Your brain is divided into two "sides" or hemispheres. The left side focuses on details, problem analysis and controls the right side of your body. Your brain's right side is intuitive, sees the "big picture," and manages the left side of your body. Each side of your brain needs exercises to strengthen it.
Right Brain Exercises
Take an online test, the "Hemispheric Dominance Inventory" created by Dr. Carolyn Hopper of Middle Tennessee State University, to see which half of your brain is dominant or stronger. If your left brain is dominant, you are one of the 90 percent of all Americans who are left brain dominant and mostly right-handed, according to Dr. Eric H. Chudler of the University of Washington. You therefore need to strengthen your right brain.
An Air Force University pamphlet, "Left-Brain, Right-Brain," notes that the right brain is fond of creative activities. Listen to music, draw and read novels. The right brain likes envisioning scenarios. Try to solve a problem by using visualization--spend a few minutes each day running a mental movie that shows you successfully achieving a goal.
Because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, the more activities you can do with your left hand and arm, the more you will flex your right brain. Carry packages with your left arm. Move your wrist watch to your left wrist. Try writing in a paper journal with your left hand. Experiment with brushing your teeth and pushing your computer trackball with your left hand.
Left Brain Exercises
If your brain's right side is dominant, then you are one of an estimated 10 percent of all Americans who are right-brain dominant and left-handed. You should focus on beefing up your brain's left side.
Tests interest your brain's left side, so taking online quizzes will stimulate it. Because your brain's left side likes structured knowledge, solving math and science puzzles will gratify it. Your brain's left side is also stimulated by reading books on non-fiction subjects that require step-by-step thought. Try a new personal financial software package. Experiment with online goal management websites. Learn a new language or a structured game such as chess.
Practice opening doors with your right hand. Other activities that you can switch to your right hand and arm include moving your computer mouse, writing, drawing and throwing a ball.
Adult Brain Advantages
Scientists recommend against interfering with a young child's dominant brain side. A 2007 study by Dr. Stefan Klöppel and his colleagues at the University of Hamburg Medical School in Germany determined that people forced to switch as children from left-handed to right-handed writing continued to write with their right hands, but their neural pathways had been inefficiently rerouted.
But adults gain from learning to use both halves of their brains, strengthening themselves physically and mentally. Ambidextrous athletes are highly valued, and people deprived of the use of one side of their bodies due to brain injuries can benefit from having previously enriched the other half of their brain.
