Boost Your Memory

Four exercises that will boost memory and protect wellbeing.

Your brain may not in fact be a muscle, but it does work in much the same way as those in your body – the harder you work it, the stronger it gets and the better it performs.

Here are four exercises that you can carry out over a four-week period – try them and see if you start noticing the results.

Exercise 1: Sleep treat

Just as you’re ready to go to sleep, think over what you did that day from the time you got up until you got into bed. Follow your entire day step-by-step, visualising each and every step.

Don’t worry if in the beginning you can’t remember much detail – you’ll probably move rapidly from task to task or think of the day in larger, broader sections. It’s important to really try to slow down and remember as much as you can, and with time and practice, you will soon start to notice significant improvement in your recall of events and details.

Exercise 2: Map attack

On a piece of paper draw a small square for where you live and begin to add in roads around you. Gradually build a map of your square mile until you reach the edge of the paper.

This is a great exercise as it promotes an ability to picture an environment, factoring in scale and perspective, and boosting rapid recall of memories attached to places.

Compare side-by-side to a real map and see what you included and missed.

Exercise 3: Non-dominant hand

Testing the efficiency of tasks with your ‘wrong’ hand is a great way to get brain activity increasing as it aims to focus harder and find solutions to what are, in fact, regular jobs.

Moving your brain out of its comfort zone in this way is a great way to stimulate it, all the while encouraging it to reach out further in the pursuit of other tasks, at other times.

Exercise 4: Socialising

Perhaps the most satisfying task of them all! Experts say the brain is at its most challenged when in a social or party situation, particularly when around strangers. In simple terms, the more we interrelate with others, the better.

How brain exercises help you:

• They help improve your memory
• They aid your ability to visualise things
• They help improve your concentration
• They boost perceptiveness at every point throughout the day
• They improve powers of observation
• They reduce stress
• They help us live in the moment
• They may well result in you falling asleep faster because your mind is exercised