My Left Hand

About a year ago I started an experiment. I began writing with my left hand. I started this on a Friday morning on another one of our long treks to North Dakota. When you have a 13-hour drive ahead of you, it’s no telling what you’ll do to entertain yourself! You can see the results in this picture; it was not so great. In fact, I think most 4-year olds have better penmanship regardless of the hand they’re using. However, I loved it so much that I kept doing it. When you’ve been writing with your right hand most of your life, it’s not easy to switch to your left hand: you have to draw the letters backwards. Numbers seemed nearly impossible. It was all a struggle, but I have kept at it.

You may ask why I’m doing this. I mean, left handed people have traditionally been the subject of bad social stigmas. The derivative of the words for right handed people have been associated with justice, authority, and dexterity. However, the root of the word for left handedness, sinestra, eventually took on the meaning of evil or unlucky. There are also negative colloquialisms associated with left handed people: for example, having two left feet. Interestingly enough, phrases similar to this one can be found in many languages. In Spanish there is a even a reference to doing something on the left that means doing it underhandedly. Even the term ambidextrous implies doing something right handed on both sides. Poor lefties – they get no respect.

With 93% of people showing right-handed tendencies, maybe I just wanted to see what it felt like to be left handed for awhile. But there were more reasons that caused me to begin using my left hand. A couple of years ago I broke my collar bone and couldn’t move my right arm much for about 6 weeks. I recall feeling baffled by how limited the dexterity was in my left hand. How could I be so strong on one side and so infantile on the other? I was also inspired by my husband who writes with his left-hand but plays tennis, baseball and eats right-handed. I think that level of ambidexterity is admirable! I wanted some of that. But there’s also the mental challenge of it. I’ve read that the brain needs to be “exercised” to learn new tasks – whether that’s learning another language, a new skill…or writing with your left hand.

In fact, Lawrence C. Katz, PhD and Manning Ruben promote neurobics, a system of brain exercises based on scientific research. Dr. Katz discusses the concept of switching the hand that you normally write with. “If you are right handed, controlling a pen is normally the responsibility of the cortex on the left side of the your brain. When you change to writing left handed, the large network of connections, circuits, and brain areas involved in writing with your left hand – which are normally rarely used – are now activated on the right side of your brain.”

Dr. Katz refers to this as neurobic exercise which he defines as including the following:

• Involve one or more of your senses in a novel context
• Engage your attention
• Break a routine activity in an unexpected, novel way

So in addition to to improving my dexterity, I’m also exercising my brain! In fact, I’ve heard some people suggest that people who are left-handed are smarter. I haven’t seen the evidence on this, but after a year of writing with my left hand, I would like to suggest a new theory. People who are left-handed are required to be more ambidextrous. Because the majority of people are right handed, left handed people are sometimes required to do some things with their right hand – using scissors, cameras, guitars, etc. I think being ambidextrous must better develop both sides of the brain.

I’m going to be writing more on the topic of left handedness in the future, but in the meantime, why not give your left hand a try at something? If you’re not ready to tackle writing, try brushing your teeth with your left hand or eating dinner. You’ll be surprised at how uncomfortable and taxing this can be. But remember, you’re giving your brain a workout so it is well worth the effort!