How Reading Helps Improve Mind and Body

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Learn how to increase your intelligence, improve your thinking flexibility, become more mindful and feel great just by reading books.

Reading is not only a great way to spend your leisure time, but also a great tool for maintaining physical and mental health. We will tell you how it can be useful.

1. Increasing the level of tolerance

Literary fiction, that is, fiction in poetry and prose, helps people to be more human. It increases the level of empathy, makes us more sensitive and receptive to everyone around us.

Fiction simulates situations that can happen to people in real life. That is why she finds such a response among readers. When we read a work, we involuntarily let through what happens to the heroes, and begin to think about how we would behave in their place.

Fiction helps to increase social baggage and better understand people whose experiences differ from our own.

What is a work of fiction, be it a book, film, play, or television series? This is a fragment of someone else's consciousness, which seems to be transmitted from one mind to another. Works of art enrich our social experience and help us better understand others. When you read a book or watch some melodrama, it is as if you are living a hundred lives. This is breathtaking.

Keith Oatley psychologist

In addition, fiction has a positive effect on the work of the brain and develops the imagination well, since often writers leave a certain amount of understatement in stories so that the reader can figure everything out on his own and think out everything at his own discretion.

2. Development of flexibility of thinking

Poetry helps you think more deeply. It increases the flexibility of thinking by challenging the reader. Poetic texts contain a huge number of metaphors and allegories. This forces readers to be more attentive to the details and meanings that the author puts into certain words.

Long-term experience of reading poetry leaves a noticeable imprint on the personality of the reader. Habitual patterns of behavior begin to change and give way to something new and more flexible. In addition, poetic texts also help to cope with depression.

Philip Davis psychologist

People who read poetic texts get used to rethinking words, noticing non-obvious references, and paying attention to little things and halftones. By reading poetry, we can learn to better express our thoughts, analyze human behavior, adapt to circumstances and more meaningfully seek solutions to emerging problems.

3. Increasing the level of creativity

Reading is often linked to increased creativity. It is believed that people who read fiction on a regular basis are less conservative and do not feel uncomfortable with any ambiguities of Keith Oatley, Mihnea C. Moldoveanu. … … They are more creative and free.

The ambiguous nature of fiction encourages people to make atypical decisions and look at the situation from a slightly different angle. This is the key to creativity. When we consider different options for the development of the same situation, it becomes easier for us to see new opportunities and ways to solve the existing problem.

4. Improving brain function

Regardless of which literature we prefer to read, scientists have proven that after reading a book, a person's intelligence level slightly increases for several days Gregory S. Berns, Kristina Blaine, Michael J. Prietula, Brandon E. Pye. … …

Different stories leave their mark both psychologically and neurologically. When we read, areas of the cortex that are responsible for touch, perception and memory development are activated in the brain. Therefore, reading not only stimulates an increase in the level of intelligence, but also trains the brain. We learn to perceive and organize information, expand our horizons and replenish our vocabulary.

5. Fighting prejudice

Good quality literature can help combat prejudice. When we read, we learn to understand people of other races, cultures and religions, we learn more about life in other countries and about the customs of other eras. We learn to empathize with people regardless of their skin color or sexual orientation.

For example, a study was conducted, after which it turned out that children who grew up on stories about the young wizard Harry Potter are much more loyal to immigrants, refugees, homosexuals and African Americans Loris Vezzali, Dino Giovannini. … … Throughout the story, Harry Potter and his friends teach readers to be tolerant and tolerant. It turns out that this children's book is not as simple and useless as it might seem to someone.

6. Prevention of senile dementia

Reading stimulates the brain to keep it in good shape into old age. If you read regularly enough throughout your life, you are likely to reduce the risk of memory loss and partially prevent a decrease in concentration.

According to studies, people who in old age devoted time to reading were 32% less susceptible to the disease of senile dementia Robert S. Wilson, Patricia A. Boyle, Lei Yu, Lisa L. Barnes. … … Those people who led an ordinary lifestyle, did not have any hobbies, did not read books and did not engage in any mental activity, they could not boast of such successes. Thus, it turns out that the more we read, the longer we keep our sanity.

7. Increased life expectancy

Reading books prolongs life. According to recent studies, the life expectancy of people who are fond of reading is, on average, two to three years longer than that of those who do not read anything Avni Bavishi, Martin D. Slade, Becca R. Levy. … … To live longer, you need to set aside about half an hour a day to read literature.

In order to improve the quality and duration of your life, it is not at all necessary to do some extremely difficult things. It turns out that you just need to set aside a little time to read.