Here are the 10 ways mind maps can unlock the potential of your body

Author: Tony Buzan (UK) | Translator/Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: The book "10 Ways to Unlock Your Body's Potential" boldly uses various methods to help you understand and develop yourself. At least one "Body Intelligence Star" is described in each chapter, with stories illustrating the many reasons for their success. As you read these stories, underline the most important reasons for developing body intelligence with a pen. During the course of reading this book, you will discover a common theme. Record it down, and this is your prescription for developing your own body intelligence. In the same way, you will become an expert in gourmet food, an expert in body intelligence prescriptions! If you find these characteristics appear in more than one place, check how many times they appear in total among the Body Intelligence Stars.
Quote of the Day: "10 Ways to Unlock Your Body's Potential" boldly quotes many famous sayings that summarize important ideas about exercising the body and brain. Many of these quotes come from the mouths of Body Intelligence Stars. Underline the keywords in the quotes and add them to your expert prescription.
Brain Boost: A sentence or a statement that helps you apply new knowledge about body intelligence, leaving a deep positive impression in your mind, thereby significantly improving your level of body intelligence.
Scientific Research: To support your activities and self-development plan, I have cited scientific research findings in this book. This will also help you become an expert!
Self-Checks and Games: Includes quizzes, self-assessment questionnaires, and games to help you understand your current level of awareness, knowledge, and skills, and to improve in all three areas.
Mind Maps: Mind Maps are a thinking tool I invented to develop our brain's memory and creative thinking abilities. A Mind Map is drawing the ideas in our brains on paper with a pen. It combines traditional verbal IQ, numerical IQ, and creativity IQ, making it a very powerful thinking tool. If linear, monochrome (and also boring) explanations belong to the industrial age, then Mind Maps belong to the information age you are living in now. In "Are You Healthy?—10 Ways to Unlock Your Body's Potential," you will find that Mind Maps summarize the content and features of each chapter in an organized and easy-to-understand way. Using linear explanations to develop various intelligences is like giving an astronaut a broom handle and saying, "This is your equipment, fly to the moon!" But Mind Maps are your fully equipped spaceship.
Brain Boost—I am on my way to high-level body intelligence.
Body Intelligence Star—Christopher Reeve①
The superhero in this story is named Christopher Reeve, who played "Superman" in the 1970s film Superman (though people at the time didn’t realize how brilliant the role was they had chosen!). In 1995, Christopher fell from a horse and suffered severe injuries. "For all spinal cord injury patients, this was absolutely a nightmare," said Andrew Caveney, director of the Spinal Cord Research Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "For patients like this, there was almost no chance of improvement." For the next five years, Christopher showed no improvement. His paralysis was so severe that he could only breathe with a ventilator and had to rely on the power of his mind to keep his entire body functions from collapsing.
Reeve did not sink into despair but instead shouted, "The mind is stronger than the body." He declared to the world that one day he would stand up and walk again. He told everyone he met who was in a similar situation, lighting their hope and encouraging them to leave their wheelchairs behind. He also asked his treatment team to use every possible method, harnessing all the power of their amazing brains, to help him and others in his condition achieve this nearly impossible goal. Through these efforts, they also became world-famous.
In 1999, Christopher’s psychological and physical therapy team, along with Dr. John McDonald, a neurosurgeon at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, developed a new method. They secured Christopher to a special bicycle with a belt, applied previously used imagery techniques, and attached electrodes to his thighs. The current caused his thigh muscles to contract rhythmically, simulating pedaling motions, to train his cardiovascular system, muscles, and imagination, three times a week for one hour each time. At other times, Christopher trained other parts of his body, including his abdomen, biceps, triceps, deltoids, and wrists (see Chapter 3), with his muscle strength noticeably improving.
Under their guidance, Christopher began a series of exercises in the pool. Through practice, he was able to push himself away from the shore; when standing, he could take a few small steps in the water. He had said he would walk again, and he had taken the first step! The goal of all psychological and physical training was to gain strength, improve the circulatory system, and enhance the endurance of the heart and respiratory system. Equally important was establishing neural pathways (i.e., the "traces in the wheat field" mentioned earlier), mentally and physiologically activating small surviving spinal cord nerve cells, creating new connections between them, and continuing the actions these nerves had previously performed.
By November 2000, Christopher was able to control certain muscles first in his index finger, then in other fingers, and finally in his entire right hand. Later, he could also move the muscles in his arms and legs. Christopher was able to lift his right hand off the table by bending his wrist while lying down and move his arms and legs. Additionally, his sensory perception improved significantly!
By July 2001, when his fingers touched his skin, his upper body could feel. He was already able to distinguish between the sensations of (needles), heat, and cold. What was astonishing was that on a scale of 0 to 100, he initially scored only 12, but now his score was close to 70! Similarly astonishing was that on a medical scale where "A" represented complete paralysis and "E" represented normal, Christopher had improved from "A" three years earlier to "C." This was the first recorded case of a patient with such severe injuries recovering two levels in over two years.
Moreover, Christopher later relied less on the ventilator and could push himself in the water. Psychological and physical therapy expanded his muscle groups, prevented bone density loss, reduced the risk of infection, and greatly improved his quality of life. Christopher’s doctors said that in existing medical literature, no one with injuries as severe as his had recovered so well. "If I had been asked two years ago whether he could move his hand today, I would have said ‘impossible,’” said Dr. John Jane of the Virginia Neurosurgery University, who was the first surgeon to operate on Christopher after his injury.
Christopher, as always, with his positive, forward-looking mindset, said, "I believe the progress I have made is a symbol of even greater progress to come." Through his efforts, over 500 paraplegic patients in academic research centers in the U.S., Europe, and Japan are now strapped into treadmills, using specially designed robots to move their paralyzed arms, legs, and other body parts. Many of them started with limited sensation but can now walk with walkers or even without any assistance for short distances. What is his ultimate goal? Still—complete recovery.
At the beginning, everyone, including experienced medical professionals, said he had no hope. But a few years later, everyone cheered for him: This was one of the most classic cases in medical history of "the mind being stronger than the body." Superhero—Super Mind.