Let’s run your brain

The human is an animal. It literally means that we are a being that should gain everything we need for living by moving our body. Human beings had to constantly move around to eat, to overcome dangers and to find a partner. The brain came into being to control these movements. Movements require highly delicate control process. We have to set the goal needed for our survival, plan follow-up actions, and calculate gains and losses resulting from such actions before determining the timing to take action. For this, the brain has evolved into a giant ‘thinking machine’ while analyzing the human body itself and surrounding environment and making predictions.

Ironically, human beings that are superbly utilizing the brain’s functions have created an environment wherein they can survive even without moving their body any longer. They no longer have to go hunting or take long journey to find their partners. However, just because things have become more convenient for our body, it does not mean our life has become more comfortable. We constantly make assumptions, set plans, agonize and get under stress while living our life. As we were born as animal requiring bodily movements but live life without moving our body, we are suffering due to excessive byproducts from the brain, which was designed to control our bodily movements.

How should we address such agony and stress? More than anything, you should move your body more. Even if you continuously exercise, you only end up exercising just a couple of hours during 24 hours. Whether you walk up the steps around your home, take a walk at your company’s campus, you should constantly move. We are living life that requires far less than the way our body is designed these days. However you carry out exercise that is completely internalize in your brain, your brain will become stagnant and inevitably produce more byproducts unless you make physical movements by yourself. If we move our body, our brain will ‘healthily’ operate to fulfill its original mandate of controlling our movements.