How to Exercise the BRAIN

A lot of people might ask "Could we exercise our brain?" The answer is, YES. How do we do that?

Exercising is a must for our body and some people today think that it is our bodies that only need exercise. We do a lot of jogging, push ups, squats and a lot more to look good.

In our biology however, we learned that whenever we learn something, our brain changes in form. It rewires itself to adopt to the new things by activating various portions of the brain. Like a piece of paper, when it's flat, it has a bigger surface area and takes up a lot of space in a box. When you learn, imagine the paper being crumpled and you will be able lessen the surface area. Hence, more space for information.

There are a lot of ways to exercise the brain and of those is reading. In this blog, we will talk about reading. As you're reading now, you're learning something new and your brain changes it form. However, reading eBooks makes it a little bit harder for our brain to remember what we read. Click the link below to learn why.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/14/do-e-books-impair-memory/

If reading eBook is harder, then what is the alternative? PHYSICAL BOOK. Yes, you've read that right. Make it a habit. Read a book everyday. You don't have to read the whole book on your first try. Just reading even just 30 pages a day helps. It is hard if it's your first time, you might get sleepy and bored. Trust me, everything is hard for the first time. It's like sports. Do you think people know already how to spin when they skate or do backflip even when it's their first time? No, they do a lot of practice. Reading needs practice. You get used to it and slowly you get better. After all, you'll be rewarded with the fantastic adventures hidden in those books.

How do we get started? If you're a beginner, I suggest you children's books. Not children's books that a toddler reads. Something like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. The reason is, these books have simpler vocabularies. I'm not trying to insult anyone's vocabulary, in fact, I don't have a vast range of vocabulary myself and a lot of book nerds keep rereading these books even when they're more than 50 years old. Do not read classic books yet because these books are hard to read for beginners. I encourage you to read as many books as you like. Keep trying until you find the genre that would fit your preferences.

If you have been a reader before and stopped reading, you're probably just in a book slump. Book slump is when a reader suddenly stops reading just because they can't. It could take a few days or weeks or even years until they read again. If you are having a book slump and want to get back to reading, I suggest you read thin books about 200 pages so you won't feel like you are obliged to read a lot and it's just satisfying to be able to finish a whole book and makes us want to read more.

Here are some photos of my favorite books that you might like.

These are my favorite series books...

Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan

Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien

Harry Potter by J.K Rowling and Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
I don't have a photo of these.

Anyway, these are easy books to read for beginners, and drop your comments below if you want me give you more book suggestions. Thank you for reading.