10 Effective Morning Brain Exercises That Can Help Clear Your Mind

Sometimes it becomes really hard to keep calm because of being mentally exhausted. Working with children, taking care of family needs, and your profession all together might give you less or no time to concentrate on your mental health. However, you need to take some time out for yourself and help yourself with certain brain exercises for your mind. So, read below and know about some of the morning brain exercises to clear your mind.

10 Effective Morning Brain Exercises That Can Help Clear Your Mind

To keep good mental health, you should always have proper sleep. However, it is explained by the Centers for Disease Control And Prevention, that insufficient sleep is a public health issue, and more than 1/3rd of adults in the U.S. gets less than the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep per night.⁽¹⁾

From countless studies, it has been found that sleep affects our capability to control our learning and behavior. So, the best way to prime our body for a better work performance the next day is to have a proper sleep schedule. Sleeping for at least 8 hours helps you clear your mind and gives you the energy to work more efficiently. However, it is not just the sleep that is essential for clearing your mind. Below let us know about some of the morning brain exercises to clear your mind.

Do Meditation:

One of the best things you can do to clear your mind is meditation. It has been found from studies that the Amygdala or the brain’s “fight or flight” center and the seat of anxious and fearful emotions, reduce the brain cell volume after practicing mindfulness. Meditators even show a greater ability to recall information quicker, which leads researchers to believe that the ability to “screen out” mental noise quickly, scopes the working memory to search and find the information required more efficiently and quickly.

Read A Good Book:

One of the best morning brain exercises to clear your mind that you can do is simply read a good book.

Several studies show that reading helps in developing the brains of adults. A study from Standford University conducted in the year 2012, where people read a few passages of Jane Austen while inside an MRI, shows that different types of reading help in exercising different parts of your brain.⁽²⁾ As we get older, another study has suggested that reading might aid in slowing down or even halting the cognitive decline.⁽³⁾ Reading a good book in the morning is not just a calming way to begin your day, but it can also help you reorient your priorities.

Play Fast Logic-Based Games:

Playing fast logic-based games like a crossword puzzle or taking online quizzes that would challenge your mind in the morning could help in building cognitive reserves. You can play Sudoku or any memory-recall game or brain app that would help you clear your mind.

You should know that brain-boosting activities with increasing complexity and cross-training brain activities uses different parts of your brain and helps in improving the brain’s function and clearing your mind.

Play Classical Music In The Background:

You can also play classical music in your background in the morning. The peaceful, gentle sounds of classical music are known to benefit the brain and your overall productivity. Listening to classical music in the morning helps in significantly improving cognitive functioning, verbal fluency, and overall concentration and focus.

Practice Deep Breathing:

You should know that deep breathing helps in clearing your mind. Spending a few minutes every minute, every morning in practicing deep breathing could help you in a great way.

Research has shown that changing our breathing pattern to take 6-10 breaths every minute restores balance to our body’s stress-response system.⁽⁴⁾ This reduces depression and anxiety, increases your energy, and also strengthens the immune system. It also helps in improving mental concentration.

A quiet mind leads to quiet breathing. So, if we learn how to regulate our breathing, then we can influence our emotional and physical states. So, we should at least take a few minutes to practice deep breathing every morning that would help us clear the mind, feel refreshed, and energized.

Below is a simple breathing exercise. Begin with 1-2 minutes and then work up to a long time practicing the exercise.⁽⁵⁾

Step 1: Lie on your back on the yoga mat, with your knees bent and well-supported head. You can place a pillow under the knees.
Step 2: Place a hand on your chest and the other hand below your rib cage, so that you can feel your diaphragm moves as you breathe.
Step 3: Inhale slowly via your nose, drawing the air into the bottom of the lungs. Make sure that you must feel your abdomen rise.
Step 4: Now, tighten your stomach muscles and take a pause for a while, and then exhale through your pursed lips.
Step 5: Blow all the air out of your lungs gently. Push out any residual air out of the bottom of the lungs by drawing your belly button towards the spine.

Take around 6 deep breaths per minute.

Try Double Doodle:

One of the best morning exercises to clear your mind could be a double doodle. Try out a double doodle that would exercise both the sides of your brain by using your dominant and your non-dominant hands. All you need is to simply take a pencil or pen in both your hands and draw a picture simultaneously in both hands. You can start drawing a heart or the outline of a house. This brain exercise in the morning will eliminate trivial thoughts from your mind and help in increasing productivity.

Try Brain Dumping:

Brain dumping means transferring all the thoughts in your head onto a paper. All that is required for this brain exercise is a notebook and a pen. Start penning down any task that you have not done or anything that seems to bother you.

By writing down your thoughts and undone tasks you will gain more clarity in terms of prioritization, thus making it much easier to concentrate on the important tasks and leave the trivial ones that could be dealt with later on. Brain dumping relieves your stress and makes your mind clearer.

Prepare A Gratitude List:

Your brain starts working better when you bring your attention to several things in your life for which you are really grateful. It is a great brain exercise to prepare a gratitude list in the morning.

Indeed, several studies have found that people who count their blessings consciously tend to be less depressed and happier.⁽⁶⁾

So, every morning, write down at least five things you are grateful for and experience the benefits.

Do Regular Exercises:

Exercise plays a crucial role in improving your mood and health. There are some additional brain-boosting reasons to sneak in a workout every morning before work. Exercising regularly alters brain chemistry and has even known to be effective enough in reducing depression. Exercise signals the release of many important neurotransmitters, many of which play a crucial role in keeping your brain sharp as you age. In addition to this, exercising regularly also help in pumping blood flow and oxygen to your brain, thus allowing your gray matter to work optimally, which translates to sharper and better decision making, memory, and judgment in life.

So, regular exercising every morning could be one of the best morning exercises to clear your mind.

Stay Hydrated:

Our mind requires enough water. Water does real wonders for our health and wellness. An adult body comprises of around 55% to 60% of water. So, you need to know that water ensures your mind and body function in an optimum manner. So, the first thing in the morning that you should do every day is drink water when you get up from the bed.

Staying hydrated helps your body feel revitalized and makes you feel refreshed since it is a wonderful way to clear your mind and prepare yourself for the day. You can also drink water along with lemon since lemon acts as a detoxifying agent and helps in maintaining better digestive health.

Conclusion:

So, we talked about some of the best morning brain exercises to clear your mind. You should try out these exercises every morning to keep yourself well energized, relaxed, refreshed, and productive every day. Things would be simpler to perform when you have an organized and clear mind.

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10 Effective Morning Brain Exercises That Can Help Clear Your Mind