The importance of left/right brain integration

My friends, the letter is back.

Most of us are creatives here or aspiring to be.

Creation is largely a right-brain objective. However, the left brain comes into play as well.

For this process to be as efficient and natural as possible, we require left/right brain integration.

A smooth cooperation between our two hemispheres.

The problem is that our modern environment is not conducive to it.

Excessive screen time is linked to left/right brain disintegration and left side dominance.

Our exercise environment is usually highly limited and uses machines and basic planar movements, which force the brain to lay down pathways and adapt to a dysfunctional environment.

The result…

For athletes, this leads to reduced agility and increased likelihood of injury as the two hemispheres do not communicate well together.

For creatives, this leads to stagnation.

The article that’s never written, the project that’s left in the middle.

And a continuous thinking pattern stuck in the details and worry.

This is left-brain dominance.

Left-brain activity is great for coding, for example, where a lot of the time a single pointedness of attention is what holds the entire thing together.

But creative work requires the brain to make quantum leaps, lateral shifts, and connect the dots unorthodoxly.

This is where left and right work together in harmony.

Brain hemisphere dysintegration usually has its origin in our infant years…

From a physiological perspective, the brain integrates when the infant adapts to a natural environment and is free to explore multiplanar movements.

However, the parents' overprotectiveness and/or a non-supportive environment could lead to adaptational difficulties and, therefore, a lack of brain integration.

But the problem could also be a product of the education system.

Research shows that the right brain begins developing at age 4-15 and the left brain begins at age 7 to 21.

When a child is forced to do left brain tasks such as mathematics or is exposed to a stressful environment, the left brain takes over, not allowing the harmonious development of the right.

And the effects continue into adulthood, as mentioned.

The good news is that this is reversible, and I will cover a few of the practices here.

The simplest concept is that integration occurs whenever our limbs cross the midline of our body.

So a cross-body crawl where you touch your right elbow to your left knee either standing or on a 4-point position will do the trick in as little as 20 repetitions.

Another tool we have is alternate nostril breathing.

Where you alternate your breathing between the 2 nostrils. Let’s say we start by breathing through the left, we block the left and exhale through the right, breathe through the right with the left still covered, now cover the right and exhale through the left, and inhale through the left once again to start the cycle over.

These are a few practical tools that produce both immediate effects and long-term conditioning.

As I mentioned earlier, in most cases, our exercise environment is highly dysfunctional, so instead of using machinery that are forcing our brain to relax and adapt in a dysfunctional hyper-supported environment, we must introduce exercises that introduce elements of instability, movement complexity, and unilateral neurological coordination.

An approach that I love is unstructured movement for exploration. Just moving freely with no expectations while breathing through the nose.

There are tools for this, such as a flow rope and a steel mace, but simple body weight can also do very well.

You could also play with creating some poetry during the rest sessions of your exercise for some further right-brain engagement.

Last but certainly not least, nature is a tuning fork for our brain and nervous system, so spending multiple hours outside per week is also integration-supportive.

Wishing you lots of harmony,

Aris

[ref: Chek P. Infant Development, Integrated Movement Science 2, CHEK Institute, 2022]