Stressed? Blame Your Left Brain

In this column:

• Didn't we used to be mellow? How a culture change raised our stress level
• The difference between the left brain and the right brain
• How to turn up your right brain
• Relax by controlling a virtual kaleidoscope

If you're over 30, you may remember the days when we were advised not to trust any over 30: the Age of Aquarius, hippies, flower power and way too much marijuana. Back then, everyone was a poet, a musician or an artiste -- not an uptight, over stressed workaholic in the bunch.

Fast-forward to today, with the under-30 crowd wearing Armani suits as they work 60 hour weeks, trading volatile Internet stocks on their Palm Pilots over lunch, dodging AIDS and Hepatitis B while they date.

Is it any wonder we're more stressed-out?

Corporate America celebrates Type-A personalities: slackers and dreamers need not apply. Hippies are out, hardball is in. And it's ruining our mental health.

A generation ago, we were creative. Even if we couldn't carry a tune, we hunkered over an old acoustic guitar and belted out "Leavin' On A Jet Plane." We tried macrame, tie-dye and haiku. We practiced transcendental meditation while hitchhiking downtown, Kerouac and Ginsberg in our back pockets. We valued imagination, intuition and feeling.

We were a whole lot less stressed when our right brains ruled.

Know Your Brain

Much scientific research has been done on the two hemispheres of the brain. Each side is responsible for different ways of thinking.

The left brain is logical, rational, and analytical. The right brain is holistic, intuitive and subjective. The left brain values reason and accuracy, the right brain values feelings and aesthetics. And, depending on your personality, one hemisphere usually dominates. If your left brain dominates, you are much more likely to feel tense, overworked and stressed, because you are always analyzing, objectifying and planning.

Our right brain is more blase. It wants you to spend a hot summer day running through the sprinklers with your kids. It wants you to drive an old VW Bug onto a cliff to watch the sun set. And it wants you to dust off the trombone you played in your high school band and screech out a few bars of "When The Saints Go Marching In."

Why Don't We Listen?

We ignore our impulsive right brain, because maybe we think idle hands do make devil's playthings.

But evidence suggests that idle hands may actually be a good thing. The book "Managing Stress" says that when you suppress the analytic activity of your left brain, and allow your right brain to dominate, your stress responses are reduced, and you feel more tranquil.

How does a left-brain dominant adult become more creative, and less analytical? Learn to turn off the left side of your brain by exciting and igniting your right side instead. Keep the right hemisphere so busy that the left is overwhelmed.

For more on the difference and relation between the left brain and the right brain, visit weblications.net.

Listen To The Art In Your Heart

• Explore your environment for new ideas and inspiration. Don't forget to look outside. Trees and birds are astounding, just because they exist.
• Develop your talents. If you have always loved colors, buy tempura paints, brushes and a big tablet of white paper. Turn off the phone, get into some comfortable clothes, and paint.
• Play with kaleidoscopes like this virtual one from Michaels Arts and Crafts Store: click here.
• Learn something new. Take a course at a local center or online, like origami. Borrow some language tapes from the library and talk Italian or Chinese to your cat. Build an elaborate kite with a kid and hang Ninja Turtle ribbons on its tail.
• Use your imagination. Don't be limited by convention or expectation. Throw caution to the wind and begin a project that is seems unlikely you'll ever finish. Make a dulcimer from a kit and take lessons on how to play it, or haul home a box of colored glass scraps and solder together a stained-glass living-room window.
• Daydream and ponder. Remember when you were young and could lie in the grass all afternoon, picking out animal shapes in the cumulus clouds as they rolled by? Put a rocking chair on your porch and sit in it. Don't listen to music or TV, don't read or talk, just sit in that rocker and let your thoughts run free.

If you're busy being creative, you'll forget to deduce and reason. You'll stop gnashing your teeth over the prickly details of life. Strengthening your right brain will reduce stress and make you a less worrisome and more interesting person. Look out Martha Stewart--here you come.

--Jacqueline Tresl, RN, a coronary intensive care nurse and nursing supervisor for over 20 years, has written on health and happiness for magazines and newspapers for the past three years. Her first book, "Whoever Heard of a Horse In The House?", is scheduled for release in March.