How to Rest Your Brain 🧠

How to rest your brain. The importance of a good night's sleep is one of the most frequently mentioned health facts. Ask anyone and they'll probably tell you that the 8 hours of sleep is the optimal amount we should all be striving for every night. It's not exactly false, and this is widely recommended by health practitioners everywhere, but the 8 hours, 7 to 9 hours of sleep is not the only type of rest your brain needs. To keep functioning at its best. Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Do you ever find yourself zoning out during the day? Well, it's not actually a bad thing. This mental wandering is a state of restful introspection, or more commonly known as the default mode network. In today's episode, we'll dive into the importance of this state How you can actively train it, and the advantages of giving your brain this type of restorative downtime. When thinking about ways to rest your mind and your body, our attention immediately draws to things like sleep, meditation, breathwork, stretching, or taking a warm, hot bath. But there is one other type of cognitive rest that we often practice Unconsciously, and therefore it doesn't immediately occur to us that we are doing it or should be actively applying it when needed. This rest state occurs when our brain engages in the default mode network and you are not actively engaged in a task that requires a lot of attention. This is just a more complex way of saying that your brain's energy is no longer being used for conscious tasks. Basically, your mind is now allowed to wander or zone out. And this is a good thing. You might think that your brain has completely switched off and is not working during this state. However, the opposite is true. When you are sleeping or engaging in the default mode network, your brain is hard at work by consuming 20% of your body's energy, While being in this unconscious state. In fact, putting in conscious effort requires just 5% more energy. Now, this network is especially active when you engage in introspective activities, such as daydreaming, contemplating the past or the future, or thinking about the perspective of another person. When you turn your focus brain off, it will retrieve memories and link ideas so that you could become more creative. And it will also help you feel more self-connected. For example, one of the benefits of free-flowing daydreaming is that it can often lead to higher states of creativity. So how do we actively train ourselves to use this network And achieve this type of rest? Well, this is how you train your default mode network. One of the ways is napping. If you are experiencing a mid-afternoon slump and all you wanna do is fall into a deep sleep and you just need your mind to be clear, a 5-minute nap might be all you need for sharper thinking. But for example, if you have a major creative project ahead of you, you will need at least 90 minutes This gives your brain enough time to shuttle around ideas, to make the associations that it needs to make. Another way is daydreaming. To harness the power of daydreaming, you have to guide your thoughts. Luckily, you have more control over your daydreams than your nighttime dreams. This is where positive, constructive daydreaming comes in. It is essentially the practice of lulling yourself into a guided fantasy. To do this, you'll want to engage in a low-bandwidth activity. For example, coloring or knitting. A simple pattern could be an option. As you engage in that activity, allow yourself to entertain a wishful image. Maybe you're relaxing on a beach somewhere with the sun on your back. swimming in the sea or forest bathing. Whatever image you choose, the key is not to become too invested. Simply use the image as a starting point for allowing your mind to wander. As you stop controlling the image, your thoughts will likely turn more inward and your brain will engage the default mode network. As already mentioned, when this brain mode gets activated. It will help you achieve a special kind of productive cognitive rest that you need. Do you have too much to read but too little time? Are your shelves full of books that you haven't read yet and become shelf help, not self-help? And that's why I created the Kwik Reading Course. 15 minutes a day, 21 days will absolutely transform your life. Just go to kwikbrain.com/reading, use the code PODCAST15, and you'll get instant access. Another one of my favorites is physical exercise and free walking. In the brain, thinking supports movement and movement supports your thinking. As your body moves, your brain grooves. In fact, exercise improves how your default mode network functions, and even a single session can make a difference. It has been found that aerobic exercise can help prevent atrophy of key regions within the network and also help with the connectivity between different brain regions. We know that walking helps you untangle our thoughts, but how you walk matters. In 2012, psychology professor Angela K. Liang and her colleagues tested 3 groups of people. One group walked around in rectangles while completing a mental test, another group walked around freely, and the last group sat down while taking the test. The free walking group outperformed the other 2 groups, and other studies have shown that free walking results in improvements in fluency, flexibility, And originality of thinking. And here's an interesting one, taking a shower. If you've ever worked on a problem for hours only to come up with a solution while showering, that's your default mode network at work. Have you ever noticed when you're taking a shower, you're more creative? I took 6 showers this morning just to do this episode for you. As you lost track of time and stayed in the shower for maybe 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes, your brain was Relishing some much-needed rest and allowed for the default mode network to step in. But there is a downside of an overactive default mode network. While there are many benefits to an active default mode network, there is also a downside when it becomes too active. An overly active default mode network can lead to excessive rumination that culminates in mulling over worries, past mistakes, and anxieties over the future. Luckily, there are 2 simple ways to calm down the network and bring yourself back into harmony and into balance. One of these is one of my favorites, meditation. Research has shown that relaxation techniques such as mindfulness meditation and even deep breathing can quiet the default mode network and boost wellbeing through decreased inflammation and stress. Another way is to cultivate the sensation of awe. Experiencing awe shifts your focus from everyday worrying to seeing the big picture and reminds us that most of our daily repetitive worries that are often linked to negative thought patterns are actually insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The easiest way to cultivate this sensation is to spend time, in my opinion, in nature and experience its vastness and greatness by watching something simple like a sunset or a moonrise or swimming in the ocean or hiking wherever you are. Maybe you have a hill or your favorite mountaintop. To learn more To learn more about awe, how to cultivate it, and to find out about its many benefits, listen to our previous episode, number 374, where we talk about the extensive research on this subject. We now know that focus is important in improving how we think, but for optimal brain training, we need to both focus and unfocus. So learn how to work with your default mode network And build unfocused times into your day to take advantage of both types of intelligence. If you're already sleeping enough, add a walk, some nap time, or daydreaming into your schedule. It takes time and organization, but the benefits, as always, are well worth it. Until next time, Kwik Brains, remember to stay limitless. Limitless.