the material.

5. Take Frequent Short Breaks. Study for twenty minutes and then take a short break. This is effective because things at the start and end of a study session last in your memory for a longer period of time. You can download the Motivator Software for free so that a message pops up every twenty minutes on your computer reminding you to take a break.

6. Use Acronyms to Remember Information. An acronym is simply an abbreviation formed using the initial letters of a word. These types of memory aids can help you to learn large quantities of information in a short period of time. For example, “Every Good Boy Does Fine” is a common acronym used to help musicians and students to remember the notes on a treble clef stave.

7. Eat breakfast. Eating breakfast has been proven to improve concentration, problem solving ability, mental performance, memory, and mood. Breakfast is the first chance the body has to refuel its glucose levels after eight to 12 hours without a meal. Glucose is the brain’s main energy source.

8. Use Your Body to Help You Learn. Movement is a key part of the process of development and learning. Brain Gym is a program of simple exercises, developed over a 25 year period by a remedial educational specialist, Dr. Paul Dennison. Brain Gym exercises can help with things such as:

- Comprehension
- Concentration
- Abstract Thinking
- Memory
- Mental Fatigue
- Completing tasks
- Physical balance and coordination

Go here to find three simple brain gym exercises (”Brain Buttons”, “Cross Crawl”, and Hook Ups”).

9. Meditate. Neuropsychologists now say that meditation can alter brain structure. MRI scans of long-term meditators have shown greater activity in brain circuits involved in paying attention. When disturbing noises were played to a group of meditators undergoing an MRI scan, they had relatively little effect on the brain areas involved in emotion and decision-making as compared to non-meditators or less experienced meditators. For more information on this, go here.

10. Stay Away From Sugar. Any simple carbohydrates–such as pasta, sugars, white bread and potato chips–can make you tired and lethargic. Sometimes called the “sugar blues”, this sluggish feeling makes it hard to think clearly. It results from the insulin rushing into the bloodstream to counteract the sugar rush.

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