The body is where we left off. Developing it is like tuning a vehicle, and nicely tuned, it will roar and drive as hard as….ah your mind can push it. This is the importance of the mind. A great tool is just that, it takes an equally great mind to show the potential of it.
Plasticity
The brains plasticity is just as the body’s. This means it malleable to the pressures placed on it. So pushing the mind strengthens the mind just as pushups strengthen the body.
It’s said the eyes are the windows to the soul and this has a universe of truth to it. If the body connects the brain and the brain combines the mind. The eyes, just as our other senses, connect us to the world. The eyes are in direct connection to the brain, so controlling them gives you instant control of the brain, and control of the flesh is a direct connection to control of the mind, and control of the mind is control of the soul.
Retinal ganglion cells
Retinal ganglion cells connect different parts of your brain. They pick up external information and allow the brain to interpret and create your picture of the world that you perceive as your reality. Information on retinal ganglion cells.
Developing that muscle
The mind is deceptively simple to develop. The problem comes when you do not see dramatic changes as you do with the body. But on closer inspection, you do. Start a mental training to develop a skill or enhance an existing one. Look at where you are. Then in three weeks, look where you are again. This observation has to be in the ability you developed. So don’t do matching puzzles, which increase the spatial part of your brain, and be upset you can’t do math better. It may help a bit, but not how you are expecting.
Like working your body, the results should be viewed in the area you have accomplished. Same holds for brain exercises.
1. Dual N Back
This game develops working memory. I play it often and love it. After playing for some weeks. Try to, instead of writing down numbers, store them in your memory. Then recalling them when you need them. Everytime I do this I am amazed at how well I can hold large numbers. Dual N Back.
To play you are trying to remember the last location of the square and sound. As it increases in difficulty, you are trying to remember the location before the last and the sound before the last. This will keep increasing until you mess up and then it goes back to the beginning, to remembering the last sound and location.
2.LOCI
If you don’t like games, or maybe you just don’t feel it works. Then change the way you use your brain with LOCI. The hindbrain only understands images. The subconscious only understands images, I hope you see where I’m headed with this. They are connected, if not one and the same. Memory masters the world over use a technique called LOCI. Created in Rome and developed over the centuries. This technique allows you to use your brain as intended.
Remember a place in your home and then connect images of what you want to remember to different areas in the house. Then when you want to recall it, just remember the locations you initially stored in your mind Palace.
Here’s an example. Look for a place in your house or apartment or just somewhere you remember well. Now take this list:
Apples, pears, cheese, dog food, rice, sunflowers, beans, fish, potatoes, fan.
Can you remember this list if I gave you two minutes to have it to me in the same order, then backwards. If you can, you either already use this method or something like it or have a photographic memory.
To use the method take the mental image of the room you are using. Now walk through it and in different locations place these items in the room. Now when you want to recall it, just walk through the room in your mind, and you will remember where all the things on the list were place in the room, letting you also remember the list. I used this technique for years and I have adapted it to work even better for me. A truly amazing technique.
3.Trataka
As we spoke in the beginning about the eyes being so connected to the brain, this was why. Trataka is a meditation technique that uses the eyes to still the mind. Holding the eyes still brings parts of your brain connected into a stillness. Like anything, combined with other techniques, you come into complete control of your being.
Pick a location or object in front of you, and hold your eyes steady on that location or object. When your eyes start to flicker and move about from the target, bring the target back, just as mindfulness with eyes closed, and hold this for ten minutes.
So to conclude just like exercise for the body, exercise for the mind isn’t a end all, or a single thing. Use it or lose it said many times before, is a very simple, but powerful truth. These are methods I personally use, but there are many more. Use this as a starting point to go down the rabbit hole. I promise if you stick with it, you won’t be disappointed.
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synechízetai the word under the title, For those that don’t know means continue in greek.
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