How To Keep Your Mind Strong

Today’s growing concern about Alzheimer’s and dementia among the elderly gives rise to studies on how people can keep their minds going strong throughout their entire lives. Recent studies reveal that aerobic exercise stimulates neurogenesis, the process whereby the brain produces more neurons, thus strengthening the brain.

A sound mind in a sound body is how the Romans put it when discussing physical and mental health. Mind power techniques cannot be effective unless the physical body is also moving and active.

Supplying the brain with the nutrients it requires is another key to maintaining a healthy brain and a strong mind. The rich antioxidant vitamins and minerals contained in colorful fruits and vegetables, such as green leafy vegetables, red onions, orange carrots, yellow lemons and bananas, purple cabbage, blue and red berries and juicy red watermelon are all superior food for the brain.

Nuts provide another great brain food with the minerals and fatty acids they contain. Giving the brain the oxygen it needs through exercise and the nutrition it requires by eating healthy food remains the cornerstone of maintaining and strengthening the brain.

Effective Mind Power Techniques

Effective mind power techniques include exercising the mind by doing puzzles, playing challenging games such as chess, learning a new language or playing a musical instrument are well-known ways of keeping a strong mind going.

Continuing education by learning a new skill, taking a course in science or mathematics, or learning tai chi or a martial art keeps the brain growing strong and the mind functioning powerfully no matter one’s age. Presenting the mind with challenges gives the mind the opportunity to grow new neurons on a regular basis.

Meditation provides its practitioners with a host of benefits. Scientific studies of people who meditate daily show these folks to have strong memory and concentration, clarity of thought and focus, good general health and an ease and contentment with life.

Meditation causes the brain to release several euphoric chemicals, which make the meditator feel great, both relaxed and alert. Training to use imagination, sensory input and visualization is another superior mental technique. As many self-help tomes reveal, regularly visualizing the achievement of one’s goals aligns the subconscious mind in support of that goal.

Self-hypnosis provides another powerful technique for maintaining and growing mental power. Self hypnosis allows the practitioner to leave subliminal messages in the subconscious, which also aligns the powerful subconscious mind behind one’s goal.

Each of these mental techniques, meditation, visualization and self-hypnosis is effective not only in maintaining a strong mind, but in growing new neuronal connections within the brain, exercising its potential and creating a more powerful mind.

Keep the body and brain happy with physical exercise and superb nutrition, keep learning throughout life, challenge the mind with new activities and use a coherent mental process such as meditation, visualization and self-hypnosis to achieve mental power. All of these combine to guarantee an active, strong mind to fight back against any diminishment of brain or body with age. In other words, use it, don’t lose it.