You Are Your Memories

Who are you without your memories?

Our brain, the "tofu-like" mass as Suzanne Corkin described it, contains our most intimate memories. Memory has really intrigued a lot of people for a long time. It wasn’t really until Henry Molainson that we began to understand what parts of the brain were key for memory. Henry Molainson, known as HM, in the neuroscience world, was born 26th February 1926, and had suffered from debilitating epilepsy since childhood.

In 1953, when Henry's extremely risky surgery was performed to reduce the number of seizers he had. Although. in that regard, the surgery was a success, it also permanently damaged his memory. Up until this point it had been believed that the billions of neurons that had made up the brain, were all in part responsible for the storage and retrieval of our memories. Henry was left only with the memories from the past 27 years and with no ability to form new memories. He could only retain memory for 30 seconds and lived his life in constantly in the present moment.

It’s normal to be forgetful sometimes - we aren’t perfect. Even Albert Einstein often forgot a lot of things. He had to keep notes of things he had to do and places he had to go.

We have to be aware of the fact that we can’t always have the same memory as we did when we were kids. Although, people accept that the ability to memorise fades with age, there are ways to overcome this.

You CAN train your brain to memorise things better. Everything can be trained - from your body to your mind. The belief that so many walk around with "I don't have a good memory", "my memory isn't as good as it used to be" or even "I have a limit to the amount I can remember". These are all misconceptions and with the correct training anyone can be trained to have a fantastic memory and recall ability.

We exercise our brain via puzzles, word games, even mobile apps for memory training! Card games like UNO also help activate your brain, and never fail to entertain the group that’s playing. Even by listening to music, we can improve our memory and activate different parts of our brain which were sound asleep.

Fun activities like dance, learning new choreographies and bopping your head to new tunes increases your brain’s processing speed and memory. Meditation and sleep pay a huge role when memory training. Meditation helps mindfulness, and being mindful increases the ability to focus.

Having the ability to bring your focus back to something important - truly comes from training the state of mindfulness.

You can boost your memory and improve other mental functions by learning a new language at any point in your life.

Most people rely on rote learning and repetition. This has been the case for years in our schooling system. It is a slow, time consuming and boring process. At BrainJitsu we use the PEAK system to overcome this. We also help remove the poor self talk to completely reframe your beliefs and set you on a path of success.

Start your journey of excellence and enroll today.

Black Belt Brain Training