We hope you are enjoy­ing Brain Aware­ness Week this week and hope­fully think­ing a lit­tle more about your brain and brain fit­ness! Below you have the Brain Fit­ness Newslet­ter we sent a few days ago. You can sub­scribe to this monthly email update in the box on the the top of this page.

We have had another busy month behind us, and we’re look­ing for­ward to Brain Aware­ness Week March 12–18. Keep read­ing for the details (includ­ing a spe­cial offer in honor of Brain Aware­ness Week) …

I. Press Cov­er­age
II. Events
III. Pro­gram Reviews
IV. New Offer­ings
V. Web­site and Blog Sum­mary, includ­ing brain teasers

I. Press Coverage

Set your DVRs – Sharp­Brains is com­ing to the small screen! Our tele­vi­sion debut will be on CBS 13 West Sacramento’s “Good Day Sacra­mento” on Mon­day, March 12.

La Opin­ion, the most pres­ti­gious Spanish-language paper in the US, fea­tured Sharp­Brains in a recent arti­cle “Secreto para tri­un­far en los exámenes” (Secrets to Tri­umph­ing in Exams)

Another great inter­na­tional pub­li­ca­tion was an arti­cle called “Train­ing the Brain as Pos­si­ble as Train­ing the Body” in the promi­nent Ara­bic news­pa­per Anna­har.

And Mark Muck­en­fuss of The Press-Enterprise in River­side writes in “Train Your Brain”:

“I would tend to believe that still we under­es­ti­mate the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, whose back­ground is in edu­ca­tional train­ing and mar­ket­ing. He notes that recent stud­ies have shown when a brain is injured by a stroke, “those men­tal struc­tures recre­ate them­selves (with exer­cise). It means to me there are a lot of things we could really do and many times we are not aware of them. We can­not promise to peo­ple you will only keep get­ting bet­ter until you are 200 years old. But I think peo­ple still under­es­ti­mate how flex­i­ble the brain really is.”

II. Events

March 8, Alvaro led the Stress Man­age­ment work­shop at Accen­ture dur­ing the Annual Inter­na­tional Women’s Day. He pre­sented the lat­est neu­ro­science find­ings about the impact of stress on per­for­mance and intro­duced a vari­ety of tech­niques to help man­age stress.

Brain Aware­ness Week 2007 is com­ing March 12–18! In honor of the week, we are offer­ing a $10 dis­count code on any brain fit­ness pro­gram offered at Sharp­Brains. To use the coupon from today until March 18th, enter the code BAW2007 into the Dis­count Coupon field pre­sented dur­ing the check­out process and get your $10 discount.

Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes: We are also col­lab­o­rat­ing with 35 dif­fer­ent Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes at uni­ver­si­ties across the US to share infor­ma­tion and our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide.

We are teach­ing our class Exer­cis­ing Our Brains once more in San Fran­cisco and prepar­ing ways to expand to other cities—stay tuned!

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing: We attended a great con­fer­ence of edu­ca­tors and neu­ro­sci­en­tists shar­ing ideas to influ­ence each other. Some tremen­dous speak­ers were there to talk about the lat­est dis­cov­er­ies in neu­ro­science. One of the main themes we left with was that peo­ple are a mix­ture of cog­ni­tion and emo­tion, and both ele­ments are essen­tial to func­tion and learn properly.

III. Pro­gram Reviews

“John & I keep work­ing the pro­gram. I love it! I just com­pleted the sec­ond assess­ment & it showed I have made progress! Thanks also for keep­ing in touch.“
—Sue Anne, reg­is­tered nurse, on Com­pre­hen­sive Brain Workout

“The stress man­age­ment pro­gram is becom­ing a big time sav­ior – keeps my nerves in check.“
—top busi­ness school pro­fes­sor on Freeze-Framer

“Sharp­Brains’ is the first biofeed­back appli­ca­tion that I’m aware of that is uniquely mar­keted to traders. I’ve used biofeed­back to mon­i­tor my body’s level of arousal dur­ing trad­ing and have found it to be quite use­ful.“
—Brett Steen­barger, trad­ing psy­chol­ogy expert, on Freeze-Framer

“Inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion, enter­tain­ing, amus­ing, edu­ca­tional, lots of mate­r­ial cov­ered in short time. Good fun! Mr. Fer­nan­dez is in his ele­ment. Great teacher, witty, his love of his craft is evi­dent.“
—Anony­mous eval­u­a­tion from stu­dent, on Exer­cise Your Brain Workshop

IV. New Offerings

Our new Exer­cise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions DVD has been a pop­u­lar item since it became avail­able. This one-hour and 20 minute class intro­duces you to the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and includes many engag­ing brain exer­cises you can do on your own or in a group set­ting. A per­fect intro­duc­tion to brain fitness!

We are pleased to have added the emWave Per­sonal Stress Reliever to our stress man­age­ment pro­grams. It is a con­ve­nient, prac­ti­cal train­ing device that uses the same patented tech­nol­ogy as Freeze-Framer to help you reduce stress and shift into The Zone any­time, anywhere.

V. Web­site and Blog Summary

Just Sci­ence spon­sored a Week of Sci­ence among blog­gers who agreed to write about “just sci­ence” for one week. Here are a few arti­cles we wrote for that week:

• Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Lifestyle
• ADD/ADHD and work­ing mem­ory train­ing: inter­view with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson
• Heart Rate Vari­abil­ity as an Index of Reg­u­lated Emo­tional Responding

Here are some other high­lights from our recent posts:

• Best prac­tice for top trad­ing per­for­mance: biofeedback
• How can I improve my con­cen­tra­tion and my memory?
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) and other stress man­age­ment techniques
• Is phys­i­cal fit­ness impor­tant to your brain fitness?
• Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #2
• Exer­cise Your Brains — Visual Logic Brain Teaser
• Brain Work­out for Your Frontal Lobes

Finally, let us ask a favor: we are actively look­ing for part­ners who can help us reach more peo­ple. Orga­ni­za­tions offer­ing advice and pro­grams around health, nutri­tion, phys­i­cal fit­ness, train­ing who may want to part­ner with us to offer an addi­tional brain fit­ness com­po­nent to their mem­bers, vis­i­tors, read­ers. Please let us know any suggestions!

Keep exer­cis­ing your brain!

~Alvaro and the Sharp­Brains Team

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