On Right Brain Magic

Brains are amazing things, and one of their most fascinating features
is the way their two halves process and evaluate the things we experience.
Left brain plans and analyzes, it develops systems and structures,
while right brain attunes to its surroundings and experiences
the here and now without trying to impose order on it.
They’re both vital to our experience of the world. And yet.
One of these approaches is very much favored
and encouraged by our dominating culture.
Let’s talk about why we need right brain magic,
and how to nurture its influence in our lives.

Subscribe! Apple | Pandora | Spotify | TuneIn | YouTube

Mentioned:

timewitchery.com/planner, where you can get a Time Witchery anti-planner to help you invoke your right brain magic.

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World https://channelmcgilchrist.com/master-and-his-emissary/

Make Magic:

Right brain magic is nurtured and supported
when you find ways to help yourself
focus on presence over planning,
and responsiveness over pre-determination.

Transcript: On Right Brain Magic

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Hello, sweet listener. What I have for you today is less a spell, and more, hmm, I wanted to share with you and talk about some of the foundations of my approach and thinking. I don't know why I'm called to do this, but that is what I want to talk about today, so that is what I'm going to give you.

As you saw, the title of this episode is On Right Brain Magic, Right Brain Magic, and so this is something that I use a ton for my own self in my coaching a lot, a lot, in my business mentoring super into Right Brain Magic. And Right Brain Magic is really—it underlies the approach of my Time Witchery anti-planner, right? I use it all over the place, and to stellar, enchanting, magical results.

So I wanted to just talk a little bit about that, about what I mean when I talk about Right Brain Magic, about why and how I use it, and also about how you can use it. OK? My understanding of right brain / left brain function comes almost entirely from an incredible book by Iain McGilchrist. The book is called The Master and His Emissary. She is thick, y'all. [laugh] She is a thick, dense tome of neuroanatomy and physiology and politics, philosophy. It's an incredible work.

And if you'll allow me to distill sort of a main message from the book for you, McGilchrist argues that while our right-brain functions are a necessary complement to our left-brain functions, our right-brain functions are at a disadvantage, at a strategic disadvantage. [laugh] Our right-brained functions are, just by their nature, underdeveloped in the way our culture works right now.

So the argument is, listen, we need right-brain function to complement and to balance left-brain function. And, at the same time, left-brain function is such that it tends to dominate, it tends to be dominant, and it tends to supersede and even sometimes erase right-brain function. So let me explain a little bit why that is and how this works.

So our left brain is strategic. Our left brain seeks to win. Our left brain seeks to understand; seeks to solve the problem. Our left brain is very interested in linear time. Left brain wants to learn from the past, and apply to the future. Left brain is always kind of in this strategic mode.

Right brain, on the other hand, is present to what is. Right brain is exquisitely present, so it's not so much interested in learning from the past, and applying to the future. It is interested in what is here now.

This is not McGilchrist; this is me. But I like to say right brain is interested in energetics. Right brain is less strategic; more somatic. While left brain is interested in understanding, in solving, and, frankly, in dominating, in winning, right brain is more interested in what else there is. It's more curious. It's more co-creative. It's more responsive. Yeah?

So the example that McGilchrist gives in The Master and His Emissary is a bird, because birds also have right brain / left brain. So a bird might be visiting the ground beneath a bird feeder. So this bird is using left-brain function in that it's like, "Yeah, I've learned in the past that there is usually food on the ground beneath this bird feeder."

It's also using left brain as it is discerning between the seeds that it's picking up to eat, and the little pebbles, the little bits of wood and, you know, nature. [laugh] I guess seeds are nature too. [laugh] But left brain here is very focused on picking up seeds, and not picking up pebbles. So left brain is helping the bird to dominate this environment, to take what it wants, and to leave the rest. Yeah?

Now, the bird's right brain serves a very important additional function here in that bird's right brain is not so focused on completing the task at hand. The bird's right brain is attuned to and aware of what is actually happening in the physical environment. So, for example, if a storm is coming, and the bird can feel the winds picking up, can feel the temperature changing, that's a right-brain affair.

The bird might also be aware of the sounds of predators. So while left brain is very focused on pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, right brain is like, "I'm going to stay open to the sounds and feelings I know are associated with other beings, let's say cats, entering my environment." Yeah?

So McGilchrist says, "Look, left brain and right brain need to be separate, and they are separate in the anatomy of the brain." They need to be separate because they perform very different functions." Right? One is entirely present, and then the other is proceeding with the plan. Yeah?

I use a slightly different example to illustrate this. I like to say left brain delivers a baby via cesarean section. Right? Cesarean section is a procedure that has steps: one, two, three, four, five. Right? It's almost always done the same way. It can be scheduled. If you're having a baby via cesarean section, you could say, "Oh yeah, I'm having this baby on the 30th at 9 a.m."

Of course, not every cesarean section goes exactly the same way, and yet this is a highly planned, highly strategic, step-by-step way of bringing a child out of a body and into the world. Now, of course, it's not entirely left brain because nothing is, right? There's the two parts, and they complement one another. But you can see that it's more of a left brain-led strategy.

A right brain-led strategy for bringing a baby out of a body and into the world might be something like a home birth. I myself have had a home birth, and so I can tell you from my own experience and from having, interestingly, doula-ed several home births as well, that a home birth is more led by energetics and somatics than it is by a strategy or a procedure.

In a home birth, a midwife is being led by signs from the mother and from the mother's body. In a home birth, there's a lot of attention to the birthing environment, to what's happening in the birthing environment. Oh, it's interesting, when the lights are lower, the contractions are longer. Oh, it's interesting, when the birthing person starts to get really discouraged, really despondent, that's actually a sign that they're almost finished with the first stage of labor. Right?

So this right brain-led environment is less concerned with the plan, and more concerned with what is actually happening, moment to moment. Yeah?

In a left brain birthing environment, progress would probably be registered, measured via a cervical check. Let's check your cervix, and see how dilated you are. In a home birthing environment, your progress would probably be registered more by how your body and your emotions are presenting in a more qualitative, less quantitative way. Yeah?

So I love this example because it shows us how easy it is for the left-brained approach to dominate the right-brained approach. Yeah? A cesarean section is much more compatible with a capitalist culture. Yeah? A home birth might take two hours. It might take 22 hours.

A cesarean section is going to take a much more standardized amount of time. Oh, I could schedule five of these into a morning, whereas a midwife (a) couldn't schedule [laugh], because who knows when the baby is coming, and (b) wouldn't know how long a birth was going to take. Yeah?

Additionally, a cesarean section is in many ways more compatible with the way that we tend to educate people, right? The educational system that we have is very strategic. It is interested in solving problems. It is interested in perfecting procedures. It is interested in methodology. It's left-brained.

So it is much easier in the educational environments that we have to teach a procedure like a cesarean section than it is to teach the ins and outs of home birth midwifery. Now, of course, I'm not at all saying it can't be done. Of course it can be done. But it's just not the way that our systems are set up. And isn't that the point, is that the left brain is more systems-oriented, more strategy-oriented. So, of course, it is setting up systems, and it is trying to deploy strategies.

Meanwhile, the right brain, essential as it is, very importantly complementary as it is to the left-brain function, isn't set up for this kind of domination. And so in our culture, it tends to be underdeveloped, underserved, under-expressed. And yet it is, in my experience, in my client's experience, it is so essential to our wellbeing, so essential to sustainability, to adaptability, and to any countercultural work that we are doing. Because right brain is interested in co-creativity, it is inherently less hierarchical. Yeah?

In a home birthing environment, who's in control? I mean, no one and everyone. The baby has a say. The birthing person has a say. The midwife has a say. The partner has a say. It is a co-creative environment. Everyone's working together to bring this person out of a body, and into the world.

In an operating room, who's in control? Arguably, apparently, the surgeon. Right? Now, of course, we know that the surgeon actually does not entirely control the body of the birthing person; they cannot. And, of course, we know that in the home birth environment, ultimately, the midwife does have experience and authority and left brain-led strategies—plural—that give them power. Yeah?

Again, in reality, these two functions, they're never separate. There's always a left brain thing going on, and a right brain thing going on. There's always co-creativity, and there's also always power dynamics at play. Both are always happening.

I think that though, left brain is just much more likely to be in a power-over stance, in a dominating stance, whereas right brain is much more likely to be in a power-with or a co-creative stance. OK. So now, since most of us are neither birds, nor people who are bringing babies out of birthing people's bodies [laugh], what does this look like for us?

Now, I've thought of a variety of ways that this plays out, and I'm just going to let you co-create with me here. [laugh] So one is left brain is about planning, and right brain is about presence. So left brain is like, "Let's talk about Q1 and Q2, and let's look back at the analytics from Q4." Right?

As you can hear from my little voice there, this is not at all my preferred mode of doing business or interacting with the world. And for a long, long, long time, I thought this was a real weakness of mine; that I just wasn't really interested in planning in that way.

What I am interested in, though, is presence; is paying attention to what keeps coming up. I mean, this is largely, my love, how I create this podcast. I don't really have a plan for how the episodes are going to unfurl. Sometimes I'll have an idea for a series or something like that, but, for the most part, I talk about what I feel like talking about. I talk about what's actually interesting to me. I talk about what I notice is coming up with my clients, my colleagues, my co-creators—and it works.

So right-brained magic might be allowing yourself to loosen up around planning, and open up to what is present, to what is calling your attention to where your energy is drawn. So this leads to, I think, left brain is a little more about "should," and right brain is a little more about "want" or "feel like." Yeah?

So, again, because left brain is interested in winning, in dominating, it is also interested in best practices, in what we should do. It is interested, I think, in following expert advice. And, again, there's nothing wrong with that, and / but right brain is more interested in feeling, in the feeling, in the energy, in the desire, in the inclination.

Right brain, I think, is less interested in the best practice, and is more interested in what feels good and right, and aligned to you. So right brain is so much more interested in the energetics than in the strategics. We need both. We need both. But right brain is underserved in our dominant and dominating culture. Left brain lords over right brain.

We are inundated with the "should" thinking, with the best practices, with the expert advice, and we do not pay as much attention to our own desires, to what else is present and possible, and to what is in integrity for us personally, for us in this particular moment, here and now.

So it makes sense, doesn't it, that in some place like the business world, left brain-led approaches have frameworks and methods and certifications. Yes? It's full of winning strategies. And many of these aren't balanced with right brain-led approaches of coaching, of individualizing, of honoring the differences among individuals that actually may mean that a best practice for one is not the best practice for another.

And what I really find is that no framework, strategy, method, none of that will work without that complementing right-brained approach as well, the individualizing, the co-creative, the one that is interested in, well, what else is present? What else is possible?

And, you know, I must admit that in my—I don't know—30 years of adulting in this world, again and again and again, I have fallen in love with a method. I've learned it and practiced it and mastered it until, I'm sorry [laugh] to say, again and again, I discovered that it's not balanced with co-creativity and with energetics and with integrity.

You know, I think that the right-brained approach that is so interested in what's present, I think it keeps methods, frameworks alive and breathing. I think that it keeps them honest and in integrity. I think it keeps them from becoming dominating. And I think that we have to be so careful to continually nurture and nourish those qualities, those responsive and values-led and co-creative and power-with, rather than power-over. I think we have to continually invest in that.

You know, left brain talks a really good talk. And I think right brain embodies that talk, walks that talk, and also notices how that talk will need to evolve, will need to shift, will need to be a little more complicated, will need to be a little more responsive to and co-creative with reality.

And, listen, humility is required here [laugh], right? Anytime we're really walking our talk, I think we see how our talk is still evolving. And, to me, ultimately, integrity and adaptability, a willingness to evolve, an admission that it's actually not so easy, simple, cut and dried, a comfort with the fact that here on planet Earth, we are always still figuring it out. Everything is always changing, and so we've got to change. Our approaches have got to change.

OK. So probably true to the subject matter, I do not have the tidiest of bows with which to wrap up this episode. Really, I just wanted to talk to you about how important this idea of right-brain magic, and balancing our overwhelmingly left-brained approach with a right-brained approach, how important this has been for me and for my coaching and, frankly, for my own ability to live in integrity, to walk my talk, which is, of course, always a work in progress, both the talk and the walk [laugh], always a work in progress.

I know I didn't delve deeply into all the ways we can spark right-brained magic, and that is something, again, I do a lot of in my work. But I will say my left-brained teacher training tells me to review what I told you in the episode, which is that right brain is about presence over planning.

This is actually so much of what my Time Witchery anti-planner helps me to do to pay more attention to my desires, my energy, my values. It helps me to be more present in my day, and less interested in capital The capital Plan that I have. And, for me, I find this makes me so much more effective and also, frankly, so much happier in my life.

So presence over planning, and also "want" over "should," because I find that desires are responsive to what is around us. And when we're curious about them, desires are conveying to us important information about what's needed to bring us into fuller expression, into deeper integrity. So there you have it, a few [laugh], several [laugh], thoughts on right-brained magic, and why and how it informs my work.

If this is speaking to you, if you are into it, I do invite you to check out the Time Witchery anti planner, both because that's a place that this right brain magic can come to life, and because Time Witchery anchors a coaching channel for me. It serves as the foundation of some of my most accessible coaching offers, one of which is happening in January 2024.

So, as always, thank you so much for listening. I hope you got something good and exciting out of this episode. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.

This is actually so much of what my Time Witchery anti-planner helps me to do is to pay [laugh]—there you go. I was just co-creating with my dog, Kevin. He popped over as I was talking, and then when I put him in my lap, he licked the microphone. [laugh] So there's a little—there's Kevin's contribution to today's co-created episode.

End of recording