AMBIDEXTERITY

Source: Encyclopedia For Handwriting Analysts

Volume Two

Copyright © 1986-2008 Erika M. Karohs, Pebble Beach, CA. All Rights Reserved.

Ambidexterity is important for several reasons.

 It enhances physical dexterity and performance.

 It stimulates brain growth.

 It facilitates increased use of both brain hemispheres.

Human movements are performed only rarely by one hand. As a rule, they require
the coordinated participation of both hands, and this coordination has different
degrees of complexity.

In some cases, the simplest, it takes the form of equal, like movements, in which
both hands simultaneously perform the same actions. However, these elementary
movements are relatively rare. They occur only in acts such as swimming or during
certain gymnastic exercises.

In other cases, the great majority, the movements of the two hands are
coordinated in a more complex fashion, in which the master (right) hand performs
the principal action and the subordinate (left) hand merely provides the optimal
conditions under which the right hand can work, playing the role of a provider of
the motor background.

Finally, the most complex types of movement of the two hands are those which are
mutually opposite, or reciprocally coordinated in character, when contraction of
one hand is accompanied by simultaneous release of the other.

Ambidexterity is the ability to use both your hands with equal ease of facility.

The Greeks promoted ambidexterity because it was a distinct benefit in sports and
battle to be skillful with both hands instead of one. They devised an ingenious

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system to increase both-handedness. By combining the Phoenician right-to-left
writing style together with their own left-to-right system, they created a writing
system called boustrophedon, where the lines ran alternately right-to-left and
left-to-right. In addition to facilitating ambidexterity, this also enhanced swifter
back and forth eye movements.

Plato believed that both-handed men were superior in combat and sports.

Michaelangelo (1475 – 1564) was a multi-faceted genius like Leonardo da Vinci. He

often painted with both hands. When one got tired, he switched to the other.

The British artist, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802 – 1873) could draw with both
hands simultaneously – a horse’s head with one hand and a stag’s head with the
other. He taught drawing and etching to Queen Victoria, who was a lefty and
became ambidextrous.

Jean Jacques Rousseau favored rearing ambidextrous kids and in the early 1900’s,
England’s pro-active Ambidextral Culture Society boasted of its celebrity
members.

Fleming, Einstein and Tesla were all ambidextrous. Benjamin Franklin was also
ambidextrous and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
with his left hand.

The 20th U.S. president, James Garfield, could write with either hand with equal
ease, he could also write Greek with his left hand and Latin with his right hand
simultaneously.

Harry Kahne demonstrated his mental dexterity in 1922 by performing several

different kinds of tasks simultaneously. While one hand was writing mirror
language, the other hand alternated between writing upside down and backward
letters.

The famous C. L. Hannon piano school uses “Sixty Exercises” for piano to render
the left hand equally skillful with the right.

The U. S. Golf Fitness Association is dedicated to improving ambidexterity to

enhance golf performance.

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Grapho-therapy can stimulate brain growth
The majority of human beings use only 10% of their brain cells and lose over
100,000 of them every day due to misuse or disuse. And, the more a person
neglects using his brain potential, the more this condition is likely to worsen. On
the other hand, the more people use and exercise their brain, the more it
physically grows.

Left-handed and ambidextrous people, on average, have an 11% larger corpus

callosum than right handed people. (The corpus callosum is a very thick bundle of
nerve fibers joining the right and left sides of the brain. Coordinated movements
of both hands can take place only with the close participation of the anterior zones
of the corpus callosum.)

An autopsy of Einstein’s brain revealed a larger profusion of superficial capillaries

interlacing the cerebral cortex than the average brain, as well as an additional
amount of glial cells. (Glial cells support neurons. Without glial cells, the neurons
would not function properly.)

Experience has shown that carefully directed grapho-therapy exercises can

stimulate little-used areas of the brain to further new growth and achieve a more
balanced integration of the two brain hemispheres, while at the same time,

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increasing physical skills. They also facilitate increased use of both brain
hemispheres.1

The human brain is a paired organ; it is composed of two halves (called cerebral
hemispheres) that look pretty much alike.

Vesalius 1542

But, in reality, the two halves of the human brain are not exactly alike. Each
hemisphere has functional specializations.

In the mid 1800’s, Paul Broca (a French neurosurgeon) suggested that a person’s
handedness was opposite from the specialized hemisphere (so a right-handed
person probably has a left-hemispheric specialization). Clinicians used handedness
as a marker for brain laterialization until the 1960’s until the Wada Test (sodium
amytal) was introduced. Up to this point, it was assumed that specific activities
were performed exclusively in one specific site of the brain.

Recent investigations, however, have shown that certain complex activities, such as writing, involve all
of the lobes in some portion and both hemispheres of the brain. This is the reason why grapho-therapy
exercises can be used to increase activity in both hemispheres.

1
Erika M. Karohs, Grapho-Cybernetics, The Complete Guide To Winning In Golf, Pebble Beach CA,
1987.

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