Learn How to Juggle and Improve Your Brain's Power

Juggling is a really good exercise for life. It has a lot of the fun parts of a soul sport (working to better yourself, non-competitive activity, etc.) but isn’t dangerous — unless you’re juggling fire or pancakes or something. That’s why everyone should learn to juggle!

Juggling’s not a cure-all but it does a great job with the following 8 things:

• brain growth • body comfort • stress relief • focus retention • coordination • being interesting • improved learning • improved mobility

#1 Save your Brain

Juggling is one of many ways to revitalize the brain. One reason for this phenomenon is that juggling takes you out of your comfort zone. Most of us are not juggling experts. The average person cannot juggle their daily workload, never mind three of four balls.

When you are challenged with a new task, you must concentrate and remain relaxed to successfully develop the skill. The concentration and effort required to develop the new skill is clearly beneficial for the brain.

#2 Posture

The average person spends between 3 and 12 hours per day at a computer. Your back and neck get out of whack, your wrists start hurting and your legs fall asleep. You can combat this by doing light exercise – juggling is perfect. To hone the art of juggling, you need to think about standing up straight, relaxing, and using your hands correctly.

#3 Destressing

It’s nice to learn something new, do something active and get away from what seems important in your life. You can lose your tension through tons of hobbies, but juggling is a great combination of physical activity, brain stimulation, joy of success, and visual stimulation.

#4 Focus

Sometimes it feels like A.D.D. makes you better at stuff, but when it comes down to it, we really need to be able to sit still and focus until something’s done. Juggling builds your focus muscles through regular practice and a built-in rewards system. One of the top performing jugglers in the world, Reid Belstock, had his life transformed by juggling. Focus was a major benefit for him.

#5 Coordination

Juggling helps your hand eye coordination and you will have better coordination for life. Think of all the situations where balls are flying at your face - sports, Christmas tree accidents, etc. It would be handy to have handier hands. Juggling has also helped people with typing and learning to play instruments as well as just being less clumsy.

#6 Being Entertaining

It’s not cool to always be telling everyone you can juggle but you never know when you’ll need a party trick to entertain someone. Juggling can prevent a nephew from crying, keep a Year 1 class occupied or even help you feel good about yourself and what you are capable of.

One of the reasons I like juggling is because it can make people feel about themselves and their own potentials.

#7 Learn How to Learn

Juggling involves problem solving, posture, hand and arm movement as well as balance, so if you learn juggling, you can learn anything. Add that “learning to learn” idea to the fact that aerobic activity can increase your learning ability, and you’re on your way to being a super learner.

#8 Juggling to Keep Mobility

Juggling utilizes body mechanics in which we normally do not engage. It’s great to move the body in new ways to maintain range of motion. The expression ‘use it or lose it’ applies here. Juggling lubricates the joints in the arms and shoulders, and keeps them from getting creaky as we age!

Other information can be found at: http://rosstraining.com/blog/juggle-your-way-to-improved-performance/ http://jugglefit.com/jf_benefits.html http://www.dynamicsportsprogram.com/juggling-improves-mental-skills/ http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/leisure/brain-games/juggling-exercise-brain.htm

Juggling balls available at Kmart for $3