Why Right Brain/Left Brain? by Sherman Goldman

WHY RIGHT BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN?


Dr. Tsunoda's approach to the Japanese mentality has such a wide range of applications because it starts from a basic physical principle that rules the way all human beings think: the left and right hemispheres of our brain control two different and complementary types of thought.. When we appreciate the beauty of a landscape, form an image that synthesizes a whole area in one insight, or listen to music, for example, the right side of our brain is functioning. On the other hand, if we are calculating our budget, forming a logical argument, or checking off details, the left side of our brain is at work. In other words, we seem to have not one but two brains, and they sort out all our mental activity into two opposite and polarized categories.

It's amazing enough to discover that all our thinking is assigned to one of two counterbalanced areas, but to be told that these mental areas belong to two parts of our body is a fundamental shock. The theory is so powerful, not only because it shows the basic complementary of all thinking so neatly but also because it firmly closes the split between mind and body.

Such a basic discovery has many applications, but it rests on a theorem that remains unexplained. Why does the right side of our brain perform the nonlogical functions, while the left side takes care of verbal activities? The principle of yin and yang offers a clue to this question.

That principle involves looking at all phenomena in terms of their context. Thus we must see how the fight and left sides of the body as a whole function, in order to understand the work of the fight and left brains. Further, we must know how the right and left sides of the body acquired their characteristics from the larger forces in the environment that gave the body its right/left structure,

The complementarity of right brain and left brain thinking is an expression of the complementarity that runs through all of nature and can be grasped in terms of yin and yang. Yin stands for expansive, outward-moving, relaxing, centrifugal tendencies; yang stands for the contracting, inward-moving, focusing, centripetal forces. In terms of our vertical posture on the surface of the earth, for example, down is yang (in toward the center of the globe), and up is yin. In scientific categories, gravity is an example of a yang force, and the growth of plants upward is an example of a yin counter tendency. Precipitation is the yang half of a cycle that is completed by the yin phase of evaporation from bodies of water. Structure and function in nature represent the complementary union of these two antagonistic, paired forces.

The head and torso are complementary structures of the body, as the yin and yang parts of one living organism. The brain is a soft, convoluted organ that occupies the major upper segment of our head, and the intestines are a soft, convoluted organ that occupies the major lower portion of our torso. the intestines coil clockwise, moving down the left side and up the right; thus, on our left side, yang predominates, and on the right side, yin. This configuration is formed during the uterine stage of development as the embryo grows within its mother, subject to the clockwise force field of planetary rotation.

If the intestines are -not optimally developed at birth, because of inappropriate factors in the mother's diet during pregnancy, the infant will tend to lie on its stomach rather than on its back, in an automatic effort to stimulate the development of that organ. Since right and left-handedness develop tinder the influence of the earth's clockwise force field at this postnatal stage, the minority of individuals who are left-handed owe their uniqueness to the prone rather than supine position they took during this stage of development. Regardless of whether we're right-handed or lefthanded, however, when we reach the stage of standing upright, the prenatally set direction of tendencies clockwise for the internal organs means that yin forces moving upward from the earth are stronger on the right side, and yang tendencies prevail on the left side.

This pattern of forces can be tested with a simple physical experiment, using any small, feffomagnetic object, such as steel nailclippers attached to a thread. Suspended a couple of inches over alternate hands, it will rotate clockwise above the right palm and counterclockwise above the left. The direction of yin, ascending tendencies is clockwise, as in the pattern of leaves on a stem, the growth of vines on trees, etc. The direction of yang, downward force fields is counterclockwise, as cyclonic weather patterns visible from satellite photographs, whirlpools of water, etc.

A more intuitive, less technical confirmation of the upward and downward tendencies of our right and left sides is noticeable in our general preference for using the right hand to throw and the left to catch. If asked to raise a window that's stuck, most people will use their right hand for pushing up and the left as support. The same yin and yang tendencies that rule the right and left sides of our bodies as a whole are also responsible for the complementary functioning of our right and left brain hemispheres.

Holistic types of thinking, controlled by the right brain, are directed outward toward the periphery that encompasses a subject and gives it form; analytic thought, handled by the left brain, focuses inward on the parts located within a surrounding whole. Thus, enjoying the artistic integrity of a painting requires an expansive kind of freely floating attention that is quite different from the concentration involved in mathematical calculations. Metaphors used to describe-- mental events betray a parahel sense for yin and yang, as image arose in his mind" or "the writer plucked words from the air." However the most obvious evidence for the yin nature of the right side of our brains and the yang nature of the left side appeus in the way people tilt their heads when using the right or left brain.

When working on some artistic task, like visualizing the monthly issue of EWJ as a whole, or coming up with an attractive cover, people in the office will think with the right side of the head tilted over the center of the neck in an automatic effort to maximize the vertical flow of energy through that hemisphere. When engaged in detailed work, like measuring article lengths or proofreading, they will tilt their heads the other way to focus energy through the left hemisphere.

The most practical, immediate application for this understanding of yin and yang running through the body is in medicine, and next month EWJ will b~gin a series of articles explaining that subject in terms of these complementary tendencies. A survey of yin and yang, features on the face will serve as an introduction here to that series. Every individual represents the union of two complementary ancestors, a male and a female, and those paired factors appear on the left and right sides of the face. The constitutional heritage from the father appears on the left side and that from the mother on the right, according to the relatively yin and yang tendencies of women and men. This pattern can be checked with the same kind of simple pendulum used for testing the force fields of the right and left hands.

Held over the head of a person sitting quietly, the pendulum will rotate counterclockwise in the case of a man and clockwise for a woman. In order to resolve the skepticism that this experiment seems to evoke, one can note the complementary direction of hair growth patterns in men and women. The hair on top of women's heads spirals out clockwise from a central origin located slightly behind the top of the skull; on men it spirals inward and counterclockwise. In order to avoid possible misinter-pretation of these facts, one should keep in mind that yin and yang are relative, not absolute terms. They always appear in combination, and nothing is absolutely yin or yang. Men represent a merging of the two in which yang factors outweigh the yin, and vice versa. Obviously, if the right side of the body, for example, represented nothing but yin it would have floated up into the sky while the left side plunmieted into the ground. The only chiracteristic being discussed here is the father's heritage appearing more on the left side of the face and the mother's on the right.

Looking in a mirror one can see that the two sides of the face are not exactly equal; one side tends to be tighter than the other. With an imaginary line drawn down the middle of the features, the side with firmer features is not as wide as the other. On the smaller side the eye -appears to take up less room; that side is more actively involved in smiling or gritting the teeth; the tip of the nose bends slightly toward the tighter side. If the right side of the face is the firmer one, the mother was constitutionally stronger than the father, and vice-versa.

If both parents are not alive, one can check this method of facial examination by confirming the fact that the parent with the weaker constitution died first. If both parents are alive, the one with less serious health problems is the stronger by basic constitution and tends to be the dominant partner in the marriage. After checking one's own facial diagnosis against one's family history, one can study the faces of friends and ask them about their parents for further validation.

The lives of people whose mothers were much stronger than their fathers are in striking contrast to those whose parental background was the opposite. The cultural implications, as in the tendency for noted painters to have had unusually dynamic fathers and for a surprising number of great writers to have had extremely strong mothers, return one to the Tsunoda theory.

The most important accomplishment of that theory may be its having so clearly established the importance of language in setting the character of a culture. A danger of the theory is in its liability to be misinterpreted, so that one side of brain functioning is considered I 'good" to the exclusion of the other. In practice, of course, no truly creative thought can be either purely right brain or left brain, nonverbal or linguistic. A formative idea is the union of a clear image with an appropriate phrase.

As Steve Earle's article on the Tsunoda theory points out, certain peculiarly peaceful aspects of Japanese culture may be traceable to the structure of their language. If we are to create one peaceful world, we must rediscover the ancient language of humanity that spoke as naturally as the snow falling from heaven and the wind rising in the trees. -S.G.