Brain Gym – Fact or Fiction? : Brain Training

Article by David Akihito

This article deals with the current facts about Brain Gym, a popular program that has received both praise and criticism. In the area of brain training, most probably you would have learned or heard about various training programs for improving your mental facilities. The Brain Gym is one such program, but it is quite unique from the others. The key difference between the Brain Gym brain training program and other programs are that it emphasizes greatly on the movements of the body in order to promote learning.

The key concept involved in their program is that proper body movements help you accelerate the creation of various pathways to the brain, thus improving the learning ability. The Brain Gym program is currently being used in many countries, though it has often been discredited by many people in the scientific community and media. Let us take a closer look at what Brain Gym is about.

As mentioned before, the uniqueness of the Brain Gym program is that it gives a lot of emphasis on whole body learning. It is not just about training your brain, but about training your whole body so that it can work in complementary function in order to improve the brain. Based on the Brain Gym concept, every cell in the body contributes to an individual’s learning ability, and it is not just about exercising the brain. They include several exercises in their program in order to help learning.

In order to encourage optimal learning, they advocate the concept of making learning fun and enjoyable, while implementing a play-like atmosphere for students. This is in addition to the concepts of movement in learning, which are also implemented. Some of their others goals include improvement in creativity and appreciation of the fine arts.

However, there has been much discreditation of their program on the part of the scientific community owing to lack of solid scientific evidence to back up their findings. They have often been criticized as being a commercial venture with no solid evidence. Still though, teachers have noted positive results in the learning and concentration of their students after putting the principles into practice. So, is the Brain Gym program based on fact or fiction? Only time will tell…