Learn The Built-in Superpowers Of Your Body And Brain This Weekend


The human body and its brain are pretty incredible. They’re also fragile and dumb. realising this can make your life miserable, or you can look at it as an opportunity and take control. This weekend, learn a few built-in superpowers you may not have known you had. All they take is a little practice.

Photos by Sofia Santos (Shutterstock) and agsandrew.

Let’s go piece by piece, from head to toes.

Your Head

There are a lot of fun things you can do with your head, inside and out. Let’s start with the brain. We post multiple mind hacks a week, so there is no shortage of ways to trick yourself into being smarter, more creative, happier and whatever else. Nonetheless, mind hacks can be applied a bit broadly and simply refer to finding better ways of thinking or learning a little bit more about the weird stuff your brain might make you do. We want something bigger. When you stimulate the brain in various ways, it will react positively or negatively or somewhere in between.

It may seem like we have no control over how this happens or how it makes us feel, but we do. Sometimes its as simple as priming your brain with the right words. It can also be as simple as conjuring up a feeling. If you really want to hack your brain, read our guide. It’ll introduce you to some of the basic techniques you can use to gain more control over your own behaviour.

Doing so can help you use food cravings to your advantage, make difficult decisions more easily, create stronger bonds with people you care about and prevent your brain from sabotaging your life.

Your Hands And Feet

Your hands and feet are kind of useful, but they have their downsides. One such example is when they “fall asleep” and are ravaged by pins and needles. If your hands come down with this problem, just relax the nerves in your neck. When it happens to your feet, the best thing you can do is walk around.

There’s much more you can do with your hands. We’ve already mentioned squeezing your left thumb to reduce your gag reflex, but you can also releave nausea by pressing on your wrist. In fact, there are quite a lot of neat things you can do with a little acupressure. But if you’d rather just impress people, check out these 10 badarse things you can do one-handed. The moment you open a bear-bottle, shuffle a deck of cards or eat an entire chicken wing with only one hand, you’ll get a round of applause.

There isn’t quite so much neat stuff you can do with your feet, but if you’re looking to burn some fat there is one thing: start tapping your feet. Apparently fidgeting is a big calorie-buster.

Your, Uh, Middle Area

Oh, the magical things you can do with your crotch. Most of the time we shy away from the area but there are a few tricks worth noting. One of the biggest problems we have is our bladders — specifically when we need to empty them out and there’s nowhere to (politely) do so. When you’re stuck without a place to pee, scratch your leg or rub the back of your calf. It can help reduce the need. After the business has been done, many men are probably familiar with the issue of getting it all out. When there are a few drops left, several Redditors suggest applying light pressure to your perineum to get it all out. This might not be the world’s least embarrassing solution, but it works for many men.

Your Whole Body

Some tricks work well for your entire body. If you get hot, knowing your body’s cooling points can make it easier for you to cool off faster. It’s not about cooling your entire body, but rather cooling of certain areas to expedite the process. If you’ve got limited cooling resources, this is especially helpful.

Plenty of other things can affect your body in interesting ways. Learning a few breathing exercises can increase your stamina when exercising. Simply looking at sick people can give your immune system a boost. With a little practice, you can boost your alcohol tolerance. Those are just a few examples. You’ll find more on our body hacks tag page.

Got any crazy tricks you can do with your brain or body? Share ’em in the comments. And have a great weekend!


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