In 2019, we’re exploring our energy. How it affects us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We’ve hooked up with a series of experts who will set an experiment every month to help us discover a new way of managing our energy.
Throughout October we’ve been looking at our mental energy and how brain training can help to give us better mental energy for the things that are important to us. We’ve been working with the super clever BrainHQ, who shared a series of exercises that we're specifically designed to give our brains a work-out... and also turned out to be super addictive!
BrainHQ is an online brain-training system based on 30 years of research in neurological science and related medicine. It was designed by an international team of neuroscientists, led by Michael Merzenich—a professor in neurophysiology, member of the National Academy of Sciences, co-inventor of the cochlear implant, and Kavli Prize laureate. So they know they’re stuff!
Check out Jim's video below for his highlights from the experiment...
Going into this month it was super clear to us that we focus too much on how to keep our bodies healthy by giving them a work-out or a detox, but we don't spend nearly enough time thinking about how we can do the same for our brains, and how we can give our brains the stimulus and workout it needs to stay healthy and sharp.
The biggest thing we all took from Brain Training is that whilst it felt like we were playing games, this had two hugely positive effects for us:
Firstly, when doing the Brain Training, the play element really hooked us all in and meant we got an instant boost of mental energy as we were fully engaged in trying to get better and better scores. It felt like we were stretching our brains and pushing ourselves to focus in ways we might not normally think of doing.
Secondly, the play element created a huge amount of competition between us as a team. This might be because we're a pretty competitive bunch, but it was actually a real boost and lift to be able to see how others scored, and was really interesting to see how some exercises suited some better than others. Either way the competition became not just a fun part of this experiment, but part of what helped it land well for us.
Overall we didn't experience any seismic shifts in our mental energy in the long term (but perhaps we need to do it for a longer period of time - they say it tales 6 weeks to develop new muscle memory so we should give our brains the same, right), but we all definitely felt sharper and more focused immediately after a session of brain training. This is definitely one we'll all keep coming back to when we want to give our brains that stretch and focus. And when we fancy a bit of a competition...
Onto November now, and another super exciting challenge... more to come soon :)
Big Love
The Upping Your Elvis Team
Xxx
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
