12/19/2014

TurnonYourRightBrain

TURN ON YOUR RIGHT BRAIN

October 4, 2011 in Creativity & Expression | 13 Comments

This morning I sat down to write about

how we can all learn to better use the
right hemispheres of our brains. For 30
minutes, I tapped restlessly at a laptop.
Nothing much happened, idea-wise. Flat
beer.
Finally I resorted to a strategy I call the
Kitchen Sink. I read bits of eight books:
four accounts of brain research, one novel
about India, one study of bat behavior, one
biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and one
memoir of motherhood. Next I drove to my favorite Rollerblading location, listening en route
to a stand-up comic, a mystery novel, and an Eckhart Tolle lecture. I yanked on my
Rollerblades and skated around, squinting slack-jawed into the middle distance. After a
while, a tiny lightbulb went on. Well, I thought, I could write about this.
Duh.
The Kitchen Sink, you see, is one way to activate your brains creative right hemisphere. Every
writer Ive ever met uses some version of it, as do Web designers, cartoonists, TV producers
all content creators who regularly face the terrifying thought, Well, Ive gotta come up with
something.
If youre not a content creator, wait a while. The 21st century is to content creators what the
Industrial Revolution was to factory workers: In a world where information is superabundant,
unique and creative ideas are hot-ticket advantages both personally and professionally. More
and more people are finding more and more ways to parent, make money, find friends, and
generally live well by relying on creativity. The demand for creative thinking is both a
challenge and an opportunity. It requires us to use more than the logical left-brain skills we
learned in school. These days, we all need to get back into our right minds.
Historically, most brain science came from studying people whose brains had been damaged.
Depending on the injurys location, these patients had varying disabilities: If you lost one
brain section, you might be unable to do long division; wipe out another patch, and your
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lace-tatting days were over. The famous Phineas Gage had an iron rod rammed all the way
through his head, permanently losing the ability to be nice. One can hardly blame him.
People with left-hemisphere brain injuries may have trouble thinking analytically or making
rational decisions. Many with damage to the right hemisphere, on the other hand, can still
pass their SATs but become unable to connect parts into a meaningful whole. Oliver Sacks
wrote about such a patient in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. This gentleman saw
perfectly but could identify what he saw only by guessing. If you showed him a rose, he
might say, Well, its red on top, green and prickly below, and it smells nice. Is it a flower?
One day, while looking for a hat to put on, he reached for his wife instead, perhaps thinking:
Its familiar, and it goes with me everywhere. Is it my hat? Im sure this was awful for his
poor wife, though it could have been worse (Well, its the size of a small house and it needs
cleaningIs it my garage?). But still.
For most of Western history the right side of the brain was short-shrifted by neurologists
intent on helping people think rationally. Only in recent years have experts begun to laud
the creative, holistic right hemisphere. Interestingly, left-hemisphere strokes appear to be
more common than right-hemisphere strokes. Perhaps were overusing our left hemispheres
to the point of blowout. Or perhaps illness is trying to nudge us back to the mysteries and
gifts of the right brain. Fortunately, we now know we can effect this change deliberately,
without having to survive neurological disaster.
In his fascinating book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle describes how the brain reacts when a
person develops a new skill. Performing an action involves firing an electrical signal through
a neural pathway; each time this happens, it thickens the myelin sheath that surrounds nerve
fibers like the rubber coating on electrical wires. The thicker the myelin sheath around a
neural pathway, the more easily and effectively we use it. Heavily myelinated pathways equal
mad skills.
Throughout your education, you myelinated the left-brain pathways for thinking logically.
You were prepared for predictability and order, not todays constant flood of innovation and
change. Now you need to build up myelin sheaths around new skill circuits, located in your
right hemisphere. To do this, you need something Coyle calls deep practice.
Deep practice is the same no matter what the skill. First visualize an ability youd like to
acquireswimming like Dara Torres, painting like Grandma Moses, handling iron rods like
Uncle Phineas. Then try to replicate that behavior. Initially, youll fail. Thats good; failure is
an essential element of deep practice. Next, analyze your errors, noting exactly where your
performance didnt match your ideal. Now try again. Youll still probably fail (remember,
thats a good thing), but in Samuel Becketts words, youll fail better.
Examples of people engaged in deep practice are everywhere. Think of American Idol
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contestants improving their singing, or Tiger Woods perfecting his golf swing. I once saw a
television interviewer present Toni Morrison with the original manuscript of one of her
masterpieces. Morrison became slightly distracted, running critical eyes across the page,
wanting to make changes. She clearly cant stop deep practicing. Thats why she won the
Nobel Prize.
Deep practice is hard. It makes your brain feel like a piece of raw hamburger. Its also weirdly
rewarding, dropping you into rapt concentration, yielding quick improvement, and (if youre
lucky) producing good work. Here are some tricks you can deep practice to buff up your right
hemisphere.
1. Sign your name every which way. My favorite teacher and artist, Will Reimann, was brilliant
at getting his students to use the right side of their brains. There were many squinty eyes in
Reimanns studio, much neural myelination. Heres one of his exercises:
Sign your name.
Done?
Okay, now things get gnarly. Sign again, but this time, do it in mirror writingright to left,
rather than left to right (just moving your hand backward fires the right brain hemisphere).
Got that? Now sign upside down. Then backward and upside down. Repeat this until you can
sign in all directions. Good luck.
2. Have a bilateral conversation. For this exercise, take a pencil in your right hand (even if
youre left-handed) and write the question: Hows it going? Then switch to your left hand,
and write whatever pops up. Your nondominant hands writing will be shakythats okay. The
important thing isnt tidiness; its noticing that your twin hemispheres have different
personalities.
The right side of the brain, which controls the left hand, will say things you dont know that
you know. It specializes in assessing your physical and mental feelings, and it often offers
solutions. Take a nap, your right hemisphere might say, or Just do what feels right; well be
fine. Youll find theres a little Zen master in that left hand of yours (not surprisingly, lefthanded people are disproportionately represented in creative professions).
3. Learn new moves. You need your right hemisphere to move in an unfamiliar way, whether
youre learning a complicated dance step or holding a new yoga posture. Or cutting your own
hair (actually, dontI speak from experience).
Try this: Walk a few steps, noticing how your arms swing opposite your legs. Now walk with
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your right arm and right foot going forward simultaneously, then the left hand and left foot.
Is this difficult? No? Then do it backward, with your eyes closedany variation thats initially
hard but ultimately learnable. Youll master a new skill, sure; more important, youll build
your overall right-brain facility.
4. Toss in the kitchen sink. Time to push your newly awakened right hemisphere into useful
service. Think of a problem thats had you stumped for a while: Your preschooler wont nap,
you cant make yourself exercise, you need to cut expenses without sacrificing quality of life.
With this challenge in your mind, read a few paragraphs in several totally unrelated books.
Then relax. Play with your cat, wash the dishes, watch the neighbors through binoculars.
Think of the problem periodically, then drop it again.
This process encourages eureka epiphanies, like those moments in TV dramas where the
brilliant doctor or sleuth gets the ping of insight that solves the case. Your first few ideas
may not be perfectmany will be awfulbut there are more where they came from. Once
you begin encouraging the right brain to churn out solutions, it will do so more and more
abundantly.
Turning on your right brain is a skill, one that grows steadily stronger the more you work at
it. Trigger the sensation of deep practice by mastering any unfamiliar task, feed challenges
and stray information into your right brains database, and see new ideas begin to emerge. As
they do, youll move more confidently and productively through an increasingly complex
world. When I see you out Rollerblading, eyes locked in a vacant yet squinty stare, Ill know
youre getting the hang of it.

TRACKBACKS

How to Kick Exhaustion to the Curb and Get More Energy | Ega Jones says:
October 24, 2011 at 11:08 am
[...] Turn on your right brain. First of all, read this article by Martha Beck. The right side of
your brain, the creative, non-literal side, is often under-used. Beck suggests exercises
that help you shift to the right side of your brain and strengthen those neurons. Theyre
actually kind of fun things like signing your name backwards and upside down and I
have to say, after practicing, I always notice a boost in energy. Plus I know that Im
expanding my brain! (Jill Bolte Taylors book My Stroke of Insight is another great
resource for this.) [...]
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Turn on your right brain | Mirrorgirl says:

October 27, 2013 at 1:43 pm
[...] Print This Post [...]
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try this: WORD ASSOCIATION | Faith Helma, Creative Guide says:

December 3, 2014 at 6:44 pm
[] THINK, just write as fast as you can. If you want, you can try writing with your left
hand thats one way to tap into your creative/unconscious/unverbal []
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