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Benefits of The Right Brain                       by Richard Stammler       © Richard Stammler, 2010    The use of the term “right brain” is in part a metaphor because for some people the so-called right brain functions are not necessarily in the right brain as psychologist Robert Ornstein articulated1. Although I am oversimplifying the complexity of what happens in the brain, for many purposes dividing the functions of the hemispheres in this way is correct. I am referring here to the intuitive side of our mind and what it gets you and me.2    I have described elsewhere that the left brain tends to be linear in thinking and impatient for a conclusion, which sometimes means expediency at the cost of the big picture. The right brain is more global and intuitive. Renowned professor of art at the California State University, Betty Edwards, wrote a ground-breaking book in 1979 called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain3, the culmination of a highly successful drawing course. But it is much more than a drawing course and for many of her techniques it represents alternate ways of perceiving. The premise is that she gets past the difficulties of drawing faces, for example, by sidestepping the left brain and giving you techniques that will employ the right brain. She has been criticized for her description of right brain activity in this way, but I believe she is not far from the truth.    Other creative people have deliberately employed techniques to activate the right brain for problem solving, writing ideas, and other creative solutions. Any sort of dissociation, disconnecting from the everyday world gets you there. For example, Edison is purported to have used the hypnogogic state to stimulate creativity. The hypnogogic state is that state just prior to falling asleep. He activated this state for creative problem solving by placing himself in his easy chair holding metal bearings in his hand, which was positioned over a metal bowl. Then as he relaxed into that state between sleeping and waking, called the hypnogogic state, if he fell asleep, his hand would release the metal balls, which would then wake him as they fell into the bowl. This is an example of the use of the dissociated state, which is a hallmark of the “right brain” and has been used by various means by many creative people. Most don’t understand that is what they are doing. There are many ways to activate this part of the mind. For most people repetitive activities, special music, or just day dreaming will do the job. It’s achieving a dissociative state that quiets the left brain and activates the right brain. I knew a General officer who, after getting briefed on a vexing question, would state, “that is one for jogging.” By that he meant that he would bring the question to mind while jogging. Jogging or running entails repetitive action and may also include some hypoxia known as the “runner’s high” and brings on this dissociative state.    This is actually what is going on when people say they “will sleep on it” before coming to a decision. As early as the ancient Greeks, dreams were elevated to forecast the future and provide specific guidance to the dreamer. A premium was placed on those who seemed to be able to accurately interpret the dream. When they needed healing, the ancient Greeks visited temples of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing, where priests advised them how to incubate a healing dream. Dream researchers and modern healers have resurrected and updated this ancient practice4 and detail a step-by-step process on how to incubate a dream. To incubate a dream means to have a dream that is focused on solving a specific problem or question. For the transpersonal therapist the dream is “the royal road to the unconscious” and the unconscious holds virtually all the clues to unraveling any problem in physical reality. There is an infinite wealth of information and guidance in the unconscious, which can be coaxed to conscious awareness for the personality’s benefit. The dream is a prime method to do this. Therefore, it is not unusual to hear of a famous writer, artist or scientist, anyone engaged in a creative process, who uses either the dream state or the transition into and out of sleep (the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, respectively) to get specific answers, solve creative problems and get inspiration. Elmer and Alyce Green are famous for their research in biofeedback and the benefits of consciously eliciting and maintaining certain brain-wave states. They believed that inner harmony, certain brainwave states and therefore right brain/left brain balance was key to creativity and physical and mental healing. According to them this is achieved through, ". . . a particular state of consciousness in which the gap between conscious and unconscious processes is voluntarily narrowed, and temporarily eliminated when useful. When that self-regulated reverie [dissociated state] is established, the body can apparently be programmed at will, and the instructions given will be carried out, emotional states can be dispassionately examined, accepted or rejected, or totally supplanted by others deemed more useful, and problems insoluble in the normal state of consciousness can be elegantly resolved."5    Is there other evidence of specific right brain activity? Yes, there are other examples. Harold Puthoff was the lead for the government’s highly successful research on remote viewing. Puthoff and his collaborator Russell Targ note in their chapter on the relation of brain hemisphere research to remote viewing that “. . . perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that ESP is right hemispheric, since the right side of the brain is known to be excellent for bridging gaps and perceiving general patterns, even when some of the pieces are missing.”6 It was not unusual for remote viewers to “see” targets as left-right reversed, which can be indicative of left hemisphere brain damage, i.e., the activity is largely accomplished through the right brain and with minimum input from the left brain hemisphere (by design).    In the same chapter Puthoff and Targ detail an interesting study. They wanted to know if strobe light flashes observed directly by a sender, an individual whose intention was to pass this experience on to the remote viewer via ESP, could be registered in the awareness of the remote viewing subject. Sender and receiver were separated by some 25 feet with the receiver in a metal shielded room. All the receiver was told was that random flashes of light would be perceived by the sender and the remote viewer was to record when they felt that was happening. What was interesting is that when the receiver consciously recorded when he/she thought the flashes were occurring, their responses were no better than chance. However, an EEG of brain waves showed a strong and statistically significant correlation in a reduction of Alpha wave activity in the brain. Alpha activity predominates in a meditative or dissociative mood; for a remote viewer this is the state associated with the remote viewing activity. And moving out of Alpha into Beta brain wave state is an orienting response, meaning that something has caught the individual’s attention and they are now focused on that activity, which is exactly what is going on with the sender. The stimulus was six strobe flashes a second for a duration of ten seconds and one could hardly ignore it. It would almost be annoying to the sender. The sender, then, generated an orienting response focusing attention on the flashes and this is what was sympathetically picked up by the receiver. So here is the kicker, when Puthoff examined further if there was a brain hemispheric dominance in the effect, he found that this response was nearly exclusively occurring in the right brain. It is logical that the remote viewer would be in the right brain when focused to receive any remote viewing information, and if there is an ESP connection between the two, that state would be disrupted by the sender’s orienting response.    To get ready to receive the desired information remote viewers will initiate what is called a “cool-down process,”7 which is a way to turn inward, turning toward the right brain while quieting the left brain. Remote viewing in the spirit of the discussion is a right brain activity and when it is fully functioning, a whole host of so called psychic talents are possible. Puthoff believes that everyone has this ability and wanted to show that many use it but are unaware of it. In an experiment done with business executives, described more completely in Executive ESP8, Puthoff reports an experiment to test the ESP ability of corporate executives while at an annual conference. They were not told the reason for the exercise, which was to guess a 100 digit number preselected prior to the task. The test reported a significant correlation between the five-year profits of the company and the number of digits the executives guessed correctly. The executives whose companies performed poorly over that period actually had results lower than chance. The indication here is that not only do successful executives employ this skill but it has definite implications for the bottom line.    Marilyn Schlitz, the current president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and past lead scientist for that organization, talks about an experiment that attempted to tap into the right brain’s creative facility. Some years ago she participated in an experiment with students from the famous Juilliard School9. These students are the best and brightest in creative fields such as music, dance and drama. What was designed was a ganzfeld experiment in which the student wore what is tantamount to ping-pong balls cut in half, one over each eye. This creates a diffuse visual field analogous to white noise in hearing. We know from the 50’s and 60’s sensory deprivation studies that when other visual images are cut off, the mind tends to create substitute internal imagery.    In Schlitz’s words this was a “well controlled, randomized, double blind experiment.” She describes the student who, when established in the ganzfeld protocol, was requested to verbally report any and all imagery that came to mind. In a separate room was a sender who watched four randomly displayed video clips selected from a database of hundreds. The sender could hear the verbal reports of the student and was supposed to “send” them the right imagery, again via ESP. Without knowledge of the real order and time of play, at the end, the student selected the video (out of four) that best matched his/her imagery. The evaluation then determined if the match was the same as actually played. Chance probability is one out of four or 25 percent. The general population of people selected at random will get 33 percent right, the students at Juilliard had a 50 percent success rate and classically trained musicians had a 75 percent correct rate. So two hypotheses come out of this research, one is that right brain activity is correlated with creativity, and two is that right brain activity correlates with psi capability or, as I have described elsewhere, the non-local function of the mind.10    This leads us to activities that purposefully enhance or stimulate right brain action to tap into this creative potential. Edwards has done that by purposefully unhinging the characteristic left brain mode of viewing the world. Anything, typically, that leads to dissociation will help in getting to the right brain, which includes meditation and a host of techniques for achieving what has been called a “non-ordinary state of consciousness.” This is exactly what occurs in other life regression11. The right brain state is accessed either through direct hypnosis or indirectly through the methods used by the Dutch regressionists. These techniques lead the mind through the right brain into a non-local connection permitting it to go anywhere and anywhen. These states are used for problem solving of all sorts and to access energy states for your benefit. They can also be a tremendous aid for practical problem solving, decision-making and development of creative options.    Call me – I can help you turn on your right brain for any creative endeavor. ___________________ 1Ornstein, R. (1997). The Right mind: making sense of the hemispheres. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Co. 2See my other article on the left/right brain hemispheres at: http://www.quantumregressiontherapy.com/Right Brain Left Brain.htm 3Edwards, B. (1979). Drawing on the right side of the brain. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher. 4Delaney, G. (1998). All about dreams. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco. 5Green, E., Green, A. & Walters, D. (1972). Biofeedback for mind-body self-Regulation: healing and creativity in J. Stuleman. Fields Within Fields – Within Fields. Vol. 5. p.114. New York: The World Institute Council. 6Targ, R. & Puthoff, H.E. (1977). Mind-Reach: scientists look at psychic abilities. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 129 – 134. 7Morehouse, D. (1996). Psychic warrior: inside the CIA’s Stargate Program: The true story of a soldier’s espionage and awakening. New York, St. Martin’s Press. 8 Dean, D. & Mihalasky J. (1974). Executive ESP. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. 9Debold, E. (2010 Spring/Summer). Field work at the frontiers of Consciousness, an interview with Marilyn Schlitz. Enlighten Next, Issue 46, pp. 68-75. 10See my article at http://www.quantumregressiontherapy.com/nonlocal.htm. 11I use the term “other life” because in quantum mechanical terms time is simultaneous and so called past lives are happening at the same instant that future lives occur, and parallel lives, for that matter. “Past lives” is, in fact, a misnomer. Einstein said “People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."