Each of your hands has a brain. What’s even more startling is that usually we only listen to one. The other, we ignore until it becomes impossible. At that point, we discount it, shove it away, shout it down. Well, we try to, anyway.
Which leads me to ask, What’s up with your Other Hand’s Brain?
It speaks quietly, and in it’s own way, but the funny thing is that it’s communicating all the time. Part of the reason we ignore it is that we’re always thinking in words and the Other Hand’s Brain doesn’t actually have any.
Moshe Feldenkrais called words “the lowest common denominator of communication.” Ouch. That’s a poke in the eye, if you think of words as your forté…
The Other Hand’s Brain tells us what it knows in ways we usually try to ignore… like the queasy feeling we get when we’re about to do something that our Usual Hand’s Brain will later excoriate us for, when it finally recognizes that it was folly! Or holding our breath when we’re being whacked by our gremlins… who all live over there in the Usual Hand’s Brain!
That’s because the Other Hand’s Brain is picking up on the other 93% of communication that isn’t words. You know, the part that Usual Hand’s Brain nearly ignores because… well, because it’s not words!
Recently I found a great book that helps to tap into what the Other Hand’s Brain knows by drawing and writing. Turns out that with a writing implement in hand — markers are my favorite — the Other Hand’s Brain draws and writes. And often does a better job of it than the one that usually does all the talking.
Conversation between my Hands and their Brains turned out to be very informative, as I sat with a marker in one hand and a pen in the other. Drawings I made with my Other Hand’s Brain in control look more like what I intend than anything else I’ve ever drawn.
The book is The Power of Your Other Hand: A Course in Channeling the Inner Wisdom of the Right Brain, and you can check it out on Amazon if you’re interested.
I can’t recommend it highly enough… especially if you’re looking for your inner artist, trying to get past the blocks that stop you from doing the things you “know” you want to do, or would simply appreciate a conversation that more fully represents the complexity of You.
So much is lying in wait for us, just beyond the point where the familiar ends… unearthing what lives there is one of the joys of the transformational leader, as layer after layer peels away and Truth is all that remains….
So… What do you think? And which Hand’s Brain is thinking it?
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