Jim Kwik demonstrates five physical exercises to sharpen memory and focus, starting with cross-crawl movements that connect both brain hemispheres. An Oxford study found that jugglers develop more white matter and better peripheral vision, skills that speed up reading. He teaches beginner juggling using socks, framing these drills as brain warm-ups before learning or speaking.
Chapters
All right, this is what I do before I get ready to go to learn something or go on stage. Okay, so there's called— it's out of a science called educational kinesiology, and it goes like this. These are different sets of exercises. So one is taking your elbow and touching it to the opposite leg. It's kind of like this. They are called cross crawls according to Brain Gym. Hey, Brain Gym, my name is Jim. So you're just doing this, and basically anything that— you know that anything below the neck is controlled by the opposite side of the brain. So you know that the left side of your brain controls the opposite side of the body, and vice versa, and so on. And so this helps to be able to connect more of your corpus callosum, left brain, right brain, more integrated, which is very cool. Check this one out. So a lot of us spend a lot of time on the computer, and So it's kind of like you're shaking out your hands like this. All right, shaking out your hands, getting some fluidity in your wrists. And now watch this. Now one is going to go twice as fast as the other. So watch this. Just try this now. Like this. Very simple. Can they see that? Mm-hmm. Cool. And then I could also reverse it too, right? I could do it with the opposite hand. Kind of fun exercises, kind of wake up, get you thinking a little bit. Another one is this. If you take your arms and you just kind of bring them towards you like you're moving energy towards you, and kind of bring it towards you, pulling it in like this, like this. And now do this. Do one towards you and one away from you, like that. So you're just making these circles. And you can do opposite also. And breathe also. Some people hold their breath for some reason when they do this. So it's like this: ba ba ba. And if that's too difficult, you could just pat your head and rub your stomach harder. They say juggling is really good for your brain also. There was a study done in Oxford. Jugglers have really good brains, which is really also good for speed reading because in order to look at these three balls, I only have two eyes. I have to kind of soften my foveal vision, expand my peripheral vision, relax a little more so I could take in more words, which is obviously really great for reading also as well. But juggling actually builds more brainpower, actually creates more white matter. All right, so juggling, you have 2 in one hand, one in the other. And so juggling is really simple. It's something that you could do really easily. You start with one. And if you're going to learn how to juggle— I'm not a professional juggler, but I self-taught because I used to teach tennis a lot, and when you're waiting for a court to open up, you only have like 3 balls to kind of keep you occupied. So you take this, let's pretend this is a ball or rolled up sock. Socks work really well because they don't roll around, like balls could go everywhere. It's also nice if you're a first-time juggler to do this over like a table or a couch somewhere so you don't have to always just kind of bend down and catch it. So you're taking this and you are— oh, is it good? Yeah. You're taking this and you're throwing it up and you're just catching it like this. So if I just throw it up and catch it. And you really want to get this to about the tip of your head, like that. And you're just looking forward. You're doing that. And that's a toss. And so the second one, this is where it gets a little bit interesting. What I visualize is I visualize 2 peaks. So 2 peaks. Because you can't toss it on the same peak, because they'll just collide with each other. So you have one here and then one here. And the trick is, is when this reaches its peak, That's your signal for tossing the other one. So you're going 1, 2, and then catching, right? So 2 different peaks, catch. And then you stop. Like that. And then so the 3rd one gets really interesting, because then you don't stop. You just go peak, peak. Every time you reach one to the top— I imagine there's like a box like here, and I'm just hitting this corner and this corner, this corner and this corner. So it looks like, theoretically, this is how it works. Looks like this. And notice, like, I'm looking directly at you because I'm not focusing on any one of these because then my attention will be everywhere. But I'm just like this, and I'm breathing. And juggling builds good brains. So you should— I'm never actually done. Yeah, so it's pretty easy. So 2 in one hand and you just throw. And this is a good metaphor also for life because how many of us feel like we're, like, juggling in life, that we have lots of different things up in the air, that we have flaming swords and— And such, because we wear many different caps. So that's the— that's multitasking.
