{"id":13024,"date":"2021-10-03T20:38:40","date_gmt":"2021-10-03T17:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mozartcultures.com\/en\/?p=13024"},"modified":"2021-10-05T11:16:09","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T08:16:09","slug":"do-you-want-to-train-your-brain-start-juggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mozartcultures.com\/en\/do-you-want-to-train-your-brain-start-juggling\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you want to train your brain? Start juggling!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s why you should learn how to juggle, according to science.<\/h1>\n

The art of juggling has been around for thousands of years. The first evidence of juggling dates back to the Middle Kingdom Period of Egypt (1994-1781 BC) and is found in a panel in the tomb of an unknown prince. [1]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Egyptians
Egyptians juggling, black and white picture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you ever seen a juggler in the streets and wondered, \u201cWhat is going on in his head\u201d? Well, a group of scientists actually did it! They used whole-brain magnetic-resonance imaging to scan 20 volunteers for over three months to understand how juggling affects the brain.<\/p>\n

What they found:<\/h2>\n

Scans pointed out that learning to juggle caused certain alterations in the brain\u2014the interconnections between the two hemispheres increased in number and thickness [2]. Furthermore, according to BBC News Online (22 January 2004), \u201cJugglers had more gray matter \u2014 which consists largely of the nerve cells \u2014 in the regions in charge for processing visual and motion information\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Grey
Brain gray and white matter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gray matter gives us the capability of higher learning, focus, memory, and thought.\u00a0 Increasing your gray matter means having access to a faster brain. The complex task that is juggling presents a strong stimulus for the brain causing an adaptive response. The scans showed two kinds of structural changes: transient and permanent. The amount of time needed to achieve permanent structural changes strongly depends on the person, but anybody could expect to have changes within a month spent training.<\/p>\n

But there’s more…<\/h2>\n

Secondly, juggling is a great way to meditate. “Meditation can be defined as a set of techniques that are intended to encourage a heightened state of awareness and focused attention. Meditation is also a consciousness-changing technique that has been shown to have a wide number of benefits on psychological well-being”.[3]<\/p>\n

Our mind is our most valuable resource. It allows us to experience every single moment of our life, to be happy, to cope with emotions. The well-being of the mind is what guarantees us to be emotionally stable individuals. And yet, we don’t take any time out to look after it. We always get stressed. Our mind whizzes like a washing machine as it has to deal with feelings and emotions we often don’t know how to cope with. At such times, meditation can offer a greater and deeper appreciation of the present moment.<\/p>\n

You can learn how to be “truly present”.<\/h2>\n

We spend most of our time not really thinking about what we are doing. This behavior can be described as a sort of \u201cautopilot\u201d. Although this can help us do almost automatically complex tasks such as walking, it can also prevent us from really appreciating what we have. This is where meditation comes in.<\/p>\n

There are many different ways of meditating, the two most common types are concentrative and mindfulness meditation[4]:<\/p>\n