Alternate nostril breathing exercise

Only 20% of college graduates know their 3-pound coconut is fueled by blood sugar (glucose) and oxygen. How many know about 25% of all the oxygen we inhale is required by our brain?

And when we study, learn and remember, our left-and right hemispheres must have an additional 10% fuel. Not eating breakfast causes early fatigue and a lowering of our cognitive skills; lousy grades on exams too.

What Helps

A glass of orange juice produces the glucose, and a quickie breathing exercise provides the extra oxygen. Research using fMRIs offers proof of an excitement (electrical activity) of our prefrontal lobes, (Broca and Wernicke areas) for learning, analysis and information processing by these supplemental doses of oxygen.

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Review: your left hemisphere controls the right-half of your body, and righty runs the left half of your corpus. It is reversed because of chiasma (crossing over), also known as decussation.

You got two-nostrils and breathing exclusively through your left-nostril accesses your right-hemisphere (brain), and exclusively breathing through your right-nostril awakens your left-hemisphere (brain).

Finally, your left-brain (right-half of body) specializes in verbal skills including language, speech, logic (math) and reason. Your right-brain (left-half of your body) runs your instincts and emotions, pattern-recognition and spatial skills.

Profound statement: electrical activity of the brain is greater on the side opposite the inhaling nostril.

Two-Minute Exercise

a) Please sit with your feet flat on the floor and relax.

b) Close your eyes and close off your right nostril using the side of your right thumb and inhale through your left nostril only.

c) Inhale slowly to a count of four and hold your breath until you switch hands and close off your left nostril (with your left thumb) and exhale (slowly) to a count of eight through your right nostril.

d) Now use your left thumb to close off your left nostril and inhale to a count of four through your right nostril. Hold your breath and switch hands to close your right nostril and exhale to a count of eight through your left nostril.

e) Open your eyes, stand up and repeat this exercise four more times for each nostril.

Repeat this exercise (left and right nostrils) a total of eight times for each nostril in order to oxygenate both hemispheres for synchronization (in sync). Balancing your two hemispheres produces deep relaxation and elimination of stress, and an alignment between cognitive functioning and optimal motivation (emotion).

When should you do the Alternate Nostril exercise?
Answer: before studying, prior to an exam, and ten-minutes before sitting for an interview or making a verbal presentation.

Does it work?

Feedback from thousands of graduates recommend the alternate nostril breathing exercise to their children, associates and Speedlearners. To install it as a habit spend two-minutes daily for 21 consecutive days; it is well-worth the effort.

Dopamine

In the brain is a neurotransmitter called dopamine; it is a chemical messenger similar to adrenaline exciting the Sympathetic Nervous System. So what?

It causes emotional responses, controls movement and the ability to experience pleasure. Dopamine is directly involved in our ability to become motivated and seek rewards. Want better learning and long term memory? Activate dopamine.

Humans have two core principles – seek pleasure and avoid pain; it is how we are hardwired. Studying, learning and memory occur because we are seeking a reward following our interests or curiosity, or to avoid punishment (failure).

Speedlearning students are interested in dopamine because we know that effort actually creates ability. We are not hardwired with an IQ at birth, it expands with experience.

It is our will power (effort) exhibited in determination and persistence toward a goal that decides our abilities. If you excite your brain to seek a learning goal, it must be motivated with a purpose (reward, pay-off) or it slacks off. Your abilities expand through effort and contracts with inactivity.

Expectation

In school your personal expectations control up to 34% of the final result. If you think you cannot, you will be proven right; those who come to learn with a powerful expectation will often experience it beyond the explainable.

Fifty years of research indicates the expectation of your instructor with regard to your learning success is emotionally transferred to your mind. Your own beliefs about your capabilities and the amount of your effort to succeed propel your grades and exam results.

Personal beliefs and expectations about your ability to excel, help produce up to 49% of your final result. It is not our opinion, but based on neuro-scientific studies beginning in the 1980s to date.

If you believe you supposed to offer your opinion and judgment, ask questions of the instructor, and be critical of generalizations, you will engage your brain in learning and not daydream.

Social proof is following the example of folks around you. We are more comfortable with conformity than being unique when in learning situations. Believing in the ability of your intelligence to expand (develop) based on the experience is not only a fact, but the prerequisite for personal IQ growth.

Endwords

Calvin Coolidge, 30th U.S. President said, We all require pig-headed persistence and determination in the face of stubborn resistance and adversity. We believe it is the power of your mental force (will power and effort) that permits you to triumph or fall under the ax.

Your innate intelligence may not kick in until you push hard and smash it in the slats a few times. Often we must fear the consequences to activate our Effort (volition). A business truism is the fear of loss is greater than the desire for profit.

Everyone needs his or her own toolkit of how to learn plus the ability and effort to succeed. Your ability is a brain filled with skills constantly expanding through use (use it or lose it). No effort, no improved abilities. Effort and ability are twins that must be equally nourished.

If you believe in UFOs it is not a sign of instability, but non-conformity. If you think UFOs are a parody from Saturday Night Live, based on your critical thinking (no evidence after sixty years), you are exercising your brain.

Both results indicate conscious analysis based on your abilities and effort. It is not what you think; it is that you expect answers you can produce. Remember the team of effort, ability and positive expectation. They form your beliefs and produce the results.

See ya,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


copyright © 2007
H. Bernard Wechsler
http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org


Author of Speed Reading For Professionals, published by Barron's; partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating 2 million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.

Interviewed by Wall Street Journal and Fortune Magazine

http://www.speedlearning.org

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=H._Bernard_Wechsler