Love your Brain, Love your Body, Love your Life - Boost your Creativity with a Vacation

Is it important to schedule that annual vacation? When money is tight and schedules don’t seem to permit taking that summer trip, how important is it really?

In Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine - How Creativity Works, he discusses in great detail why our brain needs vacation time to stimulate creativity. Chapter 5, entitled “Outsider”, gives several examples of how being an outsider is a state of mind. We need to go outside our normal everyday surroundings, duties, chores and problems; to get away! Travel is one of the best ways to do this, the reason it’s so useful for creativity is a “quirk of cognition in which problems that feel close get contemplated in a more literal manner.” “When we are physically near the source of the problem, our thoughts are automatically constricted, bound by a more limited set of associations.  It only allows us to focus on the facts at hand - it inhibits imagination.”

Detaching from the familiar environment can help get new perspectives on everyday life, when you ask a friend for advice on solving a problem, his or her suggestions are often more creative than what you would have decided yourself - that’s because your friend has psychological distance from the situation at hand. When you’re in the middle of a problem, it’s sometimes hard to untangle yourself from it to think about it clearly.

This is why travel is so helpful: “When you escape from the place you spend most of your time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas previously suppressed. Many people have epiphanies when they travel because they can view their life back home from a more detached, outsider’s view.

Experience of another culture gives the traveler a valuable open-mindedness, making it easier for him or her to realize that a single thing can have multiple meanings. We need to change cultures to feel the disorienting diversity of human traditions. The same details that make foreign travel so confusing - do we tip the waiter? where is this train taking me? - turn out to have lasting impact, making us more creative because we’re less insular.  We’re reminded of all that we don’t know, which is nearly everything. We go home and home is the same but something in our minds has been changed, and that changes everything.

Of course, it’s not enough to simply get on a plane or drive a few hundred miles to the beach: if we want to experience the creative benefits of vacation, then we have to rethink the reason for the vacation. Our mind is most likely to solve our most stubborn problems while getting a sunburn far away from home. So instead of napping on the beach, or reading the latest issue of US Weekly, we should be mulling over those domestic riddles we just can't solve.

Imagine - How Creativity Works & The Benefits of Vacation, The Atlantic by Jonah Lehrer

Why Your Brain Needs Vacations By Elizabeth Landau, CNN May 24, 2011 

Love your Brain, Love your Body, Love your Life- Turn on Your Good Genes For a Happier Healthier You

It seems that a new Swedish study has shown that exercise does way more than toning and burning calories. It found that exercise uses muscles that activate genes that promote fat-burning, prevent disease and disability; along with boosting energy and brain power. And, the benefits kick in with-in minutes of your first steps, so you win every time you move, whether it’s a lunch time stroll or an all-day bike ride.  This doesn’t mean you are changing your genetic code, it means that you are turning on inactive genes; you have the power to turn on the good guys and tone down the not-so-helpful types, some of the gene-flipping benefits are:

Mega-protection against cancer - it revs up more than 100 genes that fight against cancer.

More fat-burning brown fat - exercise activates a newly discovered enzyme, irisin, that turns bumpy, bulgy white fat into easier to use brown fat.

A younger heart - turns on the genes that help heart-muscle cells divide, this helps your heart work better.

Leaner, cleaner liver - sticking to a regular exercise routine turns off genes that encourage extra fat to move into your liver, and turns on genes that produce proteins that tells the fat to move on out. A leaner liver protects against diabetes and heart disease.

Exercise is not your only tool for do-it-yourself genetic engineering. A diet devoid of the five food felons; saturated fat, trans fat, added sugar, syrup and any grain that is not 100% whole along with managing stress, keeps disease fighting and energy giving genes turned on too.  All together you can turn on over 500 healthy genes.  With your body working more efficiently your brain is healthier as well, it’s just a win win.

Remember these daily tips:

Aim for 30 minutes of exercise

Get your dose of fruits, veggies, 100% whole grains, lean protein, nuts and Omega-3 fatty acids.

Include a stress reliever such as yoga, simple stretching, walking or laughing with your kids, whatever works for you.

Oregonian 4/17/12 Dr’s Oz and Roizen

It's Report Card Time

It’s the end of the quarter for most schools in our area, parent teacher conferences are scheduled and report cards are ready.  If you find things aren’t going as well as you would like or even discouraging, there are a few things you can do to help your child succeed.

1. Get your child an Agenda Book to keep track of daily assignments and homework. Check off the assignment when it’s completed and turned in. You, as a parent need to check it daily.
2. Get to know and understand your child’s teacher and their teaching style and expectations. 
3. Understand your child’s dominant learning style; is it kinesthetic, auditory or visual. If the teacher isn’t meeting your child’s learning style you can help at home. With the agenda book filled out properly you can adapt the lesson to your child’s learning style.
4. If your child continues to struggle, then maybe there are underlying issues that need to be addressed. Synergy Training Center has a thorough Cognitive Assessment that can diagnose issues such as ADD, ADHD, Auditory & Eidetic Dyslexia or lack of bi-lateral brain integration.  We also offer a non-medication solution to these issues that is a permanent fix.

If you have questions regarding your child, please call and schedule a free, no obligation appointment to discuss your options. We are here to help.