Recent neurological tests on people who are in the diksha process have shown that for many the neurological foundation of their brain seems more evolved than their conscious subjective experience. Upon closer examination I found that there is a common thread among those for whom that is true, people who already have the brain state of enlightenment without experiencing full enlightenment: They are almost always natural lefthanders who where retrained to be righthanders. I found the same thing to be true for people, who, despite great breakthroughs through diksha, find themselves stuck with certain blockages, trauma etc. and no amount of praying, embracing it or receiving healing transmission seems to help. Now if you are convinced that you are righthanded, you might not be. Research in Germany, Turkey and the US has shown that 50% of all people are naturally lefthanded and most of them do not know this. Even if someone was not intentionally retrained by parents or schoolteachers, model behavior alone turns about 60% of all lefthanders to righthandedness in early childhood.

So with the exception of the few lefthanded people who live as lefthanders, almost 50% of the population are retrained to be righthanded. According to Karl Grunick, a world – renowned teacher of Aikido and Ki – development, this percentage is even higher among spiritual seekers, in his estimation around 75%.

Neurological Damage through retrained Hand Dominance

It is important to understand that motoric dominance cannot really shift, we are born either right- or lefthanded. If we are retrained to be righthanded in regards to writing and other manual tasks, we can never really adapt to this use of our non – dominant hand. This puts the brain in a state of perpetual overwhelm and exhaustion. A natural lefthander needs 200 – 300% as much neurological energy for handwriting and other manual tasks when doing them with the right hand. Because of the intricate association of writing and speaking our brain, speaking also can overwhelm retrained lefthanders. This can lead to one or more of the following symptoms:

- Underachieving in life or in some areas of life. Retrained lefthanders often have problems manifesting their potential. They are often more intelligent than how they appear in life and struggle with concentration, memory and getting things done.
- Success takes so much energy that other areas of life suffer. Some retrained lefthanders do succeed in their profession, due to great talent or discipline, but it exhausts their brains that they struggle tremendously with other aspects of their lives. A typical example is a successful person who creates chaos in their home. Keeping structure and order in all aspects of life equally is very difficult for retrained lefthanders. Retrained lefthanders also tend to have more social difficulties, since they are prone to misunderstand other people more easily.
- Depression and self – rejection. The feeling of “something is wrong with me” is deeply ingrained in a retrained lefthander, because each time they write or do a manual task, they violate their natural neurological design. For a lefthanded child to see that almost everyone is righthanded can create this feeling of wrongness very early. The struggles that retrained lefthanders go through later in school because of lack of concentration or blackouts in tests deepen this emotional trauma.
- For spiritual development and the effects of diksha: In a retrained lefthander, diksha works very well to induce the desired changes in the different brain centers. The parietal lobes, basal ganglia and other stress centers become more quiet, the frontal lobes become activated. However for a person to fully consciously experience the state of consciousness that these changes should lead to, there also needs to be a fusion of the different brain centers. After interviewing many people and reviewing my data from examining people’s brains in the diksha process, I conclude that those who feel that something is blocked in their progress, who do not experience the state that their brain centers indicate they should have, are almost always retrained lefthanders. Mostly they do not know this until they undergo some tests.

Fusion between the brain centers requires a level of natural brain functioning that is difficult for a retrained lefthander to attain. Since we always use our hands, this is not simply a trauma from the past that could be healed and we could be done with it. As long as the retrained use of the non – dominant hand as the dominant one continues, a certain level of brain injury keeps going on.

There is also an important aspect of the ancient mind involved in this issue. Throughout Christianity’s history, left and right have been associated evil and good. In all lithurgic paintings where people go to heaven or hell, the sinners who go to hell are always placed on the left side of the painting. In all pictures of Jesus on the cross, the higher – ranking people are placed on his right and the lower people and sinners to his left. The catholic church saw lefthandedness as a manifestation of the devil. Our use of language, which equates “right” with correct and just (right of way, rightousness, to right a wrong etc.) reflects the same pattern. One way to indicate the lower status of women in the catholic church in medivial times was to place women on the left side in the church and men on the right. Other traditions have similar ingrained attitudes about left and right. Hindus are only supposed to eat with their right hand, because the left hand is considered impure. Counting mantras on a mala in japa practice and other spiritual activities involving hands are supposed to be done with the right hand. If a child is born a natural lefthander, these collective thought – fields certainly add to the burden of the feeling of “something is wrong with me”. Maybe this is why Karl Grunick estimates up to 75% of all spiritual seekers to be retrained lefthanders, because this feeling of wrongness implores people to seek a resolution. Maybe in this greater context, this whole issue also serves a good purpose. But when retrained lefthanders are on a spiritual path, they suffer from some blockages that seem resistent to everything they do or even to grace they receive. All the explanations about the reason for their suffering never fully feel right, there is this “something is wrong” that never fully gets addressed. When these people discover that they are natural lefthanders, there is often a huge relief and a load of self – loathing or inner struggle just evaporates.

Someone very skilled in kinesiology, body talk or other forms of muscle testing can often help people to find out about their natural hand dominance. It is certainly not advisable to start retraining oneself to lefthandedness unless there is certainty about being a natural lefthander. Retraining should be done slowly and with patience and compassion for oneself. A schoolteacher or ergotherapist can help with praticing writing skills for lefthanders. Just beginning to write words with the left hand is too much for the brain and could amplify the symptoms of retrained lefthandedness. It is important to understand for retrained lefthanders that there is the equivalent of a serious brain injury affecting them and there needs to be compassionate understanding for one’s blockages and patience. People who need to perform a lot of manual tasks that involve hand dominance like surgeons, painters or musicians, should be especially careful in retraining themselves and start durng a prolonged vacation or go extra slowly. Perhaps we can also consciously invite the Divine Presence to direct the diksha energy and healing energy towards fusion of the brain centers and towards healing the trauma in retrained lefthanders. I believe it is time to move beyond the ancient mind’s tendency to dichotomize natural manifestations of life into good and evil and acknowledging the naturalness of one’s hand dominance seems like an important and so far neglected aspect of this.