“Since we deal a lot with medical doctors, I suggest touching a doorknob before meeting with a patient,” explained Klatt. “Just some gentle stretches and awareness of where you’re holding your tension is a great starting point because when people acknowledge their body, they open up to what really is going on for them,” she said.Īnother exercise in mindfulness is to establish a habit that sets events into motion. Klatt says a great way to start on your path to lowered stress and heightened mindfulness is to be more aware of your body. She shared some strategies for your brain with Healthline. Maryanna Klatt, PhD, a professor of clinical family medicine at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, specializes in stress-related chronic illness and is trained in mindfulness, running a program called Mindfulness in Motion. In a world that often feels like it’s moving too quickly, what are some of the best ways to quiet the brain? “For our brains and our bodies, less is more and rest is best.” “The brain is the most energy-hungry organ in our body, consuming nearly a third of our energy, although it weighs only about one-seventieth of our body weight,” explained Devi.

“This study shows that daily periods of slowed activity, whether spent in meditation, unitasking, or simply being still or sleeping are as important for brain health and longevity as activity and exercise,” Gayatri Devi, MD, a neurologist and psychiatrist at Northwell Health in New York, told Healthline. In experiments on worms and mammals, boosting REST led to lower neural activity and longer lifespans while suppressing it did the opposite. In a study published in the medical journal Nature, researchers from Harvard Medical School report that a calm brain with less neural activity could lead to a longer life.Īfter analyzing donated brain tissue from people who died at ages from 60 to more than 100, researchers said they noticed that the longest-lived people had lower levels of genes related to neural activity.Ī protein, REST, that suppresses neural activity was found to be associated with neural activity and mortality.

Everyone wants to stay mentally sharp as they get older - and it stands to reason that one way to do this is to maintain an active brain.īut new research suggests that less may be more when it comes to your brain activity.

Just relax lower