This is the next post in my series on creativity and visual thinking. It relies upon the premise that creativity involves mental ambidexterity, or a sort of internal transfer from right to left brain. The ability to do this kind of internal transfer can be practiced. One way to begin practicing it is to find a setting that is pleasant and comfortable for you. Relax and spend at least ten minutes attending only to your sensations and feelings. Avoid inner speech – don’t label anything. Do not make judgements of any kind at this phase. Listen to all the sounds first, without associating any words with them. Labeling will act to restrict full sensory experience. After doing nothing but listening for several minutes, begin walking around slowly. First touch things, and touch them just as you practiced hearing them, without labeling your sensations. Then smell things. Then see them. If you find your mind at any point breaking down into internal chatter, just relax and go back to focusing on the sensation of the moment. Don’t worry about it.

After attending to external sensations for while, close your eyes and pay attention to the sensations within your own body. Focus on various parts of your body and get a sense of where they are – such as your right big toe. Become aware of your breathing, but without trying to control it. Pay attention to your emotions. What is your mood? What are you feeling? Again, just try to pay attention to the feeling without labeling or judging it with words.

When you’re done with this exercise in paying attention to sensations and feelings, it’s time to transfer it from left to right hand, or from right to left brain. Your goal now is to express as much of what you have just felt as you can evoke through words, drawing, comics or any other media of expression that can convey a part of what you have experienced. A measure of how well you have succeeded is how much of your inner experience you can convey to another person. If you don’t feel comfortable showing your creative output to anybody else yet, then let it sit and grow cold for at least two weeks. Then return to it see how well it evokes your experience of sensory and emotional attentiveness.