If you choose a form of movement like yoga, Pilates, or tai chi, you get the mitochondrial benefits of basic movement and the brain-building benefits of moving your limbs across your midline. This raises BDNF and improves cross-brain communication, which walking doesn’t.

Many people think of the brain as a mystery. They don’t know much about intelligence and how it works. When they do think about what intelligence is, many people believe that a person is born either smart, average, or dumb—and stays that way for life. But new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle—it changes and gets stronger when you

This orthodoxy was now replaced with a new paradigm, called neuroplasticity. The brain, it turns out, is constantly changing in response to experience. It’s possible to sculpt your brain through meditation just as you build and tone your body through exercise—to grow your gray matter the way doing curls grows your bicep.