The Power of Your Other Hand

Unlock Creativity and Inner Wisdom Through the Right Side of Your Brain

Lucia Capacchione

• Publisher: Red Wheel
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781573247474
• eBook ISBN: 9781633411333
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Creativity

Brain researchers have in recent years have discovered the vast, untapped potential of the brain's little-used, right hemisphere. Art therapist Lucia Capacchione discovered that our nondominant hand is a direct channel to that potential. Her research and fieldwork with people using their "other hand" provides the raw material for this classic, first published in 1988.In workshops and private sessions, Lucia has worked with thousands of people, employing these techniques to help them become more creative, expressive, and intuitive in their day-to-day lives and also experience improved health and greater fulfillment in their relationships.Lucia will show you how to:•Channel the deep inner wisdom of your True Self•Change negative attitudes about yourself•Unlock creativity•Uncover hidden artistic abilities•Heal your relationshipsThrough various drawing and writing exercises, Lucia Capacchione hopes you will discover the power that lies hidden in your other hand. The techniques will help you explore and understand your thoughts and feelings on a completely different level and reconnect with a sense of playfulness you may have left behind in childhood.

CHAPTER ONE

IN MY OWN HANDS

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

—Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet

My days in seclusion were as somber and gray as the skies that summer of 1973. The famous sunshine of southern California could only be found in the large quantities of orange juice I was consuming then. The fog near the Santa Monica shore had become the perfect metaphor for my own bleak condition. I was bedridden for three months with a mysterious malaise. It first appeared as complete physical exhaustion very much like the symptoms of mononucleosis. Initial lab tests ruled that out. The ensuing months of tests and prescribed medications turned into a horrible black comedy of medical errors.

At the time I belonged to a health plan that provided its own doctors, clinics, and hospital care. I went to one of the outpatient clinics and saw a physician who talked of viruses and prescribed antibiotics to prevent further complications. My next lab test results were mixed up with those of another patient, and I was given a prescription for the wrong medication. After that I was plagued with infections (vaginal, bladder, and sinus) accompanied by bouts with insomnia, headaches, depression, and anxiety attacks.

While spending hours in waiting rooms being directed from one specialist to another, I began to feel that the medical treatment I was receiving was life-threatening in itself. During this time, my new “friend” and constant companion was the personal journal I began keeping at the onset of the illness. One journal entry gave voice to my true thoughts and feelings:

Doctors' offices:

Cold—colorless impersonal—wordy—intellectual—intimidating.

‘I'm broken, doctor, fix me.’” Probe, harshness, some pain. “Here's what's wrong.” (I don't understand fully, ask for causes, he doesn't know but acts as if he does—in a know-it-all manner.)

“Here, take these three times a day...” I have put so many poisons in my body. Pills, capsules, ointments, suppositories, injections, etc., etc. They relieve the pain but cause more illness. Killing sterilizing healthy organisms....

I have been medicated to death.

Seven years later I saw Dr. Wheelright, a healthcare professional who founded a method of diagnosis called sclerology. In this system, the doctor reads markings and colorings in the whites of the eyes in order to determine past and current physical conditions. At a glance, he accurately recited my entire health history, from my earliest years on. He looked me right in the eye and asked, “When you were 35, did you come unglued?” I answered with a big, “Yes. How did you know?” He told me I had had a collagen disease, similar to what Norman Cousins experienced and described in his book, Anatomy of an Illness. In simple terms, this disease involves the breakdown of the connective tissue or collagen in the body. I flashed back to the pictures I had drawn in my journal while I was sick.

The journal drawing on the next page, entitled “Coping with Crisis,” was done shortly after I entered therapy in the fall of 1973. It was a purely intuitive yet accurate portrayal of my physical condition at that time. My body was coming apart, just as the Earth was cracking apart in the drawing. This symbolic representation of my state also showed “the cure” in the form of the fallen figure on the right. My healing really started when I accepted and expressed my feelings of childlike helplessness and fear in the journal. This enabled me to seek out some nurturing and wise individuals who helped me heal and give birth to my new self: Bond Wright, my therapist; Louise Hunt, a nurse trained in accupressure massage; and Dr. Louis Light, a physician practicing preventive medicine.

This journal drawing marked a turning point in my illness. It ushered in a period of intense self-discovery and healing. It turned on the lightbulb of awareness by illuminating the meaning of the disease. The drawing was a map to the path of recovery. It showed me that it was time to stop what I had been doing and begin again. I had been under great stress for five years prior to the illness: divorce, relocation, illness of family members, survival as a single parent, and frequent job changes in freelance work. It is no accident that the fallen figure is in a fetal or childlike position. Surrendering to the needs of my sick body and emotions led to healing and rebirth.

In the introduction I told about how my therapist first put me in touch with my little Inner Child by placing a kindergarten crayon in my left hand and saying, “Write.” Several weeks after that experience, another important breakthrough happened. This time I was alone, writing and drawing in the journal with my right hand. Obsessed with finding new meaning for my life after so many critical changes, I had a vague recognition that I needed to change careers, but didn't know in which direction to go.

In the journal, I was describing my recent birthday celebration. A few friends had taken me out for dinner. We returned home and opened the door of my darkened house. All the lights suddenly went on and a huge crowd of people jumped out yelling, “Happy Birthday!” The event mirrored the inner rebirth I'd been experiencing. Here is what I wrote and drew in the journal:

As I wrote the words, A new life from the old, a critical voice whispered in my head: “Yes, but you'd better hurry up. You've been searching too long.”

Then something clicked inside, like shifting gears. Suddenly my left hand grabbed the pen out of my right hand. My Little Child Within wrote and drew a picture of herself for the first time. She “answered back” to the judgmental Critical Parent that was chattering in my mind. She asserted herself against that insidious voice that was gnawing away at my self-confidence. The Inner Child started it all: my first left hand/right hand dialogue.

How liberating! In that dialogue I realized I had found the key to unlock a power within myself. This power could help me deal with the demons of self-criticism and doubt. That dialogue took me back to childhood, when I was brainwashed with a litany of put-downs recited by the grown-ups: “You're not working hard enough....You're lazy....You're messy....You're awkward....Your grades aren't good enough....”

That dialogue showed me exactly how I was still replaying the external Critical Parent messages recorded in my brain during childhood. Those messages were still putting me down. It all added up to one thing: No matter how much you accomplish, it's never good enough. Through the right/left hand dialogue I got to know the child I was before learning those negative attitudes. Now I could talk with her at any time in my journal. I didn't have to wait until my next therapy session. That Inner Child who “spoke” through my other hand turned out to be a source of strength I'd had all along, but had lost somewhere in the business of growing up.

Later I had other dialogues: with body parts needing to be healed, emotions wanting to be released, dreams yearning to see the light of day, creative ideas wanting to be born, and inner wisdom giving me answers to life's questions. A whole cast of “characters” spoke through my other hand, as well: a frightened Vulnerable Child; a silly Playful Kid; an outrageous Woman in Red; an Inner Healer; a serene Wise Woman. I encountered the archetypes of which the renowned Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung wrote: The Great Mother, the Old Wise Man, the Trickster, the Goddess. I even wrote out conversations with other people in my life. But most important of all, my other hand led me to my Inner Self or God Within—that source of love, peace, and wisdom that we all possess as our human birthright and that we...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: IN MY OWN HANDS
• CHAPTER TWO: THE UPPER HAND AND THE OTHER HAND
• CHAPTER THREE: LETTING THE RIGHT HAND KNOW...
• CHAPTER FOUR: HAND IN HAND
• CHAPTER FIVE: FINDING THE ARTIST WITHIN
• CHAPTER SIX: FINDING THE HEALER WITHIN
• CHAPTER SEVEN: RECOVERY OF THE INNER CHILD
• CHAPTER EIGHT: REACHING OUT
• CHAPTER NINE: THE HAND OF GOD WITHIN
• QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• LIST OF PERMISSIONS
• TO OUR READERS