How Exercise Affects the Brain | Jim Kwik

How is your memory? How is your brain? How's your focus? It is limitless. There are no limits. Remember, it's not the sky's the limit. Your mind is the limit. And often people shrink what's possible to fit their mind when they should be expanding their mind to fit all that is possible. So in this lesson, I want to talk about your physical body, your physicality, and how that relates to memory. Now we're going to talk a little bit about how to remember motions and movements in the future. But here I want to talk about the power of exercise to your memory. Now, some of you may be very physically active, which is wonderful. I'm going to help refine some activities you could do to really help you to enhance your focus, your concentration, your energy levels, to clear brain fog and mental fatigue. Also, to move our bodies in ways that you hear me say, as your body moves, your brain grooves. So I want to talk about the power of movement specifically to your memory. Now, the reason why I want to talk about this is in the comments, people say that they feel a little burnt out. Is that you? Do you feel a little burnt out? Do you feel a little exhausted? And part of it is because our visual vitality affects our mental vitality, meaning if your eyes are strained because you're behind a screen all day, your visual focus is going to direct Your mental focus. And so a lot of tiredness comes from just sitting down all the time because the primary reason you have a brain is to control your movement. That's the number one reason you have a brain, but it's not just a one-way connection where your mind is controlling your body. As you move your body, it stimulates your mind, and that can be only good. What's good for your heart is going to be good for your head. So I want you to take some notes on this. I'm going to ask you to move around while we're doing this. In fact, if you can, Stand up and join me for this lesson. Stand up if you can and join me for this lesson. Put everything else aside and let's do a little bit of physical exercise together. Now, I'm not talking about any specific modality, like if you want to do CrossFit or you want to do Pilates, you want to do yoga, all of them, great. Whatever works for you, your body type, your lifestyle, your timing. What I want to talk about are some of the things that I do and some of the things our clients do to really enhance their brain performance. Right. But we talk about when you listen to an audiobook or a podcast, and if you happen to be exercising, like maybe you're on an elliptical, or you're doing something rhythmic, like you're going for a brisk walk, research shows that you will actually understand it and retain it. This is about memory better. And so that's kind of interesting, right? Because when your body is moving, you're producing these neurochemicals that help you to retain information. You actually create something called Brain-derived neurotrophic factors, BDNF. You write that down, BDNF, which is like fertilizer for your brain. So you're getting oxygen, you're getting blood flow, you're getting more oxygen to your brain, and overcomes mental fatigue. Now I want to show you a couple exercises you could do, and I want you to do this with me. First, let's do our Super Brain Yoga together. All right, Super Brain Yoga. But how do you do it? With your left hand, I just want you to massage your earlobe. Great. On the opposite side, and then vice versa. On the opposite side, just massage your earlobe. And let's do this together. All right, let's really do this. I don't want to be the only one doing this. Inhale and squat down. And you can go low. I'll stay here just so I'm on camera. And then exhale and come up. Inhale and go down. Inhale and go down. Exhale, come on up. Inhale, go down. Exhale, come up and smile. Inhale, go down. Exhale, come on up. And again, inhale, go down. Exhale, come up. Now that shouldn't feel different because you should be doing this every single day, not just with our lessons, but throughout the day. Because I always recommend that you work for about 25, 30 minutes. That's why we keep this into bite-sized digestible learnings. And then from there, take a 5-minute brain break. And you're breathing, you're hydrating, and most of all, you're moving, right? We know that when Steve Jobs, he wouldn't do a lot of sit-down meetings, he would do walking meetings. It would enhance his creativity. It'll help him to focus. And being outside, getting fresh air, clean environment, getting some sunlight, the vitamin D, very good for your nervous system. And so what can you do to be more active? They say sitting Is the new smoking. And not a judgment, but if you're sitting all day, it's not the best thing when your body is designed to move, right? And so as your body moves, your brain grooves. So I say that through repetition, because repetition is the mother of memory, right? And so what we're going to do is we're going to encourage ourselves to move more often. And so you did the Super Brain Yoga. Now let's do our cross crawls, an area of study called educational kinesiology. That was popularized by Brain Gym. That's the brand. And cross crawls is where you're raising one knee, touching it with the opposite hand or elbow, and you're going to alternate. And the idea here is when you're crossing the midline, you're actually encouraging communication between your left and your right brain, right? I always talk about a little bit about the theory. And so raise your knee, touch it with the opposite hand, and just Keep on alternating, going back and forth, back and forth. Remember, you could go use your elbows and just bring up your knees. I'm bringing up my knees and just, just kind of enjoy this and move around. And these are the things that I do before I study, before I get on to a work conference video, you know, before I need to present. I want my best self there, so you move your body. Remember this. That static thinking usually comes from a static body. And if you want your thinking to be agile, you need your body to be agile also as well. But the key is putting your mind into your muscle. And that's what mindfulness is. When I have people brush their teeth with the opposite hand for the past 30 years, what it does is not only does it make you present, but it exercises a different part of your brain because one part of your brain controls the opposite side of your body. And vice versa. And God forbid, you know, somebody who has had head trauma or a stroke, if the stroke is on one side of their brain, if there's paralysis that manifests, it's usually on the opposite side of the body because there's a brain-body connection. Even though your brain is part of your body, this controls this, but it's not one way. That using a different part of your body could actually stimulate a different part of of your brain. So do this with me. Let's do something simple. Let's get our mind into our muscle. I just want you to just go back and forth with your hands. Just go back and forth. Maybe you're typing or you're writing, you're doing these exercises, which is important to do, to move around. And now what I want you to do, instead of doing them in unison, I want one side of your body, one hand to go twice as fast. Instead of just doing this back and forth, I'm gonna do it like this. You're gonna go 1, 2. Do you see that? One side is exactly twice as fast. And you can reverse it also as well. You could go like this. Do you see that? Try this now. Try this with me. And you're not gonna get it perfect because just like tying your shoes or doing something different, maybe you weren't great at it the first time, but it shows you how you can progress. Right. Here's another one. Try this. I want you to imagine you're pulling energy towards you. All right. Do you see this? Pulling energy towards you and you're going in circular motion towards you. If I'm going to change this up a little bit, I just want you to see this. I'm pulling energy towards me. You see that? And now I want you to reverse one of them. Just reverse one side. So instead of this coming here, I'm going to come here and then go out. You see that? Or I could reverse this. So I want you to try this. Do this with me so I'm not the only one that's doing this. And breathe. Now most people are still doing this. They're pulling it towards them, right? I want one to come towards, one to go out, just like this. Or you can reverse it. All right. Now, you're not going to be good at that the first time if you've never done it before. Just like any kind of learning, any kind of memory, it gets you uncomfortable, and that's part of the learning process. Sometimes learning, like life, is a little messy, and sometimes we have to push ourselves and get uncomfortable, because if we're always comfortable— the comfort zone is a nice place to visit, but not much grows there. All right. And so if you want to see what your limits are, you have to play and practice at the edge of those limits. So challenge yourself to do new things.