Left Brain, Right Brain
-
I have been a left brain supremacist most of my life.
It's the one with the words so it has an advantage over the non-verbal right brain in some respects. It knows how to command attention.
I've learned over the last decade or so, though, that the right brain has its own ways of getting attention and garnering respect, or at least resentful obedience, as well.
The left brain is verbal, logical, linear, analytical and rational. The right brain is non-verbal, visual, spatial, artistic, musical and intuitive.
This is a bit of an oversimplification perhaps, but bear with me, I have a few points I want to make.
The left brain is busy creating scenarios, devising paradigms, coming up with reasons to explain anything and everything, including things it knows nothing about.
And we tend to believe this left brain despot. It is the only voice we hear in our heads. Left brain has reasons for our illness, ideas of treatment, ideas of how to get out of it.
But if anything can thwart the average left brain, it would be CFS.
Many of us are looking for solutions to our condition with our left brains. Not finding total solutions there, are we.
I let my right brain take the lead from time to time. It'll suggest things like, take a break from the seemingly unanswerable questions that so discourage, and maybe play the piano. Or draw a picture. Knit a scarf. Or take a nap.
For months a few years ago, it flashed an image in my mind of me lying face down in the grass, outside, while I was busy typing for a newlsetter or a website or a journal.
This was back when I studiously ignored my right brain's urgings like the plague. I had work to do! My right brain was suggesting I need to stop.
My right brain was correct and my left brain was leading me into trouble. Didn't know that at the time.
And while it has taken me a long time to get past my left brain favouritism, and I often fall back into this bias, I have been learning that sometimes the answers lie elsewhere.
Sometimes it might be something like, you need to eat something. Maybe something highly specific like an overwhelming craving for some type of food -- and no, I don't mean the cravings for potato chips or popsicles -- more like, today would be a good day to eat alot of broccoli.
For awhile I was in love with my reishi mushroom tincture (which tastes like motor oil). I would think of my bottle of yucky omega 3 oil and want to pat it or hold it close. Okay, I'd take the hint and take two teaspoons a day for awhile instead of one.
Sometimes our right brain will send an SOS like, this place is not healthy for you, these people are weighing you down. You need to get out of here. You need to be somewhere else.
Call it intuition, call it gut reaction, call it divine inspiration.
But whatever you want to call it, these nudges should not be categorically ignored, because sometimes your brain is communicating something important.
So I'm just saying, we might try for a little more balance. We might try listening a bit more to our frequently ignored and often maligned right brain.
We might pay more attention, for instance, to impulses or mental images that appear, without words but often with definite, understood meaning. We might try following some of these images, or impulses, also without words or explanation.
Just because our body is maybe trying to tell us something. And since our logical brain hasn't been doing such a keen job of leading us out of the CFS maze, we could try listening to the other side.
Just this once.
Just to try something different and see if we can get different results, yes?
Back to With Apologies to the Actual Science
�
Back to Articles Page
�