Switching hands for meditation
By Nancy B. Loughlin
Published in News Press on March 22, 2016
Switch to your non-dominant hand, and you’ll be writing from a different place.
Why shouldn’t you pull wisdom from every resource, every aspect of self, you have?
Reverend Crystal Childs, Fort Myers handwriting analyst, suggests writing with the non-dominant hand as a self-exploration tool. When righties go left and lefties go right, she explained underutilized energies can emerge from the ego’s shadow.
Beginning readers are so busy trying to decode language they aren’t paying too much attention to meaning. Likewise, when you write with your non-dominant hand, you are so focused on forming the letters that your ego can’t interfere with the inspiration that is coming in.
“You’re pulling yourself out of your own way. You’re putting yourself into closer communication with your guides. Some might say with God. Others might say with your authentic self, free of the trappings of ego,” Childs said.
“It’s almost like letting someone else come in and take over the hand so your ego can surrender control,” she said.
The non-dominant hand meditation
Step One: Prepare for the meditation.
Sit in a straight-backed chair, and center yourself. Place two hands on your belly, and breathe deep. Close your eyes.
While silent, settle on a question, a theme you’ve been contemplating.
Love. Money. Fulfillment. Family. Health.
Step Two: Write.
On a piece of unlined paper, begin to freewrite with your non-dominant hand. Do not lift the pen from the paper, and be sure to write in cursive.
In the first few sessions, you’ll be writing slowly and perhaps agonizing over the formation of letters. Be patient. Your writing may resemble abstract art more than language.
Your penmanship may spiral into doodles and drawings. Grasp the pen lightly, and go with the flow.
Step Three: Monitor the ride.
It isn’t so much what you are writing, but what you experience as you are writing it. Become an observer of your own mind, and inventory the paths of your drifting thoughts and emotions as you go through the process.
Does your determination waiver? When does your frustration peak? Can you seamlessly integrate the masculine and feminine, your intuition and your logic?
Step Four: Know Thyself
Flip back over weeks of non-dominant writing in your journal.
“Trust this process as this process actually works,” Childs said.
You’re allowing yourself to go into a safer place where you permit thought to come in. Know you can safely explore your Self and your dilemmas independently, even as you muddle through the scrawl.
