How Brain-Based Physical Education May Improve Attention Span and Health

It is said that brain-based physical education and activities can improve attention span, memory and time spent on a task. It can prevent cognitive decline and help to develop innate capacity for achievement, well-being, and health.

The brain has a remarkable capacity for altering its structure and function, according to the influences of environment and experience, and physical activity is vital to that biological adaptation. Likewise, mindful-meditation can act as a standalone or complementary approach to cognitive-behavioral therapy, used to treat anxiety, depression and a number of mental health illnesses.

"The human brain has a natural tendency for empathy and compassion, and a natural ability to achieve its goals and dreams," said Isabel Pastor, editor-in-chief of Brain World magazine and Program Manager at the International Brain Education Association, to Latin Post. "It's just a matter of how we navigate our brain to unleash that natural tendency. More and more, scientific findings are pointing in that direction. People, form their own experiences, learn to relax their brain and their body, and make a connection between their mind and their body. They can naturally start to unleash that motivation, compassion, clarity and focus through the experience and through the training."

The Brain Education program, developed by IBREA, was founded with the goal of raising awareness about the great potential of the human brain. Also, the program looks to help others actualize well-being, happiness and peace on an individual level, collective, national and global level by way of brain-based education and physical activities in schools.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conceived research that tracked the relationship between physical activity and the brain of 9- and 10-year old children. Published in the journal Brain Research, the research supports the idea that physically active students are more likely to efficiently utilize oxygen, have bigger hippocampal volume (12 percent bigger relative to total brain size) and perform better on tests of relational memory. Researchers suggested that interventions to increase childhood physical activity could have an important effect on brain development. The American Physiological Society also produced evidence that supported the connection between the brain and cognition and aerobic and resistance training, and its impact on mental and physical health.

Neuroscience supports the idea that mental and physical wellbeing are far more attainable when engaging in physical fitness and engaging in activities that relieve stress. IBREA practices philosophical and holistic ideals, and their experiential trainers instruct teachers, students and principals, which proposes to increase the capacity to focus and improve peer relationships.

"We help people unleash that potential through education, and we have a particular program that combines theory and practice. Based on neuro-scientific facts, we give people the understanding about how their brain and body functions, and how their emotions function from a theoretical point of view," said Pastor. "Also, half of the sessions are more experiential, so they can experience those theories in their own bodies. Not just understand conceptually, but really go through their own experience, and understand more deeply. We've been doing that mainly in developing countries."

IBREA launched their biggest operation in El Salvador in 2011. They began in just one school, which was one of the most problematic schools in the country. The organization began instructing, and they took measure of violence in the school and they weighed that against the attitudes present after professionals at the school had been trained. Conclusively, their impact was strong, and the Ministries of Education decided to support IBREA as they ventured into four new schools in the next year.

The following year, the program went nationwide and IBREA provided training to principals in a trainer-to-trainer capacity, so that they could train teachers, who could then train students. The culture and the community around the schools have also undergone a change, impacted by the training and communal projects they are assigned in order to create a sense of camaraderie. Four years after its introduction, more than 400 schools in El Salvador are participating in the program, according to Pastor. In June, IBREA will return to El Salvador to reinforce teachings shared within the last year.

One example of the communal project includes the creation of the "Swimming Pool for Peace," which was a community-wide goal that allowed students, staff and others to enjoy the pool, alleviating stress and delivering a sense of wellbeing.

"Killings happened around the school and teachers got threatened on their way to work ...extreme situations like that. So they came up with a simple idea: let's have a swimming pool where we can try to relax inside of the walls of the school. We planned together. Everyone put in effort and put effort into the construction. Different gang members were working together, as well as the students, the teachers and the parents," said Pastor. "The city's mayor also helped with the materials, and we got the water from government agency that distributes water. It was really a holistic way of working, which is the principle we work with. The swimming pool, these days, is actually a haven for them. So that's why we call it the Swimming Pool for Peace."

In the past, IBREA has done work in Monrovia, Liberia, assisting war-affected children. Also, IBREA will expand to New York City, with two training programs in the Harlem community in development.