As I explore these ideas about exercise and not only developing our brains, but also helping us get, or stay, more creative in life.  Many of these meanderings are my personal theories, and are all the way open to questioning.  My goal is to get you to try a few things on for size.

There are many ways to help your brain keep from shrinking and even to grow;  I think of this as the depth dimension of brain fitness.  On the other hand, the exercieses I am going through are those that I think also give our brains breadth.  My goal, if you will pardon the metaphor, is to make your pool of wisdom not only deeper, but also wider.  And maybe not just rectangular or kidney shaped, but all sorts of different shape.

Get Off the Treadmill

So, how is walking a creative brain exercise?

By itself, walking for a period of time every day can help preserve brain connections; it doesn’t even have to be strenuous walking.  I want to go beyond that.

First, I would say, if possible, get off the treadmill. Get out in nature.

And do some things differently.

Dissolving Categories

Move beyond categorization.  Even if you walk outside, you may have “a walk you go on.”  You may have a route you have measured out to be X.x miles and your goal is to get that in X times a week.

Great start.  What about some change-up?  Try finding different routes to walk.  This can be more challenging than it seems.  I try to walk different paths every day, and finding new ones can get tough after a while.

• So I change other things. One day I may walk one route with my headphones on and work to see different things.  Or see things differently.  Take new looks at graffitti.  Look at the colors of flowers I haven’t noticed before.  I then seem to start noticing floweres I haven’t even seen, gardens I’ve messed, how houses with flowers impess me differently than those without.
• On other days, I may foregoe the headphones and listen to the dity sounds, train horns, traffic noise, birds chirping, kids yelling and playing.  Sometimes I even take notes — okay that may be a little obsessive.
• Add other exercises to walking.  I find places where I can stop and do some crunches, I also find walking a great time to do the super-brain yoga squats.  If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, it’s coming up.

Another Challenge

Try walking backwards.  Be careful, of course, and this may not be the greatest idea if where you walk is crowded.  Here are a couple of tips-

• I do backwards walking a lot on Sundays in empty parking lots.
• Also, get one of those bike mirrors that fits on your glasses or sunglasses.  They are fairly cheep and very helpful if you are walking on a parkway.
• Start out slowly, you will build up speed over time if you so choose.

Bonus:

Walking outside gives you another freebie.  Since the sun has somehow over the years become the enemy, many have become vitamin D deficient.  You remember vitamin D,  the other sunshine vitamin.  When you walk for a moderate time period, you will get  a dose of D from the sun.  An important vitamin, there have been reports that supplementing vitamin D can prevent death from almost any ailment.  While that may be an overstatement, the Dana Foundation, leader in brain research reports that…

Vitamin D has many roles in regulating brain health, from aiding the development of the brain and nervous system to postponing decline toward the end of life, according to a growing body of research. R. Douglas Shytle and Paula C. Bickford review the field and argue that while it is clear that many people worldwide experience vitamin D deficiency, we need to complete much more research to fully understand the consequences of this deficiency for brain health.  The Dana Foundation

So, there ya have it.  Let’s go for a walk, and then take a nap.

Mike

Photo by Caveman 92223

If on the photo, you take the beer hint, be careful!