Wednesday, July 22, 2009

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):







"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.

20 comments:

  1. O my! To me, this is the funniest yet! I read in a magazine yesterday how not to appear old. It said use only your thumbs when texting, using cell, etc. (That's how the young do it.) We're in trouble! We MUST get the word out - to use ALL of our fingers! I'm going to the music store and strum on a few strings!

    I'll stop by the barber shop to pick up my brains on the way.

    You keep me going, Marcy. Never stop!

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  2. I just had another brainstorm! I'm going to have my husband massage my neck with his NONdominate hand! This will be stimulating to BOTH of us. (Actually, he DOES practice with his nondominate hand - often sits and doodles the alphabet, etc. We learned about this in a book that helps you think like DiVinci.)

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  3. Funny...but yet a serious post Marcy...You do us all a good service to remind us.....we're getting old! :)

    I love sudoku...have several books of it...you can even do sudoku online and there is a Mensa site that has a very difficult quiz one can take.

    It's like anything else...use it or lose it...the brain is mysterious...After breaking my ankle and in a cast for two months, I was told my brain would forget my ankle was even there and would need to be retrained!

    Writing backwards is a good brain exercise too!

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  4. Good Morning Marcy. Boy, you were up early this am. I feel like such a layabout as I got up at 7:30 to put out the trash.
    I'm going to let you in on a secret ::looks around and whispers softly in Marcy's shell-like ear:: your blog is the first one I read every day. Shhhh....don't tell anyone.
    Thanks for being an inspiration to me and all your "Village" friends. Peace and Blessings, Mar.

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  5. Oh, here's something I just realized....my post says I wrote it at 6:51 am. Well it's actually 9:51 am here. Sooo, I guess you weren't up as early as I thought. LOL Well, I learned something and that's good for the ol' brain...I have to add 3 hours to the post time showing. Time for another shot of caffeine. Mar.

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  6. OK. Now that I've officially joined (I was sure I was a follower before), what is the "Village"? Am I an official Village People? Or is it a subgroup WITHIN the followers of Marcy? And I promise this is my last comment here today.

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  7. Here I am again. I reread your post and you did day you were up at 4:00 am. Hmmm guess I do need to improve my short term...uhhh what's the word I need...oh yah, memory. LOL Mar.

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  8. Those brain tips are really good ones, Marcy!
    Thank you for those....
    I hope that you have a good Wednesday.
    I'm on line for a few minutes and wanted to check in and say hello.
    Smiles from Jackie

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  9. Aaahhh...mass confusion...this MUST be good for the brain too! I deal well with this as it seems to be my normal state!

    **Well, Rebecca, at the rate you are using all these brain techniques, you may just end up being a teen-ager before the end of this week. As for the Village, it SHOULD be everyone who wants to be a part of it, so your followers are my followers and my followers are your followers and Wanda's followers...hmmm...Wanda's followers are in storybook land (soooo beautiful over there where she lives), but hopefully we are all HIS followers!!!

    ***Wanda...waaah...I didn't want to remind anyone we're getting old! This is to MAKE us young...just check out Rebecca, she's gonna look like a teen-ager any minute now. If that works for your broken ankle and then we take it to the next level, when we lose weight, will our bodies forget about the fat and have to be retrained to retain it?...I'm LIKING this! And how about thinking backwards...will that help? If so, I'm gonna zip on down to the toddle stage!

    Poor Mar, did I ever confuse you and then you had it right and then you thought you had it wrong, but guess what? You were STILL right! (How's THAT for confusion...boy do I feel young now!) I only woke up, NOT got up (to do a post or anything) at 400 a.m. (my poetic musings were while lying down wondering why I have to be awake at 4:00 a.m.). Yes, this goofy blogger is on its own time, not ours, so it's 3 hours off for alot of us and REALLY wacko for anyone overseas!!

    ***Now, Jackie, I am disappointed as I expected something weird from you...this vacationing is not good for you as you are becoming like normal people! Is it that fresh and cool mountain air??

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  10. Backwards writing is a gift, I think. My English friend in Ireland can do it without thinking about it. The real brain exercise comes with trying to decipher it!

    Everyone ought to practise using their non-dom. hand - you never know when it might come in .....er.....handy. The one thing I just can't master is writing with the 'wrong' hand. I can form the letters ok but it looks as if a spider walked over the paper!

    I do envy people who find Sudoku anything other than bloody boring. That's not bcause it's too simple for me, it's because I don't know where to start and as many times as I might be shown I STILL can't get it! Numbers have always had that effect on me, as has threading sewing machines, following knitting patterns and crocheting. All fingertip jobs...hmmm..............

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  11. ****Angie, it's OBVIOUS that you are not backwards enough! So if you want to get super sharp and bright in the brain, you need to start doing things backwards, like baking your cake before making it, wheel your chair backwards, the possibilities here are endless (and dangerous, I might add) etc. etc. I like that hand y reference there that you made...very punny...or funny.

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  12. WANDA!! Old? What's old? There is no such thing as OLD in the Village! Please! It matters not our age in years, we are young in mind and young in heart!
    How could we possibly enjoy all this silliness if we're old? How can we squabble the way do sometimes if we're old? WE ARE NOT OLD!

    Okay, now that we have that settled, let's move on to Rebecca, and why is she asking if she can join the Village??!! I think we all assumed you were already an upstanding member of the Village! As is everyone and anyone who visits here or any other member of the Village! (Well, only if they care to be part of the Village, there are no tyrants here forcing anyone to join the lot of us! Well, you never do know about Miss Marcy and her blogger police force though! She may work herself up to Dictator!)

    LOVED THIS POST, MARCY!!
    Love you too!

    'Glad I finally made it here today. Better late than never I guess!

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  13. OH MY GOODNESS did you write that first poem? It is so wonderful! I agree, my best poetry comes in the wee hours of the morning. I wrote a Christmas poem actually a song called "Mary's Lullaby" I will post it closer to Christmas. I got up (without my glasses on of course) sat at the computer, started typing...because this melody was haunting me and of course I couldn't see what I was typing, and finished. When I got up the next morning all excited to see what I had written I noticed that I had my fingers on one key over and typed the whole poem in gibberish! I was so upset I cried, then I prayed and it all came back to me! miles of smiles...lindalu

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  14. Marcy ~ DIANA'S BACK!!
    Shout it from the hilltops! DIANA'S BACK!

    Oh, and keep a pen/pencil and paper by your bed for the brainstorms God sends your way at night!

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  15. I once used my non dominate hand to brush my hair.
    I lost my balance and fell off my chair.
    I tested my brain on sudoku and such,
    only to find my brain didn't contain much.
    How's that for Village sillyness?!

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  16. Okay, I am an unhappy villager...blogger just knocked me out of my own blogsite and REFUSED my comment!!!

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  17. Let me try one more time...and that comment they blew away was SO good and long too...can I whine some more?

    ***Pat, you not only did good, you did great, what a poet and with such meaning too! You definitely make it inot the silliness circle at the Village. Somewhere in this big village there are some normal people...we just haven't found them yet, so let us know if you do!

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  18. ***Okay Eileen...you know I don't believe in dictatorships anywhere ANYTIME! However, along with being in charge of the Police force, I wouldn't mind being nominated for the position of Tinkerbelle!
    I would also like to thank you for pointing out that this Village is open to ALL and we will give liberal cyber hugs to anyone who wants to be associated with the Village, such brave souls they would be anyhow! So Come One, come ALL!!

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  19. ***And dear sweet Lindalu, I just want you to know that buttering up the Village Police aka Tinkerbelle will get you everywhere. Thank you so much for the nice words about my poetry...you are too kind!

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  20. Ooops...brain freeze again...may I ask all to please pray for Jackie?? She mentioned in a comment on another blog site that she is not feeling well and she is far from home, on vacation!

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