If you are not inclined to take a Brain Gym course or buy the books, just try this posture to get an inkling of what I’m raving about. You can easily relax in this at your desk. I sometimes just sit in it at concerts or at the theater (no one’s looking, right?), or do it when I’m getting ready to write. Unfortunately, the web offers no perfect pictures. But we can get pretty close. Look here and here. You can try this pose when you are standing, sitting, or flat on your back. Sitting is probably the best way to start.

Brain Gym’s developers call this pose “Hook Ups” because it requires some mental coordination to hook yourself into it, and it immediately integrates your left brain with your right, so you are engaged with your creative, intuitive powers and your more mechanical, rational ones all at once.

This posture is so calming, a great thing to try when you first get into bed at night. You can also encourage your children to try this when they can’t quite settle down.

The exercise actually has two parts, getting into the twist and breathing there for two or three minutes, then uncrossing everything and breathing with feet apart, and your right thumb and right finger tips touching the matching fingers and thumb of the other hand in a prayer pose without palms touching. You’ll find detailed intructions here (scroll down to “hook ups”). And here‘s a whole kindergarten class essentially doing the first part of the routine.