This morning, there was a fascinating piece on the radio about the effects of deep breathing. I use breathing myself to help lower my heart rate, settle my nerves and focus my awareness in important or stressful situations, so this story resonated for me personally. Its relevance to so much of what we are working on at school and especially the topics we are exploring in our class made me realise I HAD to share it with my students.
We try to help kids (and colleagues) use knowledge about our brains to be better at understanding emotions, recognising and regulating stress levels, and at understanding and solving problems. Being in the middle of a novel whose main character frequently experiences (and is overcome by) the physical and emotional effects of anger & stress, we have a perfect opportunity to apply this story from the radio to our discussions about our novel. It also helps us work on questions we’ve been exploring in health, PE, science & math. I will be curious to see how we are able to use the information we are finding out about the body and the brain (e.g. about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems) to help us connect our learning in class to our learning out in the rest of the world and to our understanding of ourselves and others.
If you’d like to listen yourself, you can find the story at http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2697746396
The brain has to sides one is slow and one is fast when you are in a here you take the
fast brain if you take the slow brain you will figure it out.
I don’t think I understand you completely. I’m not sure what you mean by a slow and a fast side of the brain. Where are you when you “take the fast brain”? What will I figure out if I take the “slow” brain?
I think the brain is the most important body part of because if u don’t have a brain your dead if you damage your brain you can’t think right so that is why the brain is the most important part of the body (remember that is my opinion).
I don’t think many of us would disagree with you about the importance of the brain. Do you think the doctor who spoke on the radio could be right that perhaps we can use what we know about how the brain and body respond to each other to activate our parasympathetic systems and help our bodies and brains avoid the kind of overstimulation that may stop us from functioning at our best?
The brain has to sides one is slow and one is fast when you are in a here you take the
fast brain you will not figure it out.That is way we woes both sids they are very well.
I’m not sure I follow you. You’ll need to help me remember what part of the piece we listened to described fast & slow sides of the brain. I’m sure I won’t figure it out without some help.
Last year I learned that the two sides of the brain has two sides but then I looked it up and I saw that there is no right or left side and that they both work together.
It does seem that research is still ongoing to better understand the brain. The left side / right side theories are familiar to most people (though I bet most of us have not read them carefully nor in much depth). There are some well-established differences though. According to an article reviewed by Dr. Steven Dowshen at Kidshealth.org, “Scientists do know for sure that the right half of the cerebrum controls the left side of your body, and the left half controls the right side.”
I’d be curious to know more about where you found your information. If you are interested in our amazing brains, maybe you will study more and go on to add to the research that helps us find out more about how the brain works.