People who actively use the right hemisphere of their brain are more likely to be successful, says John O'Keeffe, the author of the method of unconventional thinking. We have already told you what the right and left hemispheres of the brain are responsible for and how they cooperate with each other. Today we’re talking about ways to turn on the right hemisphere at full capacity.
Using the right hemisphere of the brain is relatively easy. These methods are literally on the surface - sometimes you just need to remember them. However, the habits formed in Western society push us only towards logic, analysis and facts. So those who want to succeed should learn techniques that allow the right hemisphere to automatically engage in active work.
Only the left hemisphere - and the whole brain: test
How can you feel the difference between the work of the whole brain and the work of just the left hemisphere? Try to quickly answer the following questions.
SECTION "A"
- Name the seventh letter of the alphabet.
- How many days are there in November?
- Count the numbers from 26 to 0.
SECTION "B"
- Write down instructions on how to get from your home to work by car.
- Write down instructions for tying a tie or shoelace.
- Name all the letters of the alphabet in reverse order.
When solving problems from section “A”, you use exclusively the left hemisphere of your brain. They require predominantly mechanical thinking - mental repetition of words, letters or numbers.
The tasks in section “B” are completely different. They engage the right hemisphere and require that you form a certain picture in your head, and then the left hemisphere translates this picture into logical instructions.
You can easily count the numbers from 26 to 0 - partly due to mechanical thinking, and partly due to logic. To do this, it is enough to use one left hemisphere. However, most people cannot recite all the letters of the alphabet in reverse order because the alphabet has been learned mechanically and there is no logic to it. A different approach is needed here.
There are several simple techniques that allow you to engage not only the left, but also the right hemisphere of the brain:
- Use color.
- Use pictures.
- Use metaphors and analogies.
- Use emotions.
- Use your intuition.
- Use not only facts, but also a coherent story.
- Use not only professional vocabulary, but also figurative expressions.
How to prepare your brain for training
Just as athletes prepare their bodies for physical exercise, the human brain must be prepared for intellectual development. To do this, it is enough to remember and follow three conditions that will help make the brain plastic and ready to assimilate and process new material. They will help you and your children train their brains.
- High physical activity. If you are constantly in a sitting or lying position, then you are at risk of physical inactivity. Because of this, the fatty acids that are in your body are not broken down. In addition, due to lack of movement, blood circulation is impaired. And because of this, an insufficient amount of oxygen may reach the brain, which will impair its functioning.
- Consumption of phosphates and carbohydrates. Be sure to eat foods that include phosphorus (pumpkin, soybeans, nuts, beans, processed cheese) and healthy carbohydrates (rice, corn flakes, pasta, kefir, fish, shrimp).
- Drink plenty of fluids. Teach your child to drink a lot of water. It cleanses the body of toxins and also helps maintain neural connections, thereby ensuring the development of cognitive thinking.
Left hemisphere development
The left hemisphere is responsible for logical, rational thinking and, due to our lifestyle, dominates in almost all people, with the exception of left-handers. The education system is built on the development of the left hemisphere, that is, the child receives the necessary skills already at school. But there are several ways to quickly develop the left hemisphere:
- daily solve mathematical problems of varying complexity;
- practice logic and ingenuity puzzles;
- solve puzzles, crosswords, charades, etc.
Development of the right hemisphere
It has been established that the right hemisphere, responsible for creative and imaginative thinking, dominates in people from birth. However, during the learning process there is a bias towards the left hemisphere, which gradually suppresses the right. In left-handed people, the right side of the brain still remains dominant, but for other children it is useful to learn how to develop the right hemisphere:
- attend creative events (exhibitions, museums, galleries, etc.);
- write poems or stories;
- use your left hand when performing habitual actions;
- visualize various images;
- reproduce familiar sounds, smells, sensations in your mind.
But the main condition for the comprehensive development of a child is training and establishing connections between the hemispheres. This is why neurogymnastic exercises are needed. The greatest effect from their implementation is observed in children from 7 to 12 years old - at this age they are the most active and inquisitive.
Use color
This method is simple but effective. The next time you write something down, use colored pens or different colors of paper, including very bright ones. Use different colors for headings, highlighted words, summaries, and key phrases. You will feel your mood lift from work. It will become more pleasant, interesting, memorable and fun.
This is how you engage the right hemisphere of your brain. Now several other thoughts come to your mind. You feel that you are no longer constrained by any boundaries. You feel that your thinking is becoming unconventional.
After two or three weeks, try going back to black and white notes. You will find them boring, tedious, routine and limited.
Color is present in almost all business communications - modern technologies allow this. Presentations include color slides. Photocopies may be in color. Personal computers provide color graphics. Newspapers and television have long switched to color. Imagine the opposite situation. Go back to black and white newspapers, movies, television, black and white presentation slides, monochrome monitors. You will feel like you are in a dark basement. This occurs due to deactivation of the right hemisphere of the brain. You will have to expend enormous amounts of energy to use it when faced with an ocean of colorless communication.
If this is so obvious, why continue the habit of using one color when writing, which dates back to the era of quill pens?
Description of the practice - Your Yoga youryoga.orgcopyright.htm -
Below I give you simple animation exercises. Working with them is very simple - you just need to look with a calm and slightly absent-minded gaze approximately at the center of the screen for as long as it is pleasant. It is recommended to go through the animation exercises sequentially, as I wrote them down.
Download music (1.5 Mb, mp3)
Balance
This exercise balances the right and left hemispheres. But its meaning is not only in balancing - it also “shifts” consciousness from some stable platform, - Copying is prohibited by the AUTHOR - Veretennikov Sergey - as if “rocking” it, - Your Yoga youryoga.org/copyright.htm - making it mobile, - Copying this material PROHIBITED - www.youryoga.org/copyright.htm - Your Yoga is fluid and plastic. — www.youryoga.org/copyright.htm —
Right hemisphere activation
Here the emphasis is on the right hemisphere and its activity. Just be relaxed and calmly look at the approximate center of the screen. — Your Yoga youryoga.org/copyright.htm —
Passive activity
Relax and calmly look approximately at the center of the screen. +++ You CANNOT copy material - www.youryoga.org/copyright.htm +++
Right-sided rhythm
In this exercise you will see an animation in which the left side blinks rhythmically. You need to look calmly and slightly absent-mindedly at the rotating circle in the center of the screen. ...Copying this material is illegal...
Abstract sphere
Look at the approximate center of the screen with an absent-minded gaze, ::: Veretennikov Sergey - www.youryoga.org/copyright.htm ::: as if into the distance. ::: Veretennikov Sergey - www.youryoga.org/copyright.htm :::
Right-sided consciousness
Look at the approximate center of the screen with an absent-minded gaze, ... Veretennikov Sergey - copying any part of this text is PROHIBITED ... as if into the distance. ... Material is not allowed to be copied - Site author - Copyright - Veretennikov Sergey ...
Questions and answers to yourself
Each person always has many different questions, so you can easily find several to use for this exercise, the point of which is to answer your questions from different levels of consciousness. Simply answer any of your questions by substituting the action for the phrase “do this” in the diagram below:
For example: “1. What could happen if I am kind today?..”, etc.
Offset right
- Stand at a distance of a meter (approximately) near the wall (wall on the right).
- Bend to the right and touch your head to your waist (you can put something soft between the wall and your head to make it comfortable).
- Stand like this (leaning to the right) for several minutes (the further the distance from the wall, the greater the effect). Keep your body as level (straight) as possible.
- After this, sharply push off the wall and stand straight. You will immediately feel as if something is pulling you to the right and something in you will strive to the right. Concentrate on this feeling and also think about the space to your right.
Plane of thinking
- Draw an imaginary plane dividing your body in the center into two halves (right and left).
- The plane is infinite, i.e. it goes into infinity forward, backward, up and down from you.
- Fill all the space to your right with red and concentrate on that red space.
Use pictures
Pictures are just as effective as color.
One picture is worth a thousand words. Don't limit yourself to a world made up of columns of numbers or pages and pages of facts. Television has triumphed over radio. Personal computers have powerful graphics capabilities and are capable of bringing any information to life. A presentation with only text on the slides will never be as effective as one that uses high-quality visuals. The effectiveness of pictures is due to the fact that they appeal to the right hemisphere of the brain. Pictures can be very simple, approximate; reduced simply to symbols. However, the question “How can this be illustrated?” includes the right hemisphere of the brain. The combination of color and pictures is even more effective.
Use metaphors and analogies
Metaphors and analogies stimulate the right hemisphere—both yours and those around you. They evoke emotion and a sense of belonging, and help paint a picture much better than dispassionate detailed descriptions. For example, when faced with a problem of duplication of responsibilities, a typical response is to investigate and analyze the problem. Another approach that involves the right hemisphere of the brain would look like this. In your speech, you resort to the proverb “Seven nannies have a child without an eye,” and then propose to clearly delineate areas of responsibility.
By comparing a goal or problem to something distant from the area being discussed, metaphors and analogies remove the limitations of standard thinking. When you say phrases like “Let's try to become like Microsoft” or “Let's catch up and overtake Coca-Cola in popularity,” it pushes the boundaries of conventional thinking and removes barriers to creative thinking.
Use emotions
There is nothing wrong with emotions. They exist, and at the same time they can have an impact much stronger than logical constructions. The combination of emotions and logic can sweep away all obstacles in its path. Television advertising becomes much more effective when it appeals not only to logic, but also to emotions. For example, one of the commercials dedicated to car tires especially emphasizes their role in ensuring safety. The advertisement uses an image of a huge tire with a child sitting in it - this is a combination of logic and emotion.
Reports and presentations sound much more convincing if they appeal to the feelings of the audience, and not just to logic. This has to go in: use your own emotions to appeal to other people's emotions.
Use your intuition
We are too often interested in facts and do not ask about premonitions. Facts are pure logic. In contrast, intuition is associated with the right, creative, hemisphere of the brain. The combination of logic and intuition has enormous power.
Apparently, a person makes the most important decisions in his life with the participation of both hemispheres of the brain, and not just the left. We can name three such moments: the choice of a spouse, profession and place of residence. These decisions may have to be made several times in your life. However, none of them are usually accepted based on logic, analysis, and facts alone.
The issue of starting a family is not a dispassionate decision based on hard facts and logic. The choice of profession is largely based on feelings, a few signals, as well as impressions and inclinations, but not on rational analysis. The house you live in is also chosen based on feelings, not dry facts - you often act illogically, overpaying to live in a place you like.
Gymnastics (charging) for the neurobic brain
What is neurobics - brain gymnastics. It helps synthesize new connections between neurons in the brain and preserves good memory for a long time. It is useful for people at any age: schoolchildren and the elderly for mental correction.
Every person who cares about the state of his own intelligence can learn the simplest neurobics techniques and not be afraid of the onset of senile insanity.
Finger gymnastics
Brain training can begin with finger exercises. Stretch your fingers, bring your palms together, bend your fingers, passing the index finger of your right hand first. Now straighten your fingers and bend them in a different order, lowering the index finger of your left hand first. Repeat these movements several times.
Bend your fingers, straighten them, clench your fists, unclench them. Repeat 10 times. Place your fingers in a lock and rotate both hands clockwise and back, 10 times.
Touch your fingertips to both hands, palms straight. The palms are separated by 5 centimeters. Using springy movements, try to bring your palms together. Repeat 10 times.
Touch the thumb of each hand to the little finger, ring finger, middle finger, and index finger. Repeat everything in reverse order 8-10 times.
Kinesiological exercises
An excellent exercise for the brain is kinesiological exercises. An example would be a simple exercise that is easy to get confused about.
Sitting on a chair, raise your left arm up and raise your right leg 5 centimeters above the floor. After this, clap your palms and raise your right arm and left leg up. Clap both hands and switch hands and feet. Repeat several times.
Squeeze the fingertips of the thumb and little finger on both hands at the same time. Massage the pads, rub one against the other. Now repeat the massage with the ring finger, middle finger, index finger and repeat everything in reverse order.
Place the palm of your right hand on your stomach and your left hand on the top of your head. Make several movements at the same time: rotate the palm of your right hand over your stomach, clockwise. Lightly pat the top of your head with the palm of your left hand. After this, switch hands and repeat the movements. Rotation on the stomach and patting on the top of the head.
Fingers
Fingering exercises for brain development. They are performed simultaneously with both hands, develop synchronous work of the two hemispheres, improve memory, increase reactions, and decision making. New neural connections are formed in the gray matter of the brain.
Exercise plays a big role even in martial arts. Photos of them can be found on the Internet if you ask Google what Fingers are. They are similar to ancient mudras and beautiful poses of the hands of oriental dancers.
Qigong
A special system of Buddhist breathing and movement exercises is called Qigong. It represents a special set of movements with the arms and legs and is associated with the religious teachings of Taoist monks.
Adults and elderly people who practice Qigong gymnastics feel much younger and better than their peers. How to develop your brain 100 percent? Qigong teachers will undoubtedly be able to answer this question.
Yoga
In Indian culture, the concept of Yoga means a combination of spiritual and physical exercises. They are developed in different directions of Buddhism and Hinduism. Yoga develops in a person the ability to control his physical and mental functions. There is Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Hatha Yoga and other directions.
The ultimate goal of yoga is to improve a person's physiological abilities and even achieve enlightenment and eternal life. In any case, long-lived yogis are known, with flexible bodies and excellent memory.
Entire books are devoted to other aspects of yoga. Followers of this teaching devote their entire lives to their improvement. The neuropsychological capabilities of such people are very highly developed.
By doing any type of mental gymnastics, a person is able to preserve his memory and intellect for a long time.
From the editor: Causes of brain tumors in children, symptoms, types, treatment methods and prevention
Use not only facts, but also a coherent story
"The facts speak for themselves." It is not true. Such statements are often made by people who fail to fully convince their interlocutor.
If the facts really spoke for themselves, then all controversy would cease. Everyone would come to the same obvious conclusions. The very fact that you use the expression “the facts speak for themselves” indicates the opposite: you were not able to fully convince the audience, the job is only half done. You must be prepared to use a variety of stories and anecdotes to evaluate the facts presented—to bring them to life so that they make sense to the listener. For example, one story or one anecdote can be more effective than a whole list of facts - and they are remembered better.
Functions of the cerebral hemispheres
The main organ of our body is undoubtedly the brain. It is thanks to neural connections that we are able to feel, think and remember. With the help of the main organ of the central nervous system, commands are given to coordinate movements and facial gestures, so we can say that it completely controls our body.
All plans and vital decisions arise in the brain. However, there is one caveat: each of the two hemispheres has been found to perform different tasks. Let's try to answer the question of what the right and left halves of the cerebral cortex are responsible for.
Functions of the left hemisphere
Its main task is to build logical connections and analytical thinking. Previously, this hemisphere was considered dominant by scientists, but later it turned out that it prevails only if the corresponding rational and pragmatic tasks are completed. Let’s take a closer look at exactly what processes and actions this half coordinates.
Analytical thinking
This includes various cause-and-effect relationships without involving emotions. If a detective is investigating a crime, the left hemisphere comes into play predominantly.
Language acquisition and speech perception
Oddly enough, such a humanitarian discipline as linguistics exists thanks to the exclusively rational half. It also links words in the speech stream into a coherent whole. But the analysis carried out allows us to identify only the direct meaning of the words, while all kinds of metaphors remain unrecognized.
Writing and reading
One of the tasks performed is the assimilation of a written text and its subsequent reproduction. The left hemisphere remembers facts and names of things.
Mathematical calculations
With such a rigorous calculation, it is not surprising that mathematics directly depends on our rational side. The list includes numbers, sequences, and calculations. Many technical jobs require full use of the left hemisphere.
Control of the right half of the body
Our central nervous system is designed in such an unusual way that the opposite hemisphere controls the right arm or leg of a person.
Use not only professional vocabulary, but also figurative expressions
Most professional slang is associated with the left hemisphere of the brain. It's something like a set of formulas. Professional slang and abbreviations may be present in our speech, but they must know their place. If you want to convey the depth of meaning, don't be afraid to use figurative language.
Perhaps, from a stylistic point of view, they will not be entirely ideal, but they will accurately convey the meaning of what you want to convey to your listeners. Figurative expressions “strike the right chord” in the right hemisphere of the interlocutor’s brain. Figurative expressions are like pictures. They engage the right hemisphere of the brain, which professional slang is not capable of.
What is useful to do to develop the right hemisphere
Visualization
No, this is not only a method of fulfilling desires. This is a psychological technique for working on the brain. Moreover, it is very interesting. All you need is to imagine something in colors using the power of your imagination.
Start simple. Close eyes. Imagine a white background in front of you. Try to mentally draw something on it. You can even just write your own name.
Remember something from reality. For example, your favorite dessert - try to imagine it not only externally, but remember the taste, aroma, feel it. You can visualize anything. The clearer and brighter the presentation, the better the brain works.
Drawing
Don't think you have to be an artist. Don't be afraid to draw. Just do it for yourself, to improve your imagination and creative skills.
One of the techniques is to draw images with both hands at once, which should mirror each other. When performed regularly, the procedure helps train both hemispheres.
Do not miss
- Do not miss
How to develop fine motor skills (and why this is so important at any age)
Playing musical instruments
Musicians have a very developed right hemisphere. Playing instruments requires creativity, as well as coordination, memory, attention - this is very beneficial for the brain as a whole.
No one is asking you to master an instrument at a complex level, but even occasionally playing easy tunes on the piano or guitar (or whatever you like) is very important for brain development.
Even just listening to music (especially classical) is also useful.
