Many of us exercise regularly, but few of us think about exercising our brains. Tapping into dormant areas of your brain provides a world of benefits. Not only does it improve overall brain function and mental health, but it can also help prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Activating the dormant areas of your brain can be accomplished by performing a few simple exercises and changing some routines.

Use your opposite hand. If you are right handed, use your left hand to write with, brush your teeth, etc. If you are left handed, switch to your right. Doing this will jump start the connections and circuits in your brain that are ordinarily neglected.

Work crossword puzzles to stimulate the left side of your brain. Crossword puzzles are an inexpensive way to awaken your brain while passing the time.

Read out loud while pretending you're in front of a large audience. Reading out loud forces your brain to do multiple activities that reading silently does not. Your brain has to scan ahead to prepare your speech delivery, determine the proper pitch of your tone and various other activities all while speaking.

Learn a musical instrument or a foreign language. Learning to play an instrument or speak a foreign language builds up the gray matter in your brain and encourages new inter-brain connections.

Visit a chiropractor. Having a proper adjustment done by a qualified chiropractor can activate muscle and joint receptors that have become dormant due to non use.

Add pratyahara yoga to your exercise routine. Pratyahara is a type of yoga which means "withdrawal of the senses" and teaches you how not to become disturbed by sounds, thoughts, feelings and various other senses. In knowing how to control our senses, we activate areas of our brain that we would not use otherwise.


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