06/20/2025
The Healthy Mind Platter has seven daily essential mental activities necessary for optimum mental health. These seven daily activities make up the full set of “mental nutrients” that your brain and relationships need to function at their best. By engaging every day in each of these servings, you promote integration in your life and enable your brain to coordinate and balance its activities. These essential mental activities strengthen your brain’s internal connections and your connections with other people and the world around you.
Focus Time
When we closely focus on tasks in a goal-oriented way, we take on challenges that make deep connections in the brain.
Playtime
When we allow ourselves to be spontaneous or creative, playfully enjoying novel experiences, we help make new connections in the brain.
Connecting Time
When we connect with other people, ideally in person, and when we take time to appreciate our connection to the natural world around us, we activate and reinforce the brain’s relational circuitry.
Physical Time
When we move our bodies, aerobically if medically possible, we strengthen the brain in many ways.
Time In
When we quietly reflect internally, focusing on sensations, images, feelings and thoughts, we help to better integrate the brain.
Downtime
When we are non-focused, without any specific goal, and let our mind wander or simply relax, we help the brain recharge.
Sleep Time
When we give the brain the rest it needs, we consolidate learning and recover from the experiences of the day.
