Are you right-handed? Left-handed? I'm very happy to say I'm a lefty. I know my 2nd grade teacher is still greatly disappointed. Sometime during that year, I fell and broke my wrist and had to wear a cast for a couple of months. She got me switched over to writing with my right hand. As soon as that cast came off, I went back to the left side.
Over the years, I've enjoyed reading a lot of things about left-brain, right-brain styles of thinking.
A book that comes to mind is
Betty Edwards', "Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain." If you buy into the idea that the brain is split into the left hemisphere (logical thinking) and the right hemisphere (creative, spatial thinking), Betty's book will give you lot's of exercises and ideas for stimulating the right side of your brain.
Exercise sample"You have two brains: a left and a right. Modern brain scientists now know that your left brain is your verbal and rational brain; it thinks serially and reduces its thoughts to numbers, letters and words… Your right brain is your nonverbal and intuitive brain; it thinks in patterns, or pictures, composed of ‘whole things,’ and does not comprehend reductions, either numbers, letters, or words." From The Fabric of Mind, by the eminent scientist and neurosurgeon, Richard Bergland. Viking Penguin, Inc., New York 1985. pg.1
An exercise I've found fun and interesting is to use the opposite hand for a day. If you are right-handed, try eating, brushing your teeth, dribbling a basketball and other things with the left hand. Try writing with the opposite hand. Take out a piece of paper and sketch or doodle with the other hand. If you keep a diary, put an entry in your diary writing with the opposite hand. You might be very surprised to go back a few days later and look at what you wrote. I often times will practice certain exercises on the trumpet with the left hand. It's amazing how easy the same exercise is when I go back and use right-handed fingering.
Gorgeous sunset......
ReplyDelete