How the Brain Works, Accelerated Learning, and Review of Best
Selling Book: “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain”

Accelerated Learning is a term used to describe many techniques
which offer approaches to learning that advance a person’s capabilities for embracing knowledge. Most accelerated
learning is through alternative methodologies rather than mainstream academics.

Often this type of learning and teaching allows a person to forgo running every thing through their conscious
mind, and relies more on the unconscious or subconscious mind’s abilities to process and learn information.

For instance, there are courses that assist people in learning music, or foreign languages at an accelerated
rate. Methods might include NLP, or Neuro-linguistic programming, subliminals and paraliminals, as well as
suggestive hypnosis scripts.

Some other good uses for accelerated learning approaches are memory enhancement and speed reading. There are
even some researchers who feel that the subconscious mind is so powerful that it can absorb knowledge through
just placing a book under your pillow. This may be stretching it a bit, but we actually use just a small
portion of our minds.

In due time, we may find that our capabilities may be expanded through many different learning approaches
and with experimentation you just may find that you are able to learn new things much quicker than you may
have thought.

Book Review: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain

By Mike Kay

Just as accelerated learning methods reveal untapped power within our brains, a new best selling book is getting
a lot of attention. The following is a book review sharing insight into how extraordinary our brain’s potential
may be.

Neuroplasticity and the Dalai Lama seem like curious bedfellows but Sharon Begley’s book “Train Your
Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves” shows
how science is now proving that, with effort, the brain can rewire itself to improve functions like compassion.
The Dalai Lama’s interest in the experiments is not purely superficial; his interest is in the fact that
the mind is not simply a byproduct of the brain.

Buddhist monks have donated their brains to science on a temporary basis to allow magnetic resonance images
of experienced monks deep in contemplative meditation to be compared with the brains of novice monks. The
results show something not previously believed; that the mind can cause the brain to regenerate in different
ways.

My interest in the book stems from my sister’s reprogramming almost 50 years ago. She suffered oxygen deprivation
during birth and her speech and voluntary movement centers were badly damaged. However, following extensive
therapy, she learned to walk and to speak albeit with difficulty. My belief since those early days is that
the brain is an amazing muscle that can be adapted through exercise and, to me, it is intriguing that meditation
can produce these changes.

Begley is an author and science writer for the Wall street Journal. Her other co-authored titles include “The
mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force” and “Inside the Mind of God:
Images and Words of Inner Peace”. Her writing style helps even the least scientific, like me, to understand
this unfathomable science.

Although the book provides no hints and tips on the subject of DIY Neuroplasticity, it does make it clear
that changes are only possible if the subject is committed and undertakes the equivalent of Olympic training.
In “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform
Ourselves”, Sharon Begley makes this fascinating subject accessible to all.

More information on this can be found in our free online health magazine.