What Your Brain Looks Like On Poetry

Guess what I was doing when I woke up sleepily in bed at 4:00 a.m.!!!???!!! Poems...crazy poems, but pretty good ones too. Problem is I don't know if I can remember them now as I did fall in and out of sleep after that!

This is kind of close to one of the poems:

Inside each of us is a hiding poet

So we write and write until we show it

and then, before long everyone else will know it.

My still sleepy brain is refusing to help me with the other one...so you're off the hook for now.

For those running low on them, here is a really great deal....

Things like poems, crosswords, puzzles, sudoku...all exercise our brains, so if I'm slack in the body exercise, at least my mind is exercising.

This is your brain on poetry...nice and colorful...




Here's a great web site that I found (you can click on it for additional info):

4 Exercises to Sharpen Your Brain

"1. Use your non-dominant hand


Tackling new tasks improves brain capacity in younger people and has a restorative effect on mental faculties that are declining. Boost your brain power right now by performing everyday activities with your non-dominant hand. If you're right-handed, use your left hand to eat, drink, comb your hair, and brush your teeth. Try writing your name with your non-dominant hand or put your mouse pad on the other side of the keyboard. (Warning...do not do this in front of anyone {like Eileen} who could possibly spew their coffee out or laugh hysterically to the point of giving themselves a hernia...yes, I do speak from the experience of me trying some of these.)



2. Work out your brain


You have to use it or lose it! You can work out your mind just like you work out your body. Mental exercises that will keep your brain fit include doing crossword puzzles, playing chess, or memorizing names, shopping lists, and phone numbers. When I was a young boy, to keep my brain function strong, my father had me memorize Tang Dynasty poetry. Every day I had to memorize a new poem and recite it back. Learn the words to a poem or a new song and repeat them back from memory. Set aside the calculator and add manually instead. Keep challenging yourself with tasks that are new to you. (I would love to experiment here with trying to remember what I went into another room to get...maybe if I write it down on a piece of paper and then try not to look when I get to the other room...but who's gonna check to see if I'm 'cheating'???)


3. Move your fingers to improve your brain


Many people marvel that Asian children seem so intelligent. It could be because they use their fingers more frequently. They eat with chopsticks and at one time, they used to compute with an abacus in school. In fact, some studies have been done with children who use an abacus daily, and findings show that engaging the fingers stimulates nerve endings that go directly to the brain, increasing circulation. Take advantage of this by practicing motor activities that use your fingertips, like crocheting, knitting, and other arts and crafts where you are manipulating small parts. Try playing the piano or a stringed instrument. (Or go into a music store and try their instruments until the owner thinks your brain and his ears are stimulated enough.)


4. Stimulate brain acuity with self-massage


To improve concentration and memory try this self-massage that stimulates two easy-to-find acupressure points on your neck at the base of the skull. Cross your hands behind you with the palms cradling the back of your head, your thumbs in the grooves on each side of your neck, and your index fingers crossing one another below the skull, just above the thumbs. Sit in a chair, lean your head back, and let it rest against the pressure of your thumbs and index fingers. Slowly inhale deeply through your nose and exhale through your mouth, letting your whole body relax. Do this for three to five minutes. You'll increase blood flow to the brain and at the same time relax the neck muscles, which often tense up in response to stress, constricting blood vessels in the area." (You could always tell your friend or hubby to do this for you so you will be REAL smart...add that a total massage is to their benefit too as it will make them smarter...they'll stay far away from you and your ideas in the future!)

Here's what happens when you do and do not use your brains...you get a lot of laughs...

Brains

I'd contacted a butcher to get sheep brains for a lecture in my neuroanatomy class and said I'd be by to pick them up. But when I arrived at his shop, it was closed. Taped to the door was this note: "Teacher, your brains are next door at the barbershop."

Lack of Brains, obvious lack of poetry

Torrential rainstorms were knocking down power lines all over town. That meant, as a customer service rep for the electric company, I was dispatching repairmen right and left. When one lineman called a customer to get her exact address, he was told, "I'm at Post Office Box 99." The weary lineman replied, "Ma'am, I'll be coming to you in a truck, not an envelope."

Using Her Brains...a real poet

Our family was dazzled by the sights and the bustling crowds during a visit to Manhattan. "This is the city that never sleeps," I told my eleven-year-old daughter."That's probably because there's a Starbucks on every corner," she observed.

She's not writing enough poetry...no brain exercises

My boyfriend was working in the souvenir shop at the Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, England. One afternoon he was talking with an attendant who worked in the cathedral when they were approached by two tourists. "Are you a monk?" one of the women asked. "No," the attendant explained, "I wear this robe as part of my job, but I'm not a member of any religious order.""Then where are the monks?" asked the woman.

The man replied, "Oh, there haven't been any monks here since 1415."

Hearing this, the woman looked at her watch and announced to her friend, "Betty, we missed the monks."

~~~Thank You Lord for the blessings of poetry in Your Creation and for gifting us with appreciating it, in all its' forms.