Cross crawling is actually something we kind of do naturally when we go for a walk. This is why the simple act of a good brisk walk is such a great way to get inspiration – apart from anything else, it gets you breathing!!
This exercise is in two parts which can be done separately, or combined if you feel particularly energetic. It seems appropriate linguistically to call them steps.
Step 1: Walking
If you are able, go for a 10 to 20 minute walk each day, either before you start a creative activity or, especially, if you hit a creative block.
For at least five minutes of the walk, swing your arms from side to side in front of your body. Depending on your physical ability – and where you are doing it – this movement can be as small or large as you feel comfortable with.
Step 2: Cross crawling
You can do this exercise in the comfort of your own home and it important that you do it slowly and you only go as far as is comfortable.
1. Stand with your arms to the side and let the tension fall from your body. Feel the floor with your feet.
2. Now bend your right leg at the knee and swing your left arm in front of you across your navel and, if you can, touch your left elbow to your right knee.
3. Let your right leg fall gently and your left arm return and now bend your left leg at the knee and touch your right elbow to the left knee. Again make sure your left arm crosses your navel.
5. Try to repeat the exercise 10 to 20 times for each side.
If you find it difficult or you seem to get your sides mixed up like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach, don’t worry. This just means your left and right hemispheres really need this exercise. Either really slow the movements down or try it lying down. It will come in time.
I first did this exercise over 10 years ago and after the exercise I briefly started mirror writing. This is often a trait seen in those categorised with dyslexia. If it happens to you, take it as a sign that new pathways are opening up in your brain.
Less Strenuous Versions
Note if you are physically infirm or unwell and either of these exercises is either impossible or likely to cause you harm, instead of getting your elbow and knee to touch, you can just tap your opposite knee with your hand as shown here. This has much the same effect.
What is most bizarre though, if you not able even to do this reduced movement version, you can actually get some benefit by closing your eyes and imagining you are carrying them out – as observed and supervised below by a professionally qualified ‘cross-crawler’ who takes me on ‘training sessions’ daily – although I labour under the illusion that it is me who walks him.
Such is the power of the mind.
If you would you like to learn more about these techniques, make sure you get a copy of Tom’s new book to find out where ideas really come from and how you can make sure yours actually happen …
Many people ask me how they can be more inspirational or can experience more inspirations. The answer is perhaps surprising as it doesn’t lie being more intelligent or studying. It involves doing something we all do every day, without thinking about it, and that’s to breathe.
Of course, this is quite handy as we all breathe anyway to stay alive.
What brought me to this realisation was some research I did around the actual word, inspiration. Our words and our sayings give away much about their true semantics.
If you look up the word inspiration say at www.dictionary.com, you will see the following definitions:
1. an inspiring or animating action or influence:
2. something inspired, as an idea.
3. a result of inspired activity.
4. a thing or person that inspires.
5. Theology.
a. a divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul.
b. the divine quality of the writings or words of a person so influenced.
6. the drawing of air into the lungs; inhalation.
The first four you will probably have expected but it’s maybe a surprise to see that there is a theological connotation for inspiration. The last definition is one that most people don’t think of even though it’s perhaps fairly obvious. Inspiration is of course one half of the respiration process.
Further insight comes from looking at its etymology, or root meaning. You find that the word ‘inspiration’ is comprised of the word “in” and the Latin “spirare”which meant “to breathe”.
Now I was aware we speak on the out breath. Could it be that ideas come to us on the in breath? I did some more research and found that Eastern mystical practices such as Taoism use breathing exercises in meditation to both balance Yin and Yang energies and encourage the connection to the divine.
Whole Brain Breathing
Now our neurons don’t store any oxygen but they need oxygen in order to function. So guess what? If you increase your depth of breathing by really using your diaphragm, your brain gets more oxygenated.
Now you don’t have to do this all day but it’s a great thing to do as you get up and when you need an shot of inspiration – for example, if you flag in the afternoon.
Here’s the sequence to follow:
1. Place your hands on your belly so your fingers tips on your left and right hands are touching
2. Now breath in so your belly really expands and your finger tips separate
3. Next breath out fully with your out breath being about 3 to 4 times longer than the in breath – and then your fingers touch again
4. Repeat this nine times
5. If you want to get a bit fancy, on one breath, imagine the oxygen filling your left brain and on the next, the right – alternate this sequence and see if you can work up to 18 breaths in this way
If you would you like to learn more about these techniques, make sure you get a copy of Tom’s new book to find out where ideas really come from and how you can make sure yours actually happen …
In the 1960’s, Professor Roger Sperry was amongst the first scientists to discover the left and right sides of the brain performed different functions. His work was primarily based on studying people with mental illness or physical brain damage.
His research won him a Nobel prize.His research papers had great titles that indicate where he was coming from:
“Interhemispheric relationships: the neocortical commissures; syndromes of hemisphere disconnection.”
“Lateral specialization in the surgically separated hemispheres.”
… this was pioneering stuff !!
Nowadays, scientists can temporarily anaestasise sides or parts of the brain while normal and healthy ‘patients’ are awake and then they can study what functions are affected. With MRI scanners, we can see which bits of our brain ‘light up’ when we perform certain tasks or think certain types of thoughts. Neuroscience is truly entering a Golden Age.
In his phenomenal book, The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist describes how a chicken uses its right eye to look for grain while its left eye scans for predators and danger. He also postulates how left and right brain functions have changed over time influenced, as they are, by cultural advances and education – i.e. brain training.
Remarkably, several mystics ‘knew’ about the hemispheric differences years before the advent of brain scanners. It was thought the left brain worked inside space and time and was the ‘generator’ of consciousness. They ‘knew’ the right brain operates as a ‘receiver’ of thought and acts everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else.
It has been discovered recently that the corpus collosum, which connects the two sides of the brain, actually suppresses one side of the brain while the other gets on with its ‘job’.
It’s generally agreed that Whole Brain Thinking is a ‘good thing’ and I can testify that when you do it that 1+1 equals at least three if not more.
In this next blog series as part of the Ultimate Blog Challenge, I’ll be introducing simple techniques we can all do to activate and integrate both sides of our brain.
I’ll be covering:
The Inspirational Breath
Cross crawling
Mind Mapping
Food for thought
Which side are you on?
To get you started and warm you up, read this blog and listen to the free audio visualisation on Getting in the Zone
So tune in for the next week of blogs if you want to increase your creativity and productivity by leaps and bounds.
If you would you like to learn more about these techniques, make sure you get a copy of Tom’s new book to find out where ideas really come from and how you can make sure yours actually happen …
If you would you like to learn more about these techniques, make sure you get a copy of Tom’s new book to find out where ideas really come from and how you can make sure yours actually happen …
When you experience a moment of light, it is quite simply magical.
If you happened to have an Magnetic Resonance Imaging [MRI] scanner handy at the time, and you stuck your head in it, you would see every neuron in your brain lighting up as it connects with it’s neighbours. Over 10 billion neurons would light up in harmony shouting “Eureka” at you.
Moments of light like this are more commonly referred to nowadays as light bulb moments. As Archimedes, Newton and Saint Paul could testify though, we experienced them well before the light bulb was invented.
They are a special mode of consciousness where, in less than a second, you see the whole picture. Apparently, Newton intuited the complete theory of gravity in that split second and it took him the rest of his life to tabulate them. They seem like they occur in less than a second because, for that moment, you have jumped outside space and inside time.
It is assumed they are random yet it is possible to enter a special type of meditative state, with your eyes open, where you can experience them on demand. The first step in achieving this state of being is to understand what blocks such moments of light.
Imagine if someone cuts in front of you, into that safe gap you left, on the motorway. You feel affronted. Perhaps, if your life was endangered, you may utter an expletive or even flash your lights at the offender. At that exact moment, certainly what won’t be happening is that you will be having a moment of light. Just by a subtle flip in your thinking though, you could have had an idea for a new novel called Road Rage or a safety device for a car which told the driver the gap was too small to pull into. The issue is that your thoughts are controlling you, not the other way around.
If you are in any kind of heightened negative emotional state, be it anger, sadness, hurt, fear or guilt, light bulb moments are stopped dead in their tracks. Your emotional see-saw gets thrown off balance.
Even if you had a bright idea, there is just no brain space for it to surface. Any inspiration you might be feeling gets outweighed by heavy emotion. You will have to wait for the extreme emotion to abate.
This is why it’s best not to make a decision or send that email when you are angry. Take a few deep breaths, even wait for 24 hours and you will end up with a better outcome. You may even have a bright idea of how to respond to achieve a much more satisfactory outcome.
For most of the time, and most people, hopefully our brains and minds are running on a more even keel. Instead of rage, anger or grief, perhaps you are just beset with the daily worries of life. From this position, you can begin to enjoy flashes of inspiration and good ideas can get an airing. However, if you are in anyway fearful of the outcome of expressing or executing an idea, you will remain in stasis. You won’t go forward and you won’t go back. Everything will just be fine and dandy and the boat won’t get rocked.
In order to progress from this state of mind, we have to make a leap of faith. We need to see the fears and worries that beset us each day in a different light. Our unconscious mind is the source of such emotions. These fears and worries don’t exist in the real world; they are just inside our heads.
The Fool in the Tarot on the surface can be seen as a reckless figure without a care in the world. In some packs, he is only a couple of steps from walking over the edge of a precipice. He is however enlightened, with his face aligned to the Sun, the source of light. He only appears to be a fool to us as we haven’t reached his state of grace. His emotions are under control. Like the snapping dog at his feet, he knows fears are only there to tell him to pay attention to something. He doesn’t concern himself with them when not appropriate.
If the Fool could speak, his favourite phrase would probably be, “There’s no point worrying about something you don’t have control of.”
So it is not a case of ignoring fears when they arise but paying attention to them only when necessary. If you are worried about something, it is just your unconscious (or gut) mind telling you there’s something you need to address. Once you’ve taken action, move on.
When you make this shift, you become free to work with the light and have unlimited light bulb moments on demand. The see-saw shifts in your favour and you notice something new.
First, to appreciate how to maximize your light bulb moments, we need to look at the dictionary definition of the word ‘moment’. We see that, as well as meaning a moment in time, it is also a force applied at a distance from a central pivot. If you use the same force but with a lever twice as long, you double it’s effectiveness. This of course is nothing new, the architects of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid knew this.
When we use it in this see-saw analogy, the length of the lever is proportional to the level of focus in our consciousness and the level of our intent. If we dilute our consciousness by tackling too many things, the lever action will reduce. Channel your efforts and you will reap rewards much easier. With higher intent, the force at the end of the see-saw is amplified further.
So if your aim is to make a million dollars, you will be more effective in that goal if you’ve got a good and worthy use for the money – even if this is purely financial and personal. You don’t have to give it away but just to amass wealth for no purpose is an empty challenge which will just end up with you worrying what to do next. The see-saw will just swing back the other way.
Naturally if everything you bring to your consciousness manifests, you could end up being a busy bee indeed. So it’s fine to flip back from time to time to a balanced state for the see-saw. What is healthier though is to achieve balance using reflection and assessment as opposed to fears and worry.
Cross crawling is actually something we kind of do naturally when we go for a walk. This is why the simple act of a good brisk walk is such a great way to get inspiration – apart from anything else, it gets you breathing!!
Cross crawling is actually something we kind of do naturally when we go for a walk. This is why the simple act of a good brisk walk is such a great way to get inspiration – apart from anything else, it gets you breathing!!
Less Strenuous Versions
If you would you like to learn more about these techniques, make sure you get a copy of Tom’s new book to find out where ideas really come from and how you can make sure yours actually happen …
Many people ask me how they can be more inspirational or can experience more inspirations. The answer is perhaps surprising as it doesn’t lie being more intelligent or studying. It involves doing something we all do every day, without thinking about it, and that’s to breathe.
