Going Full Einstein
May 31, 2024 09:31AM ● By Julie Chai
Few of us would contest the fact that Albert Einstein is one of the worlds’ most brilliant scientists. And yet, by favoring the rational, organized, controlling, analytical (scientific) left brain to the exclusion of the messy creative, spiritual, intuitive, (psychic) right brain, we deny half of what made Einstein great. And, we deny that greatness within ourselves.
We know that how we talk to our body has a huge effect on how our body functions and what chemicals we create and release into our blood stream. Our body responds to our thoughts and gives us what we believe.
If one were to believe and affirm on a regular basis: “The left half of me is great but the right half isn’t worth a darn. I’ve got a bum right knee and shoulder … it runs in my family,” chances are very good that they will continue to have difficulties with their right side. They are giving their body the message that the right side is “bum” and should not work well. Our bodies obey the messages we give it.
So do our brains. Just as it would be a mistake to deny the right half of our body, it is a mistake to deny the right half of our brain.
According to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, noted neuroanatomist and author of My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living, the left and right hemispheres of our brain have different and vital functions. She writes that we function at our best when we allow, use, and honor, both sides of our brain. Just like Einstein.
The left side of the brain is analytical, judgmental, likes to be in control, is on time, organized, and helps us get things done. Some might call this our scientific brain. But it is also these beta brain waves, that, when left alone to solve a problem, takes us into an anxious monkey mind, because the left brain only has access to what we already know, and what we think we already know is the same mind that caused the problem.
The right side, on the other hand, is our intuitive brain or what Bolte Taylor calls our messy creative selves. It flourishes when we take time to day dream, meditate or lose ourselves in the arts. It is a deeper consciousness, one that is often defined as mystical. Others call it psychic.
The right side of the brain is often seen as non-productive, spontaneous, undisciplined, and therefore, in our Western society, it is discounted, even feared unless it is regimented into organized religion.
When Jose Silva, author of The Silva Mind Control Method for Getting Help from the Other Side, wanted his children to do better in school, he taught them exercises to get out of the left brain beta wave lengths, or monkey mind, and access the deeper alpha wavelengths of their right brain.
It is the same thing Einstein did when he rested during the day. It is from these deeper, right brain states, that he developed his theory of relativity.
Einstein used his whole brain, both left and right hemispheres. He knew that there was a difference between his analytical waking, thinking state and his intuitive, creative resting state of mind. He valued both. For his best ideas came from his right brain and his ability to organize, implement, and put them out into the world, was the gift of his left brain.
We might find it helpful to go full Einstein. When we become anxious and unable to solve a problem by thinking about it, we can rest, meditate, go for a run, be creative, or just watch the clouds floating in the brilliant blue sky. By slowing down our left brain and giving ourselves access to our creative right brain, the solution may come to us more easily, from the genius within.
