Fun + Challenge = the fountain of youth
"Brainy What-Why-How"
Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.
🧠
What (the TL:DR)
Age related decline is avoidable by continuing to do things which require:
- large amounts of focus
- lots of concentration
and that's why most people don't do enough of it (including myself!)
BUT WE CAN CHANGE OUR BRAINS, and learn to associate the challenge of novelty with FUN.
Why (the geeky neurology)
It's just plain HARD to do things that are new and unfamiliar, and there are a few areas where scientists look for age-related decline such as:
- fine motor skills (playing a musical instrument, knitting, whittling, etc)
- gross motor skills (balancing, jumping, walking, etc)
- memory
- language processing
- visual processing
And in all of these areas, to avoid decline, we sadly can't just keep doing what's easy -- using the existing neural pathways that we built (*through intense focus and concentration)* when we were younger.
We have to keep these brain regions and circuits active by challenging them through the things that are HARD.
But the brain is adaptable, INCLUDING your beliefs around doing hard things.
How (apply it to your life)
There's an app for that.
Learning a new language is GREAT brain training, for example. I think there are now 2932309823 apps for learning new languages and many of them are gamified to help you associate the difficulty with fun.
And it's why on my app, MWA, I include novelty and brain-training for those fine and gross motor skills. Today's new flow has loads of it!
And we have fun while we're doing it (see comment below)
Isn't it cool, how we have the power to notice our patterns (such as associating a challenge with "ugh I don't wanna because it's hard meehhhhhh") and mindfully change them (start to associate challenge of learning with "woohooooo this is the good stuff") ?
You're powerful. Remember that,
Adell xoxo
Want to go way deeper with me? 👀
Check out my upcoming IRL events
Sign up to my next NeuroYoga TTC where I teach YOU how to blend yoga + neurology
Join me on Move With Adell -- your brain-based yoga hub -- Click here to start your FREE trial.
Check out the courses from Z-health, where I started my education in brain-based approaches: Click here for my discount codes on their first 3 courses!
Get my book "Too Flexible to Feel Good: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility"