If you have not seen the painting “Cotton Candy Grannies” by Naya Green, I highly recommend it. It captures the essence and happy spirit of the ladies I get to lead in water aerobics (even as I try to recover from an accident myself).
One of my students is 96, with a permanent smile. She has such a different attitude from some of the younger ladies (in their mid-80s) who might complain about the pool not being clean, the clock being off, or wanting different moves. This lovely student, Eileen, is clearly just grateful for every moment and takes it in fully. She actually accomplishes more of the steps in the water than the others, despite coming in with an electric scooter. It’s a great reminder: just be grateful, take in the moment, and fuss less.
That adaptability showed up in class recently. I always teach to the room, not based on my rigid left-brain wishes to control every moment. I had curated a new playlist based on the usual group—including Cyndi Lauper songs for a woman who ended up calling in sick, with the first few tracks (after warm up) focused on arms because that meets the average's needs.
Then, one of my students arrived with severe back pain, unsure if she should even get in the water.
So I threw out the plan. I changed the focus of the class to soothing the spine for the first 15 minutes, emphasizing core support far more than usual. Eileen, of course, just went with the flow and enjoyed every minute of it. Her smile spreads so much joy.
This ability to navigate between strict plans and creative, on-the-spot solutions is what I call “Hemispheric Harmony™” between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. We all face this kind of tug-of-war daily. Between the left and right hemisphere lies the corpus callosum, where sensory information passes back and forth. In today’s modern world, the left hemisphere often dominates this pull, constantly judging and suppressing the right hemisphere. It’s an epidemic, and a tragic one—because we need the right hemisphere to interpret intentions, read the room, and feel emotion. (Studies show we can survive quite fine with damage to that all-judging, OCD left brain, but we can't survive much without the intuitive right.)
I started this research back in college while drawing my first heart mandalas and inventing a planet made of hearts. My left brain demanded symmetry, strict patterns, justifications if a heart was out of place, and realism even in this imaginary universe, even as my creative right side longed to break free. (And those hearts that were out of place got called “dimples” or “magic heart buttons” by the left brain.) Through careful listening to that internal tug-of-war, I developed a flow, a voice of my own, and even a system to balance the two. It took a lot of practice—one small step (or one heart) at a time, learning when to adhere to the plan and when to let go.
So as we marched across the pool, I saw a need to pause, turn 90 degrees, and add a different exercise for the spine again. We were moving in pattern, along that xyz axis that our bodies formed, and the right brain’s contributions for breaking out of the expected march were most welcomed. Eileen’s brain hemispheres must be in super harmony, and the lady with the back pain said this helped her so much.
For more on how to practice and find your own Hemispheric Harmony, check out my book on Bite-Sized Mandalas: https://a.co/d/0cHPd96Z. I didn't use any AI for any part of it, and cannot imagine how I could have ever created so much original work if I had.