Breathworks For Your Brain
I am a 71 (almost 72!) exercise specialist, who didn't even begin to teach exercise until I was 47. So, the first good news is that you can begin a whole new life of passionate involvement, self-energizing creativity and exciting new discovery at 50! This discovery was initially about myself…at that crucial point of my life, middle-age, I found something that got my attention so deeply, I couldn't wait to learn everything I possibly could. I'm still teaching 5 classes a week
Are you thinking "Is she crazy?, at 70 I want to start to slow down a little, stop working so hard, begin to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Breathworks For Your Brain is based on a simple physical principle, Increased Demand creates Increased Use creating increased Function. This is how it works:
During the pattern-based exercises, the brain must connect:
Auditory & visual input with processing of the information
Planning with anticipation
Balance with meter, rhythm and pace
Spatial awareness, direction and force
coordination in partner activities
Focused attention on where they are in the pattern
Short-term memory retrieval of the pattern itself.
Every nerve & muscle (both large and small) are involved in the coordination of the physical movements.
The body is moving fluids within the body:
Oxygenated blood
Neurotransmitters & hormones
Cranial-spinal fluid
Lymph
Extra-cellular-fluid
The dance - ball playing and strength exercises
Activate, engage and integrate the body & the brain simultaneously.
These activities over-ride age boundaries, disabilities, depression and negative self image, while they are strengthening the heart, lungs, bones and muscles.
Dance and play allow us to explore our relationship with our body and with others. These activities create new interoceptive maps within the brain. This increased body awareness plays a huge role in fall prevention.
The aging brain normally slows down in its processing of information, but if free from disease can remain as vital and as good at learning & performing tasks as a young brain. The biggest change is the decline in our sensory perception and awareness, which is the way we take in most of the information we learn.
Our eyes, ears, hands & feet are all enormous transmitters of information during our lives. The optic nerve is connected to 80% of our muscles, and there are nerve receptors in the bottom of our feet to tell us if our weight is evenly distributed.
Our physical body is design to be an information-gathering system by way of our sensory receptors. Our eyes, ears, nose and nerve receptors in the muscles and joints take in the details of our surroundings and send the information to the brain to prepare us for action.
As we age, and our vision becomes less sharp, we pay less attention to detail…because it's too much effort and the body is always finding ways to reserve our energy.
As our hearing diminishes - we pay less attention to what people are saying and what's going on around us.
Without stimulating input from our eyes & ears - our brain doesn't take in as much information…so we use less of our brain.
Movement of our eyes, head, body & feet, all stimulate the vestibular system, which plays a crucial role in our development & learning throughout our lives.
As we move less, our muscles weaken, our bones become more fragile and our balance and stability gets poor from lack of use. It's all connected. The health & use of one system is dependent on the health & use of other systems.
Movement is necessary, not only to promote the flow of oxygenated blood throughout the body and to the brain,
But also to produce acetylcholine, a primary brain chemical for memory & attention.
Acetylcholine is a "messenger". When it is released into the muscle fibers, it sets up a chain of events that result in muscle contraction. Our muscle fibers contain special proteins that stabilize the nerve receptors. These nerve receptors are like "docking stations" for the acetylcholine to go.
Inactivity (lack of muscle contraction), causes a breakdown in the proteins that make these docking stations. Without the proteins, you don't produce the docking stations…and without someplace for the acetylcholine to go, the brain doesn't produce this important brain chemical.
The loss of receptor activity reduces the number of signals within the brain, and the loss of use ultimately results in the loss of function. Coordinated movements are particularly important. They stimulate the production of other brain chemicals that stimulate the growth of nerve cells and increase connections.
Breathworks For Your Brain actively uses the eyes, ears, muscles, specifically targeting the cerebellum and basal ganglion, responsible for the organization, timing, control, force, spatial awarenesss and speed of our movement. Rhythmic movement allows a fluid interaction between the muscles and the cerebellum & Basal ganglia, which in turn send signals to the neo-cortex (the frontal lobe of our brain) which organizes our thoughts. It's all connected.
Increased use of the body, results in increased & improved use of the brain. Go to my website to see some short clips of older adults and seniors ranging in age from their late 50's to well in their 90's. You can visibly see the speed with which they are processing the visual and auditory information I am giving them. The results speak for themselves. I hope I'm not overloading you with TMI, but I think all of this is so amazing and sooo perfectly orchestrated... and we tend to take it all for granted. Watch these video clips andthen think about what is going on between the body and the brain. It's magic!
- and let me know what you think!
n
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