botmc42

Ahh the smell of fresh breze in the morning, sipping on some hot coffee that isn’t great, but isn’t bad, looking around you at the cold stern faces of the time honored chess gurus staring you down as you choose who to play.

I don’t have any idea what it will be like, but I want the chance experience it. Not just the chess, but the moment, the tradition, the hope of beating someone at their own game. They can’t size me up or my game, that is, until after I have played them. But until that moment, I could be the Bobby Fisher they have never heard of.

What is it like to tap into a whole other part of your brain? To be able to change perspective in an instant, looking at a problem from multiple facets? Well, becomming ambidexterous can help with those and so much more(in my experience at least).

I was not born ambidexterous, but I worked in coffee shops for 10 years and started to develop repetitive motion injury in my right(then dominant) wrist. So I decided about 4 years ago to teach myself how to use both hands proficently(at any given task).

This started out with bowling, which my high score right is 199, left is 175. I was taking signlanguage at the time, so I learned how to fingerspell left handed also(now about 90% as fast left handed as right handed, which both are now almost too fast to read, mainly because I use fingerspelling to release built up energy I have while sitting for long duriations).

So the next step was to learn how to write left handed. This has taken a while, as I only practice when I get really bored, or my right wrist hurts alot. I found that writing backwards left handed was more natural for my fingers, but harder on the brain. It has been these 4 years now, practicing around 10 min every week, going in spurts of inactivity.

The benefits.

These are amazing, and some of them could be attributed to the other wacky things I have chosen to learn, but these are all at least influenced by the dualhandedness.

I have found that I can switch from being highly creative to logical and structured. Too many examples of this, and they all relate to each other, and I am working on how to prove all the connections between them, so I guess take my word for it until I get my masters.

Improved connections between my left and right brain(seems like improves the corpus collosum). After I have written with my left for a while, then switch back to my right, my handwriting is drastically improved(my reasoning is that the right creative side(controlling my left hand) has been activated for the writing proocess, and then when I use my right hand again, those connections are still turned on and influence the writing process.

After I have been using my left hand, it seems that trying to problem solve something is much easier i.e. I have taped into a creative part of my brain and it is now working harder or using aspects that it was not before and applying those to the problem.

There are many many more, but try it out yourself, let me know what you think.