Since most of you probably like to read and/or care about the state of your brain as a thinking mechanism, I thought I’d share some reading/brain exercises I read about in Making a Good Brain Great.

LAZY-8S
How to do it: Extend one arm in front of your face. With your thumb pointing upward, slowly and smoothly trace a large figure 8 on its side in the air. Keep your neck relaxed and your head upright, moving only slightly as you focus on the thumb and follow it around. This reportedly helps with reading, speed reading, writing, and hand-eye coordination.

CROSS CRAWL
How to do it: While standing, alternately touch your left knee with your right hand, then your right knee with your left hand. Continue for 10 to 15 repetitions. This reportedly helps with reading, writing, listening, memory, and coordination. It activates both sides of the brain simultaneously.

The first one makes more sense to me as a reading aid, because it’s giving your eyes a workout.  I also read about a similar exercise to the Lazy-8s in Men’s Health.  In this one, you hold your hand out at arm’s length and point your index finger up, while keeping the tip of your finger at eye level.  Focus on the tip of your index finger, then shift focus to something behind your finger without moving your head.  For instance, you could stand in one room and shift your focus to a lamp that’s in an adjacent room (that’s what I do).  Do the exercise ten times.

On another note, I was reading something about speed reading, and it said that one reason people sometimes read slowly is because they subvocalize everything they read.  (And by subvocalize, I mean silently, in their head; not with the moving lips.)

When I read that, it was like a light went off.  That’s exactly what I do, and that’s probably why I can’t seem to read any faster than I do.  In order to break yourself of this habit, the text said to count to ten in increments of two (2, 4, 6, 8, 10), and do that over and over as you’re reading.  While you’re doing this, you’re supposed to read extra slowly as you’re training your brain to process the words differently. 

I don’t think I’m ever going to break myself of the habit (and I probably won’t really try as it seems impossible), but it does explain to me why some people can read a whole book in a 2-3 hours, while it takes me much longer.  But I also read that people who subvocalize often require a quiet and distraction-free zone to read in, and that’s definitely true of me.  So that also explains why some people can sit and read in a noisy restaurant (or while listening to the radio, as Gordon does), while I find any kind of noise or talking very distracting.  Of course, reading the way I do means I’m a more careful reader than some others, and so that’s good for editing, at least.