The Great Family Spaghetti Challenge

This blog post is about creativity.  I would like to take this time to talk about the function of our right brain and how important it is for overall good health. The right brain is creative, it helps us to see the big picture of what we are doing, it provides our feelings and embraces all that is new.  In contrast, the left side of our brains help us to be more organized, to break down big tasks into smaller ones, to calculate figures, and learn languages.  

Most North Americans have a more dominant left brain. We have deadlines, schedules and assignments that need to be completed at work and at home. We have traffic to dodge and meetings to get to. We need to get our kids to gymnastics and lacrosse. Left brain dominant people like routine and order. They crunch numbers and accomplish tasks…. and they might possibly forget to have fun. 

As more dominantly left brained people, we can all use right brain stimulation to improve our overall life quality.  The more we stimulate our right brains, the more we see the big picture, feel emotions and open ourselves to creativity itself. With a working right brain, we take time to stop and enjoy ourselves and smell the roses.

There are many ways to stimulate your right brain: 

1.    Listen to different music

2.    Drive a different way to work

3.    Try something new

4.    Eat at a different restaurant for lunch

5.    Colour, draw or paint

6.    Play with playdoh

Try the Great Family Spaghetti Challenge

This is a fun and awesome activity for family gatherings with kids present:

• Make a big pot of spaghetti.  

• Have everyone sit at a different chair at the dining room table

• Use your non-dominant hand to hold your fork and eat with

• Have an awesomely fun time eating supper.

All of these activities create right brain stimulation.  The spaghetti challenge combines them all in one activity: a different seat, a different perspective, and different hand to do an activity that is taken for granted.  I promise you that it will be messy and I promise you that you will have fun.  Your children will love it… and that’s what the right brain is all about!

Dr. Melanie Beingessner is a pregnancy and pediatric-focussed chiropractor, a breastfeeding counselor, an infant massage instructor and a mom of three awesome kids.