Developing the Right Brain

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my Disclosure Policy for more information.

The notes from this article are from a Heguru Seminar covering the following topics:

• Left Brain vs Right Brain
• Is it too late for my child?
• 10 Rules for Developing the Right Brain
• The Radar Effect

Left Brain vs Right Brain

Left brain is the language brain. It is:

• slow
• small quantity
• processes one by one

Right brain is the image brain. It is:

• rapid
• large quantity
• automatic processing using images

In right brain education, observe the following tips when practicing the activities that help to develop the right brain:

1. Relax! When practicing right brain activities at home, make sure you are relaxed and comfortable. If you feel stressed, your child will feel stressed and the right brain will be closed.
2. Speed is the essence – the faster you flash the cards, the better. The current pace in a Heguru class is three cards per second. Your speed during home practice will be slower but that is fine. Do not increase the speed if it compromises your accuracy and clarity when flashing. Your goal for home practice should be one card per second.
3. Quantity over quality – the right brain is an image brain so you need to stimulate it with lots and lots of images. Show each set of flashcards four times then retire and start a new set. Target to flash 100-150 cards a day.

Is it too late for my child?

Right Brain Education should begin as early as possible. In most articles about Right Brain Education, the focus is on the first six years of your child’s life. But what if your child is past 6 years old? Heguru founder, Mrs Henmi, teaches students in Japan all the way up to 20 years old. She says that the window of opportunity to develop the right brain is open until the age of 12. Beyond 12 years old, they don’t really see a lot more development. Students beyond 12 years are taught how to apply their right brain to everyday life.

10 Rules for Developing the Right Brain

1. Believe – one can only produce up to the capacity of belief. In other words, you have to believe in your child’s ability or you’re setting him up for failure. You also have to believe in the program or you might as well not be there.
2. Attend lessons to open the right brain.
3. Read stories to your child – reading is one of the four conditions for bringing out your child’s genius. When you read to your child, read with emotion and expression.
4. Stay beside the student whose right brain has developed. This is the theory of talent formation – there is a radar effect (see below) from the child who has developed his right brain.
5. Do fun and exciting things. Your child must be happy in order to access the right brain. When your child is unhappy, the learning does not enter the right brain.
6. Develop the left brain gently. The misconception with right brain education is that left brain development should be suppressed. That is incorrect. The left brain should be developed alongside the right brain because it strengthens the right brain. Right brain education isn’t just for the development of the right brain; it requires whole-brain development.
7. Self-esteem – you need to develop your child’s self-esteem. Do not scold your child because of “lack of ability”, discipline because of misbehaviour. Set clear boundaries and rules so your child knows what is or is not okay. Sometimes children will misbehave because they do not understand what the rules are. When disciplining, make sure your child is aware that your disapproval is with the behaviour, not the child. This sort of discipline should begin from 2 years old onwards.
8. It requires patience, suffering and worry. This state of heart is required for growth because it is difficult to develop the right brain if your child is spoilt. Children need to learn to endure some difficulties in life and learn to overcome them (see adversity quotient).
9. Help children fully absorb positive comments from parents, teachers, and their surroundings. Help them fill up their “positive cup”. This will help them overcome obstacles. “Don’t worry if you cannot do it now, next time you will be able to.”
10. Develop the heart – the right brain is strongly affected by the heart. If the heart is negative, the right brain cannot be applied. Mrs Henmi gave an example of a boy who discovered he was better than his peers because of his right brain development. After a while, he began to look down on his peers. As a result of his arrogance, his right brain ability started to drop.

The Radar Effect

Shichida believed that in order to tap into a child’s right brain potential, you must provide the child “opportunities for talent formation”.

“A whole group can enter metamorphic consciousness when each individual of the group releases his own consciousness, which effectively unifies the consciousness of all group members into a core consciousness.”

If one child has developed an ability, other children around that child will soon develop that same ability. For instance, if the child has developed the photographic memory ability, the children around that child will soon develop the photographic memory ability, too. Shichida called this “The Radar Effect”.