Brain-Based Education & Exercise

Research - Exercise is Vital!

Eric Jensen, reports in the Phi Delta Kappan, a comprehensive review of the body and brain’s role in learning. Notice the studies linking cognition and exercise, validating the key role Physical Education and sports play on academic excellence. Read more of Eric Jensen’s in depth articles on his BrainBased Jensen Learning Blog.

Fix Neck Pain (free e-book)

Request a free e-book!

John Miller from ‘down under’ is on top of his profession helping people relieve body pain, (back, neck, shoulder, wrist, hip, calf) not through drugs or shake and bake, but with well conceived stretching and strengthening exercises putting muscles and joints back into alignment.

I requested and read my free eBook ‘Fix Neck Pain’ and found John’s approach very helpful. I was able to quickly diagnose the cause of my pain, then stretched and strengthened my muscles in the neck and further down the body to relieve the problem. John’s website articles include ‘Principles of better musculo-skeletal function’ – excellent material and ‘Fact Sheets’ covering various wellness topics. John is direct and humorous… a master Physical Educator and exceptional self-healing advocate.

Physical Education Excellence!

What PE Needs to Be!

Gerry Cernicky is Physical Education’s most ardent advocate, encouraging developmentally appropriate physical education activities that are fun, creating a lifetime of health and fitness. Retired by not resigned to see his profession slip, Gerry offers voice recordings and hundreds of activities professionals can use to achieve a super successful program.

One of Gerry’s quotes, "He who dares to teach must never cease to learn" describes Gerry to the T! Visit this Master Physical Education teacher’s site and encourage others to the same.

Brain Research Helps Educators

Brains change based on experience…
Even students embedded in poverty!

Eric Jenson, author of 26 brain-based books connects teaching and learning to brain research. Eric has inspired people around the globe to use music, arts, physical activities, positive emotions, environment, engaging states, and other essential ways to help students of all ages and learning styles achieve their learning potential. He is a master teacher offering highly engaging books, articles, workshops and conferences involving people in the highly effective brain-based learning process. Sign up for a free monthly newsletter at JensenLearning.com.

Enjoy the movie, The Blind Side for a compelling story of a young man moving from poverty and illiteracy to living and learning success, emphasizing the adaptability of the brain when given a chance. This is a movie the whole family will enjoy.

Special thanks to Eric Jensen for inspiring me to put key learning ideas to movement as the Body-Brain Boogieman.

HPERD Boosts Learning Success

Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance are Key

Create ideal learning states shown to grow and speed body brain cells and systems responsible for enhanced learning. Exercise and relaxation are key, along with a healthy diet and wholesome living practices. Read these Body-BrainBoogie postings -- then take daily action creating new dendrite delight adding new receptor sites and more vibrant energy information bytes, making your hippocampus hop, synapses sing and cerebellum ring!

Train Your Brain with Exercise

Make yourself smarter with aerobic workouts

Jean Lawrence writing for WebMD summarizes current research showing how exercise combats ADHD naturally, calms hyperactivity, grows new brain cells with added BDNF, releases pleasure chemicals key to memory and motivation, and helps remedy depression, fatigue and stress. Dr. John Ratey is quoted, “Exercise is really for the brain, not the body.” No wonder daily physical education in school is key to maximizing learning potential.

Obesity and Quick Fast Food

Proximity of ‘fast-food’ restaurants to schools is a major factor

Newswise reports a study by Baylor University relating adolescent obesity to how close fast-food restaurants are located to schools. The study was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as “the most influential child obesity research for the past year.”

I wonder why compelling research relating childhood obesity to sedentary lifestyles and lack of sufficient daily exercise and movement wasn’t on top – then again this childhood ‘fat factor’ is most obvious… and who needs to prove the obvious?

Want to remedy childhood obesity? Insist on daily physical education with a fitness emphasis! Daily Health education is needed too, helping people understand high calories of certain fast-foods, and the best nutrition to maintain ideal body weight.

Super Charge Your Brain

Speed up brain impulses through repetitive body movements

Get wired! Become your own electrician laying down new elaborate body brain networks that connect sensory and motor neurons responsible for learning. Expand your neural networks and speed their electrical transmission through physical activities (e.g. talking, writing, drawing, dancing, socializing, playing musical instruments, acting, playing, engaging in sports, etc). All neural networks created through such movements are part of the circuitry regulating mood, boosting attention, heightening motivation, building academic performance skills, and extending memory.

Repetitive movements increase cellular voltage as positive and negative ions surge back and forth between communicating neurons. When the energy threshold is high enough to stimulate genetic expression, genes and chromosomes within the neuron’s cell body nucleus produce new molecules that boost cellular function. One master molecule created is BDNF, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor, referred to as Miracle-Gro for the brain by Dr. John Ratey in his book SPARK, The New Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain.

BDNF along with other Nerve Growth Factors grow new neurons, help extend neural networks and increase speed of transmission. Exercise produces and pumps more BDNF throughout the body brain to maximize growth. If you want to wire up… then fire up with exercise. You’ll have less mental static and faster neurons in your mental attic needed to excel! Insist on daily Physical Education focused on fitness to super charge your brain!

Learning Challenges Unfold

When physical movement is put on hold…

Writer’s block, reading delays, LD, ADD, ADHD, and a host of other learning and behavioral challenges can result from lack of movement.

Examples include a fetus frozen by excess stress in the uterus, C-section babies who fail to exert themselves during birth, infants lying on their back or trapped in a car seat, baby swing or playpen for extended periods, young children deprived of plenty of robust play, young learners sitting in their desks doing endless worksheets rather than learning concept through frequent sensory and motor activities, lack of repetitions writing, talking, reading, and primary reflexes (e.g., ATNR, STNR, grasp, spinal gallant) not integrated through repeated physical movement… the list goes on.

Daily Physical Education, morning and afternoon recess, and multiple movement opportunities during each class period will engage the body brain, helping resolve some of these learning issues taking root in body tissues. For more severe learning delays a more focused, remedial physical approach is needed to mature neural networks, helping people realize their living and learning potential. Movement is key!

Prime the Brain Before Studying

Move your muscles to produce and pump learning chemicals

Chemical messengers communicating between neurons are needed for the brain to pay attention and focus. Since attention precedes learning, it makes good sense to produce and pump enzymes, hormones, and neurochemicals needed, especially for people with ADD, ADHD, and other attentional challenges.

Large muscle movements (e.g., circling the arms overhead) produce dopamine, the pleasure/reward motivational chemical that orchestrates the pre-frontal cortex called upon to learn. Moving the arms and legs across the body engages both sides of the brain, helping with sequential and global brain functions involved with writing and math.

Daily Physical Education and frequent movement activities throughout the day will help brain cells excel. Why rely on stimulant drugs when the body can do the work!

Do the Body and Brain Cell dance to prime the brain.

Maximize Learning -- Physically!

Improve learning by engaging your body more often

What if schools and workplaces adopted practices shown by neuroscience to improve attention, focus, motivation, learning and memory -- helping all people maximize their living and learning potential? What immediate changes would take place?

The most noticeable change would be much more movement and exercise throughout the day. Increased blood flow carrying oxygen and an assortment of body-brain enhancing chemicals (dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, BDNF, serotonin, etc.) would heighten physical, mental, social and emotional states shown to enhance learning.

So why do we sit on our duffs? Why is recess and physical education on the chopping block when our goal is to excel and meet the highest learning standards?

H. P. E. R. D. is Key to NCLB!

Exercise Natural Steps… ‘Leave NO Child Behind Developmentally!’

Students falling behind in school most often possess immature sensory and motor systems. Such developmental delays have an adverse effect on academic performance skills, including reading, writing, spelling and math.

Strengthening visual, auditory, tactile, proprioceptive (muscular) and vestibular systems builds a more solid body brain neurological foundation upon which enhanced attention, academic skills, memory, and motivation are built.

Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance provide activities designed to mature the body brain, allowing people of all ages to achieve their vast living and learning potential.

Soon this Body-BrainBoogie Blog will feature short videos that ‘Shake, Rattle n’ Role-model’ research-based methods that tap, tap, tap the body-brain! Get the beat on neuroscience, assuring NCLB, NO Child is Left Behind developmentally! Watch the upcoming videos -- better yet, perform the routines lead by Jeff Haebig.

Video sequences will include the following.

Turn On Neurons! Energize! Exercise!
Expand Dendrites Grow Receptor Sites
Hip-Hip Hooray! I Revise My DNA!
BDNF – Body-Brain Cell Miracle Gro
Hippocampus Chop, Retention Tip-top
Gain Brain Speed with Smilin’ Myelin
Rum-rum! Energy Across Cerebrum
Synaptic Adhesion – Give Gap Naps
Peptize! Move Cerebral Spinal Fluid
Prime the Brain – Go-Go Chemicals
Boost Attention – Pump Dopamine
Reticular Activation -- RAS Matazz!
Serotonin Steady! Adrenaline Ready!
End Excess Stress – Neocortex Hex!
Stress for Success, Breathe with Ease
Rah! Rah! Rah! Amygdala De Dah!
Nah-nah No-no GABA Take Control
Calm Down -- Relax Muscle Spindles
Integrate Celebrate! Primary Reflexes
Auto Sequence -- Ring the Cerebellum
Pedal Brake – Regulate the Cingulate
Hypo-slow Vestibular – Fidget is Legit!
Hyper Vestibular – Rock It to Calm It!
Rock and Roll, Balance and Spin
Eye-eye! The Eyes Have It! Acuity
Hear-here! Ears Can Hear It! Clarity
Hand It To You! Fine-tune Tactility
Gross-motor Laterality Directionality

Boys Need Dance!

Strength, Grace and Emotional Balance

Anne Green Gilbert, Founder and Director of Creative Dance Center, points to the critical interplay between how we feel, act and think in her article titled Boys Need Dance. Her article cites many benefits of dance including the need to balance cortisol stress hormone with serotonin to produce feelings of well-being and self-confidence. Creative Dance Center offers many fine articles and Fabulous Resources for Parents and Teachers.

Obesity -- Top Health Concern

Obesity Remains No. 1 Health Problem for Kids

Newswise.com reports research released by the University of Michigan C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. Obesity ranks number one among the Whites, Blacks and Hispanics surveyed.

Does it seem strange that schools are cutting recess and physical education at this time?

Daily physical education with a fitness focus, leading children into pleasant activities not only will help resolve the obesity crisis, but strengthen learning as repeatedly shown on this Body-BrainBoogie Blog.

Race to the Top!

National Competition to Advance School Reform is Afoot… but?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced the $4.35 billion dollar ‘Race to the Top’ program leading the way to school reform and innovation in classrooms, I wonder whether effective body brain enhancing methods featured on this Body-brain Boogie Blog, using exercise and movement to effectively build academic performance skills will be in the mix?

Read the press release. What do you think? Are we about to see more recess, Physical Education, and evidence-based methods using art, music, and movement to build academic performance skills… or is money going to be pumped into more extensive Testing and Awarding pursuits. Hearing Arne Duncan on the PBS Newshour enthusiastically refer to the Institute for Learning, I fear that Effort-based Education will be guiding the process.

When are we going to embrace Neuroeducation… and utilize the science showing how the body brain works best?

Cerebellum Key to Learning

Watch Prof Bellum's explanation about how the brain makes skills automatic.

Watch this video explaining how the cerebellum is involved with reading, writing, spelling, coordination, attention and memory. Expanded research of the cerebellum shows how movement is essential to learning. Thank you Dore.com for advancing the need for Physical Education in our schools.

Physical Education NCLB Solution

Mastering the Sense of Balance is the Learning Breakthrough

Frank Belgau is the ultimate Physical Educator. He developed the Learning Breakthrough program, helping people of all ages calibrate their brain, enabling it to absorb and process information more easily and effectively. Participants strengthen neural transmission and unlock their learning potential with physical activities designed to strengthen the vestibular system – central to sensory input and motor output needed to learn effectively.

Learning Breakthrough offers a drug-free ADD and ADHD treatment building brain fitness. Brain processing allows us to read, write, talk, stay focused, remember and perform athletically. It’s time people serious about NCLB No Child Left Behind practice methods designed to move child forward academically. Let’s get frank about this, share the science – and move on it!

FIT Kids Act Targets Obesity

Fitness Integrated with Teaching Kids Act (FIT Kids)

American Heart Association notes, “Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions, increasing our children’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Regular physical activity is critical to fighting back and ensuring a brighter, healthier future. The Fitness Integrated with Teaching Kids Act (FIT Kids) would amend the No Child Left Behind Act to help prioritize quality physical education in our schools. Join in our effort to urge Congress to pass this legislation to provide more Physical Education for our kids and help them lead healthier lives." It's time to move on this!

New Brain-based Physical Education

Physical Education's key role boosting learning achievement

Have you noticed as school budgets shrink, Physical Education is put on the chopping block? For those of you knowing how the body-brain functions best, this makes no sense. Why don't School Boards, educators and parents take an interest in how learning happens?

NCLB can only succeed if we practice effective methods helping students with weak, immature sensory motor systems who have trouble reading, writing, sitting still, paying attention, focusing, following directions. calculating, spelling and carrying out other academic performance skills.

Body-brain enhancing movement and exercise is the key to success as this blog suggests repeatedly. It's time we enlighten those who truly want No Child Left Behind! Share this blog with people of influence. Let's move on this!

Jeff Haebig

Physical Education and the Brain

Daily Movement and Exercise improves academic performance

Physical Education is redefining itself. Now that neuroscience has shown how movement and exercise enhances brain function, more physical educators are seeing themselves as key players in the current learning revolution spurred by brain research. Naperville Central High School has led the nation. Phil Lawler and Physical Educator Paul Zientarski have worked with Dr. John Ratey, author of SPARK – The New Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain. They have created a daily program that has proven its effectiveness. Read the stories – then insist your schools offer daily Physical Education designed to boost body-brain fitness. Test scores, social-emotional health, physical well-being and motivation will rise.

Attend the 2009 DuPage PE-Heatlh-DrEd Institute in Naperville, Illinois on February 27, 2009 and hear Dr. Ratey, Bill Hubert, Jean Madigan Blaydes and others address these exciting changes. For more conference information visit DuPageInstitue

Jeff Haebig