Bifocals And The Brain: My Thoughts Are Spinning

With gearheads, it's parts. With cooks, ingredients. With fiber artists of a certain age, well, we're going to discuss our bifocals.

The topic arose yesterday in the short lesson that came with my new spinning wheel. I paid close attention to Kathi's modeling and advice about posture. Still, I could feel myself tilting toward the wheel a couple of times as I tried to find the focal spot in my progressive lenses. I think I've got it now. It's about the same distance as the speedometer in the car, but lower. Shoulders back, head up, eyes down.

Bifocals are not a new thing for me, but the spinning wheel is. There's lots of new information routing through those lenses and into my brain. Throughout the lesson, I felt myself making all kinds of connections to past experiences. I have good resources on which to draw, but that's not a substitute for hands-on practice specific to this activity.

There are many reasons why I wanted to start spinning on a wheel. One of the big ones was to shake things up between my ears. Studies show that learning is good for the brain, like exercise is good for the body. A recent article in the New York Times reported that:

The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.

The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively.

Patterns. Significance. Connections. Understanding. All this, and (eventually) cool yarn, too.

What are you learning that has your thoughts in a healthy spin?