What quality reading does to our brain
I wanted to be a creature whom ‘Smart’ does not even slightly describe… – Olya Aman
Many years prior to the days of our acquaintance, my mentor was considered a dyslexic child. He had trouble matching the letters, struggled to read fluently and spell words correctly.
My mentor, Maks, can intoxicate every person individually with his great bright voice, hoarse and rich, sudden, and intensely accurate. Saying things enlightening and captivating, he can describe any event from his life and the life of the world around fully and without hyperbole and still catch unmitigated attention of everybody around.
My notebooks, one in particular, are covered with expressions of his wisdom. I’m the witness of his ineffable teaching — How to eliminate our troubles by growing a hunger to read.
I will put you wise using his own words:
Read a Good Book and Energize Your Brain
Reading makes our brain omnipotent. By processing written material, we encourage our brains to work harder and better. Almost like after a visit to a gym, when our muscles still remember the strenuous stretch and weight, our brain expresses a shadow activity at a specific region that was stimulated.
Maks has a great understanding of the brain and his learning disability. He explained to me that dyslexics are visual and multi-dimensional thinkers.
“Although I excelled in hands-on learning and was highly creative, I needed to put a certain dangerous effort into mastering the art of reading. I was long past the school-age when I finally could claim a label ‘normal’ for myself.”
Maks was hard, immeasurably hard on research, finding the best ways to rewire his brain. “I tried all kinds of remedial reading programs that could help me become a better reader. Every single day I was working on changing the way how my brain was processing information.”
Remedial Reading Helps to Diminishing Confusion in Our Lives
Reading decreases stress. You transport yourself into a different situation and positively affect your daily life with uplifting literature.
Maks made his Dyslexia (‘word blindness’ — how it is called sometimes) not an insurmountable obstacle in a process of education, but a problem to be solved — an opportunity to express personal motivation; a trigger to combat an enemy and win the battle on the arena of education.
“I’ve discovered the relationship between reading and stimulation of particular regions of the brain. Today it is a base for the emerging field of literary neuroscience. My life is an example that even a dyslexic reader can fix his problem with the right approach to a book.”
Maks often stresses that by challenging our brain, we keep ourselves upright together with our cognitive abilities. “There are many benefits in the ensemble of mind improving reading exercises. It even can ward off dementia.”
“Behind our eyes lives a world of undiscovered. And to start a journey of self-digging and improvement is never late. There are special techniques, new emerging programs, even specifically created fonts to help us become better readers.”
The Value of Close Reading
Reading is not just fun, it is beneficial for our mental health. Reading stimulates our analytical abilities, heighten our focus and concentration.
Breakthrough information emerges every day. Maks keeps finding new ways to improve memory, reduce stress, decrease depression, enhance imagination, improve sleep, and many more — all with the help of books, chosen smartly and intentionally.
“Reading every day not only makes our feet travel in countries not easily imagined but also explore the grounds of our abilities.”
Methods of Keeping Our Brain Active
When crossing the threshold of a new book you should think what benefit you are expecting to get from it. Making a choice in a library, you pick, quite literally, a kind of cognitive brain training, a way to use new brain regions, and it is in your power to decide where to put your focus on.
“Scientists work extensively, developing new ways to train our brain.” says Maks. “There are numerous books on simple math problems and short brain-training sessions with puzzles. By challenging ourselves, we strengthen the connections between brain cells. Devoting our time to learning something new and complex like a foreign language can protect our brain from aging.”
Conclusion
My mania for the world of reading results from the prolonged conversations with my mentor. I love the state of focus and concentration I feel every time we meet.
I think that being a victim of a great book is an honor, and I wish to get into such captivity often and do so at my leisure. There is about the entire process of reading something irretrievably and positively self-imaginary. It punctuates our lives with novel ideas and educates us in unknown areas of life.
By mastering a new field of study, we heighten our opinion of ourselves and our capabilities. Reading manifests refinement to our brain and enjoyment to our life.
A final work from Maks:
When working with great workout tools our body responds more quickly and easily to the exercise, the same happens with our brain when we chose a quality book to read. You may even feel a bit exhausted at the end, as if your body went through the exercise along with your mind.
Stay tuned…
Olya Aman 