Free Online Course on Are You Using Both Halves
of Your Brain - Two Brains One Body
The last time anyone talked about
two brains in one body was regarding those behemoths that dominated the earth 65
million years ago: dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex, the most dedicated carnivore of
all time, weighed between four and six tones - too much bulk for one pea-sized
brain: so, in a fit of mothering, Nature gave it two pea-sized brains, one in
the head to handle senses like vision, hearing and the procreative instinct, the
other near the tail to deal with locomotion and control of the extremities.
Nature was subtler with human
beings: she gave them one brain and bisected it into halves that not only look
different but have exclusive functions as well: the grayish left half is
logical, analytical, verbal, linear and sequential; the right white half is
emotional, spatial, visual and holistic.
The right hemisphere is white
because the nerve cells there are protected by a white insulation called
myclination, covering the nerve cells, which are too involved in processing an
unending march past of visual, emotional and sensory messages to keep a lookout
for their enemies. It is here that fuzzy logic creates lifesaving abstractions
like hunches and gut feelings. The left-brain doesn't need much myclination
because its function, unlike the right brain, does not need to process a wide
variety of messages to provide a complete and overall picture of the situation.
It processes the messages only to provide special and analytical results.
The hemispherical preference of
our personalities - left – or right dominant - depends on our genes and
psychological conditioning. This preference has a direct bearing on our style of
thinking, which in turn influences our skills, our inclinations, and ability to
gather particular kinds of knowledge. Our attitude towards life, the quality of
our performance and our relationships with people, work, money, material
possessions, nature, and all that we are surrounded by and interact with, all
these are determined by our left-right brain orientations.
One hemisphere grows in skill only
at the cost of the other. The consequences are unnerving; the impoverishment of
the right brain could lead to our denial of our intuitive faculty. Also, the
historical cost of this hemispherical sequestration is mind boggling: the
Industrial Revolution blindly favored the left brain and accelerated the pace of
scientific and technological progress - but it retarded the progress in research
in the right brain, the paranormal, ESP and other hidden powers of man.
Besides left or right-dominant
people, there are mixed dominants: they can use both the sides with almost equal
command. Mixed dominants, however, may vary in lateralisation. Highly
lateralised individuals (more males than females) move more completely to the
task-appropriate hemisphere than their less lateralised counterpart, who may end
up performing a task in both the sides. Mixed dominants lacking this ability of
lateralisation may experience an inner competitive tension between the two
sides, which may manifest itself in indecisiveness or stammering or both.
