|
LETTER from LONDON |
 |
|
|
 Inside view of 'the other muscle' |
Using that 'other muscle'
beats the Olympics any day
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
Watching 10,000 super-fit men and women in Athens throw things, run, jump, run WHILE jumping, pedal their bikes round and round an oval track, or bob upside down in a swimming pool wearing a ridiculous noseclip is a sure route to depression for us sedentary folk--probably 95 percent of the population. I never had abs like that and never will and I am not into envy. It’s a sin.
There are alternatives to this extreme sportiness. Try using that muscle that sits idle for most of your adult life. No, not that one. The brain. This year the Mind Sports Olympiad and the World Memory Championships coincide with the Athens Games and will be more interesting, that’s a guarantee. The Mind Sports open in Manchester, England, on Monday Aug. 19.
You won’t find network TV coverage. The mind games are not frantic enough. As Memory Championship organizer Tony Buzan acknowledges, “It’s not good television to watch someone think.” Instead, tune into www.worldmemorychampionships.com/ or to www.msoworld.com/Olympiad/.
What makes these alternative games so gripping is that they deal with things we all try to do: mental math, speed reading, and most of all, remembering.
I am over 50 and when I travel I have no idea where I am when I wake up in the morning. I have to check CNN to see what day it is, and open my calendar to remember appointments. I am fed up with the numbers we are supposed to know by heart. In London, the bank wants you to know your eight-digit account number plus your six-digit “sort code.” And they always demand it sharpish, like “What’s your sort code? No, that’s your phone number. What’s your sort code? No, that’s your overdraft. Sir? Wake up. Sir?”
Our digitized society also wants us to recall our phone numbers, fax numbers, international dialing codes, PIN numbers, passwords and our cellphone number. As a rough tally, I make it 37 digits supposedly stored in your head. As Emperor Joseph II said in Amadeus, “Too many notes, Mozart.”
Paul Thorne, a psychologist friend of mine, tries to make me feel better by patiently explaining that our minds get crowded over time. We take in so much new information every day that some of the old information has to vent, like a safety valve, to make room for the new. I read somewhere that the Sunday New York Times contains more information than a 17th-century Frenchman absorbed in a lifetime.
But the brave participants of the World Memory Championship and that other Olympiad, now being staged jointly at the University of Science and Technology in Manchester (UMIST), have found a solution to this overload. It’s my kind of exercise, mental workouts--you don’t have to get out of bed to do it. Figuring out the crossword in your morning paper, doing the “Jumble” puzzle or the daily chess problem is enough to get the adrenalin flowing. I even triggered some endorphins the other day.
The smart guys and gals practice more seriously, starting their day by memorizing a stanza or two of poetry or learning a string of numbers just for fun. “This is every bit as useful as going down to your local gym,” insists Buzan.
The Mind Sports events
carry on for 11 days, Aug. 19-30, and include about 100 events--such
challenges as speed-reading an unpublished book in one hour and
taking a test on it, and multiplying in your head one six-digit
number by another six-digit number.
In the Memory Championships, participants must, among other things,
memorize poetry, remember the order of cards in as many as nine
decks, and retain a long binary sequence--committing to memory
thousands of 0s and 1s, like a computer, and reciting them without
error.
A prolific author and consultant, Tony Buzan is a former editor of the Mensa International Journal. He is also the creator of Mind Mapping, a fascinating tool for helping you master great masses of shapeless information. I use it in a writing class I teach to financial analysts.
He links memory directly to IQ, and believes anyone can get a fix on his or her IQ by asking a friend to read a series of numbers and trying to repeat them. If you can retain nine numbers you are exceptional.
I tried it. Let’s just say I am not exceptional.
One source of satisfaction for Buzan is proving other memory experts wrong. Just a few years ago, psychologists believed the limit of the human memory would be about 30 numbers. This year’s contenders are already well over 100 and aim to exceed 200. “With training, any human brain can do things that previously were the territory of genius,” Buzan says. “We are resurrecting memory from its deathbed.”
He blames the school system in most countries for harming memory skills by boring students to sleep. “We teach in monotone, which is monotonous. When kids are bored, the brain tunes out. We have trained them to forget, and they have done it perfectly,” he says.
Buzan has served as one of the coaches of the British Olympic rowing team and the British chess team. He likes the Latin mantra “Mens sana in corpore sano,” roughly, “Sound mind, sound body.” He tells his competitors that one can help compensate the other.
His four foods for the mind:
Information. Keep sucking it into your brain.
Nutrition. Eat more fruit, nuts and fish.
Oxygen. This is the brain’s fuel. The more you take
in, the better the brain functions.
Love and affection. Happiness makes you sharper, smarter.
His body advice:
Muscles. Muscular strength and tone keep your bones aligned.
Flexibility. Freedom of movement of the joints
eases the workings of nerve impulses and blood flow.
Aerobic fitness. When very fit, you have about one
additional pint of blood in your body, keeping systems at their
peak.
Stephen Hawking, crippled by motor neuron disease, was powerless to stop the advance of the disease, but Buzan believes he would have been dead long ago if he had not kept his mind active.
If the ideal lifestyle is a fine balance of the mental and physical, the physical performers in Athens get it half right. They excel on the track and in the pool but it’s a rare medallist who can talk intelligently about why or how he did it. Maybe they should try some of Buzan’s brain food.
©2004 by Michael Johnson.
The drawing is courtesy of The Human Brain website.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Michael Johnson. To send
an email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |