Therefore, there is no doubt that it is necessary to radically change the old approach to teaching children in preschool and school institutions. Without any stress, of course. The time has come for techniques that contribute to the natural and equal development of both hemispheres of our brain with all their rich functionality, with increased memory and an increasing speed of thinking.
Learning should be built in such a way that the slave hemisphere of the brain becomes a full participant in solving life problems. A dual-core computer is more powerful and faster than a single-core computer, and something similar will happen to people. With Reading, Music and Juggling, we can develop both hemispheres of the brain equally. It sounds funny, but from a passive appendage a half of your brain will turn into a faithful and full-fledged ally.
By the way, starting to juggle, I undertook to interview my acquaintances and very soon found out that many of them (usually the most wise and successful) ALREADY own this art. By the way, my favorite writer Emil Azhar (aka Romain Gary) also juggled perfectly.
And since the names were used, I cant resist and I will continue the lists, mentioning people who at different times also joined the ranks of ambidexters. This is natural left-hander Charlie Chaplin, who played the violin with his left hand, but wrote and painted with his right hand, this is Julius Caesar and Leonardo da Vinci, this is Nicolo Tesla and Luis Carroll. And also these are Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Auguste Picard, Shigeru Miyamoto, Alexander the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Paul McCartney, Vladimir Dahl and Probably, you should not continue further, since the main conclusions, I think, you have already made.
And finally an important stroke, which you should definitely know
Yes, juggling promotes ambidextrium and initiates the creation of new neurochains. They are the ones who help us manage balls in the air. But these same neurocheps forming in the head are much more universal. And in the future they will be used not only for working with balls. The range of their capabilities is unimaginably wider, which helps jugglers (children and adults) make breakthroughs in other areas of life. In particular, this will be noticeable where spatial imagination is required, namely, in geometry and physics, in history and chemistry, in geography and in labor lessons. Hand motility, sense of rhythm, intuition, orientation and capabilities of the vestibular apparatus are an incomplete list of modes in which newly created neurochips will confidently help their owners. In many ways, this is what the growth of the IQ indicator is associated with. And this is no less than 46% (!). Tomography studies have finally confirmed an amazing phenomenon: in just 34 months, the brain of a juggling person adds 56% to the mass! And its not just a lot, its a fantastic lot! In essence, we become more memorable, smarter, smarter, which can only be surprised and rejoiced.
Chapter 3 Balls and our Fantasia
Once, fascinated by military equipment, I learned about the existence of combat complexes capable of detecting enemy batteries. Armed with computer processors, radar stations and acoustic direction finders, these formidable mechanisms in a matter of seconds along the trajectory of the arriving shells and the acoustic features of the breaks determined where the launch was made, from which guns or installations the enemy fired. Judging by the photos and videos, these are really serious machines operating according to their cunning programs, served by qualified personnel.
And what about military equipment, you ask? Yes, despite the fact that we are talking about really complex devices, about multi-stage algorithms developed by large teams of programmers. However, something similar is built in the heads of our neurons in the shortest possible time, as soon as we start juggling.
I will be distracted again and repeat the bearded thought: the human brain is unique. And the uniqueness of him is that throughout his life he does not lose the ability to improve. French writer Bernard Verbert said: A persons brain wears out when they dont use it. The discoveries of recent decades fully confirm this statement. If the nerve cell (neuron) is idle without work, it turns on the mechanism of self-liquidation.
Is it scary? And yes, and no.
The fact is that the total number of neurons in our country is really considerable (approximately 80100 billion neurons). For comparison, in jellyfish neurons only 800, in Drosophila 250,000, in cockroach 1,000,000, in rat 200 million, in octopus 300 million. An equal number of neurons are in a horse and a crow (just over a billion), in a macaque and a giraffe 1.7 billion neurons each, in a bear about 10 billion of them. But do not rush to proudly bend your chest, we are by no means champions. The same elephant has 257 billion neurons! And the brain of bottlenose dolphins is much larger than the human brain, and at the same time its neocortex (a new cerebral cortex responsible for higher nervous functions) is much more complex than that of humans. This, according to scientists, gives dolphins self-awareness and the ability to think. By the way, the number of convolutions in dolphins and whales is twice as large, and the language in complexity and linguistic reserve is quite comparable to the human one: 8,000 words in dolphins, and 14,000 in the average person! Agree, not so impressive a difference.
But perhaps it is worth taking a break from the numbers. Moreover, there is still enough mystery and fog in this area. It is now more important for us to understand that we use our seemingly quite promising brain apparatus extremely inefficiently. Actually, one of the hypotheses just claims that human old age comes so early precisely because of the idleness of our brain. And if with the end of schools and institutes, studies for us stop, then only we ourselves are guilty of this. Wise people learn throughout their lives! It is this process that supports our health like nothing else, significantly prolongs youth.
Any new problem tones the brain, and as a developmental task juggling is ideal. We dont just throw balls, our brains at this time work with shape, color, weight and variable movement. We are forced to build the most complex neurochips, and the software of these circuits will include all the laws of mechanics we know. Yes, we may not have enough knowledge of physics, do not know anything about ballistics, but the brain working with balls will quite independently fill these gaps. So it should be, since the balls fly not at random, but along predetermined trajectories, and we set these trajectories! Vertical, parabola, ellipse, eight we chart the movement of the ball, absolutely knowing exactly what height it will fly to, where it will fall and, therefore, to what place our palm should move in order to confidently catch the ball. In other words, at this time, the most complex software algorithms work in our head, and the neural circuits being built are quite comparable to modern processors.
A small illustration: one ball weighs 160 grams, the second 170, and the third 180. Let them throw a robot equipped with manipulators, and all three balls will fly in different orbits, slapping anywhere. To make the necessary correction, taking into account the difference in weight, you will need to make serious changes to the robot program. If the balls differ in color, and the robot tracks them visually, again it is impossible to do without additional programs. I was not too lazy and spent a couple of days trying to find something capable of juggling among digital mechanisms. Didnt find it. More precisely, I found only an extremely primitive imitation of the simplest and disposable combinations. Of course, the success of scientific and technological progress is foolish to challenge. If humanity sets itself such a goal, the best engineers on the planet will certainly create a robot capable of juggling balls (maybe even clubs!). True, it will take both time and colossal costs. And this is not sarcasm, but just a statement of the amazing fact that our brains are much more powerful than existing computer systems. At least, he copes with the task of teaching juggling more than confidently.
And another significant nuance: juggling is primarily volumetric gymnastics, and volume tasks will always be more difficult than tasks in the plane. It is understandable that this affects the development of the brain. For example, if we compare the number of neurons in the cortex of the hemispheres in mice, rats and moles (representatives of the flat world) with the same pigeons, tits, magpies and rooks (inhabitants of celestial volume), then we will have to give the palm to birds. You will be surprised, but the raven will turn out to be smarter than a cat with a dog and at least not dumber than a noble horse! And the Ara parrot in intelligence will leave far behind the bears with lions and even confidently ahead of the huge giraffe! If we talk about the marine element, then this is still the same gigantic volume, requiring the brain of floating creatures to calculate calculations made in three dimensions at once. Perhaps it is for this reason that we observe that mammals living in an aquatic volume (grinds, fin whales, dolphins, orcas) are equal to humans by all formal features! Accordingly, draw conclusions about juggling, doing which, you break out of the plane into the volume
And now a few words about mirror neurons the very ones with which the whole animal world is armed and without which no training would be possible.
They were discovered by Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti in the 1990s. A distinctive feature of them lies in the fact that they work not only during some action, but also when we observe the actions of other people. In other words, mirror neurons allow us to try on the behavior of another person. Like a network of small mirrors, a neurochain of similar neurons from birth sensitively tracks the volatile images of the outside world. At the same time, she not only passively reflects them, but forces the brain to copy these images, creating internal models, learning to move, talk, eat and dress. In fact, this is the same imprinting. Ducklings emulate their mother from the first days, repeating all her movements, learning to swim, and then fly. Smile at the baby and he will smile back, unconsciously copying your facial expressions. This is also an example of unconscious learning, and in addition to smiling, the child over the years takes on increasingly complex emotions from his parents: irony, politeness, anger, leniency. By the way, the kids also rise from the fours only because they copy the behavior of adults without any pressure, over and over again making attempts to get on their feet. Lumps, abrasions nothing stops them because mirror neuron commands are imperative. This works especially hard in the early years. To survive, a little man is simply obliged to learn and learn as quickly as possible. This explains the speed at which we repeat certain movements, copy facial expressions, words and phrases, voice intonations. The example of children Mowgli once again confirms these conclusions, and, getting to the wolves, children run on all fours, among monkeys climb trees. No genes dance anymore, and none of them remember bipedal walking.
If anyone else doubts the existence of mirror neurons, pay attention to how infectious our yawn is. It is worth your interlocutor to yawn a couple of times, and your mouth begins to open itself. This does not mean that you are drawn to sleep, you just copy the visible image. And this is all they are, too mirror neurons! By the way, the ability of other parrots (and not only) to repeat certain sounds and human words is also explained by the work of mirror neurons. If someone cries, and we see and hear it, our lips involuntarily tremble. Conversely someone elses fun boosts our mood, even if we have no idea who laughs for what reason. We copy feelings and behavior, dance and sports movements, facial expressions and intonation almost everything. And this is one of the most important natural components. A program that helps survival. We can confidently say that without mirror neurons, no personal development would be possible.
Of course, with age, along with the metabolic rate, the speed of building new neurochains also decreases, but on the other hand, there are already quite efficient neurochains, there is an invaluable experience in assimilating something new. This way we learn not from scratch, and this seriously facilitates our life path.
For example, knowing our native language, we are quite able to learn the second language, and the third and fourth (any polyglot will confirm this) will not give you an easier example. A child fond of drawing is able to succeed in serious painting, in descriptive geometry, and in spelling. A reading person loads almost all parts of the brain, and his mirror neurons perform uniform miracles during reading. Not seeing book characters, not hearing their voices, not feeling smells, earthly tremors, heat, wind and cold, an experienced reader reproduces all this with ease in his own imagination. It is mirror neurochips that allow us to turn into creators and virtual directors. Moreover, avid readers better understand their heroes, empathize with them, which turns the reading process into real art. Those who have reached this stage can safely call themselves established readers Readers with a capital letter. By the way, the dreams of such Readers will not be as an example brighter, more interesting and more colorful.
But
Paying tribute to Her Majesty the Book, I will still indicate one weak link. So, this is our vision with you, which, unfortunately, gets tired of books and screens. This is where juggling can come to the rescue. Why? Yes, because working with balls relieves the spasm of the eye muscles, giving the opportunity for full rest and high-quality training of our vision. Therefore, combining these two activities (reading and juggling), we find a new quality of life!
Both reading and juggling stimulate our mirror neurons and in both hemispheres of the brain. But if multiple works have been written about the benefits of reading, then serious observations of juggling people began to be carried out relatively recently. The first researchers had to be content with logical tests and personal observations, but today theoretical assumptions are confirmed by the readings of all kinds of tomographs, clearly demonstrating that after 23 months of active juggling in volunteers from control groups, the amount of white matter in the parietal lobe of the brain increases by an average of 5%! A popular statement was also confirmed that the process is much more important than the final result, since the increase in white matter was observed in all students, regardless of their real success in juggling. At the same time, tests showed a confident increase in IQ by 35% or more. So the conclusion is unambiguous:
juggling and reading children (and adults too) are undoubtedly smarter!
It has been repeatedly proven that juggling people show better results of the mental rotation test of complex geometric objects (mental rotation test). It is also worth noting that research related to juggling is becoming more and more every year, and modern equipment only confirms the most optimistic conclusions. Actually, in the old days, craftsmanship and handicraft were directly correlated with the human mind. Recall the English handyman which means master, skillful. And in Russia, many enthusiastic epithets were linked with hands: manual work, golden hands, master of all trades, etc.