How to Boost the Right Side of Your Brain

The right brain is more than just the creative, artistic side of your brain that may be suffering from lack of stimulation in a overly stressful and boring career. According to the book "Neuropsychological Perspectives on Affective and Anxiety Disorders" by Richard J. Davidson, an imbalance towards deficiency in the right brain may be implicated in anxiety and even depression. So, by taking the time to do some right-brain boosting with simple and fun exercises, you can improve your creative potential and emotional outlook at the same time. The key to boosting the right side of the brain is to engage in activities that turn off the analytical left brain and let the right brain, which solves problems by association, take over.

Things You'll Need

• audio books
• musical instrument
• sketch book
• dancing shoes
• jigsaw puzzle

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Instructions

Boost the right side of the brain

• 1

  Listen to audio tape books. One of the easiest ways to boost the right brain on a daily basis is to listen to audio books while on your way to work. Listening to stories engages the image-producing part of your right brain as you picture the story in your head, which expands your visualization capabilities.

• 2

  Play some music. Learning even a simple musical instrument such as a recorder or hand drum instantly forces your analytical left brain into submission and uses your right brain's power of feeling as you listen to the musical tones and experiment with the sounds that can be produced. As you learn the instrument, your right brain will develop the creative potential to improvise.

• 3

  Do a quick sketch. Even just random drawings of still life scenes or people in the cafe force your left brain to take a back seat while your right brain organizes what you see into what you create. At work, if you can get away with it, draw or doodle on a pad of paper when you are bored, to stimulate the right brain.

• 4

  Move it. Nothing shuts down the left brain and forces the right brain into action like dancing. You must feel the music, move your body and memorize the steps, all in synchronicity--a well-rounded workout for the right brain.

• 5

  Piece it together. Get a large 500- or 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle and work on it bit by bit, day after day. Working on pattern recognition and spatial relations is one of the best exercises for the right brain, which seeks to make a whole out of the parts. The left brain, in contrast, seeks to isolate and analyze the parts.