Exercise for the Brain

Learning to write by hand involves much more than memory and muscle movement. It begins with a thought of putting pen to paper. Your brain then sends instructions through nerve impulses down your arm to your fingers where you begin to form letters that join to form words. Meanwhile, your mind is rapidly selecting which word to write, out of many possibilities, while remembering what each letter looks like and how to connect them. Not that you make your letters and connections the way you were originally taught because now your emotions, experiences, and perceptions influence how your writing will look on the page. Still, your brain remembers the basic image, choosing capital or lowercase, and directs the fingers to move in a way that will reproduce that image with your special flair. At the same time, you’re thinking about what you want to say while remembering to dot your i’s, cross your t’s and add commas and periods; not to mention feeling emotions as you press harder into the page or barely touch it, and all the while remaining somewhat aware of the environment around you. All this commotion is definitely exercising the brain!