Several experts point out their tricks to ensure that the most complex organ of the human body can also rest despite constantly creating neural connections.
Every day we are more aware of the importance of mental health in our daily lives and that leads us to try to take care of it as much as possible. However, it is not always easy and much of the problem lies in the constant brain activity. But several studies have shown that allowing the brain to rest is fundamental in different facets of life, from decision making to memory or motivation.
But how can we rest our brain? It is a complex organ that is constantly creating neural connections and we cannot turn it on or off at will. For this reason, some experts point to their tricks to get the brain to relax and take a break, habits that we should introduce in our lives to improve our daily lives.
Some tips are purely physical, as Select Health experts point out. Thus, it is essential to prioritize sleep, sleeping a minimum of 7 hours a day, but we must also spend time outdoors, at least 20 minutes that we can devote to our emotional well-being by breathing fresh air, which will also help us to concentrate and focus on our work or daily chores.
How to rest the brain
Other experts also recommend changing our daily routines, introducing something new so that the brain does not become comfortable. We can do a sport we have not practiced before, try to solve hobbies we have never tried before or even adopt a dog to get out of our comfort zone. The brain will adapt to these new situations, causing it to reset itself and facilitating brain wellness.
But, in addition to these external factors, we can also implement another series of solutions on an internal level. One of them is to meet with our brain for 30 minutes every day, an exercise proposed by Jade Wu, a doctor specializing in sleep medicine, in the podcast Savvy Psychologist. The goal is to plan the day to day and take care of pending tasks or worries so that, when the night comes, the problems do not bother us. When those 30 minutes are up, it's time to wipe the slate clean; anything else that comes up after that, we should postpone to the next day's ‘meeting‘.
In the book ‘ Neuroscience of the body: How the organism sculpts the brain ‘, neuroscientist Nazareth Castellanos explains that “in a year we breathe more than 7 million times, but we would be surprised to know the low percentage of breaths of which we are aware or have controlled at will”. For this reason, she points to the need to control breathing and to know how to breathe, fundamentally through the nose, because “breathing influences the capacity to memorize, remember and learn because it impacts the hippocampus and influences neuronal dynamics and the nose prepares the air so that it can penetrate the body in a healthy way”.
The brain is constantly creating neural connections, so we cannot turn it off or on at our whim.
Sleeping well, going outdoors, meeting our brain or knowing how to breathe are some of the tricks to rest the brain… but not the only ones. Catalina Hoffmann, an expert in cognitive stimulation, has created her own method in which she seeks physical, cognitive, neuropsychological and social benefits based on brain neuroplasticity. And part of this stimulation is produced thanks to binaural music.
As reported by Vogue, Hoffman explains that “binaural music allows us to rest by listening to slightly different frequency tones in each ear, and they have a direct impact on the brain, modifying our mood“. These sounds are generated by two different types of sound frequencies and can be easily found in any search engine. The sensation of three-dimensionality they provide helps the brain to relax and rest from its tireless daily work.
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