What is Right?

Once a yoga teacher had us hold a challenging pose for a long time. Then he asked us to focus on what we were doing right.

It seems rare these days that anyone asks us not to focus on right. The media blitzes us with broken aspects of life and what needs fixing. Has America become a disability culture? Why do we need a disease-based model to describe aspects of our society?  

Do we even have a model of right?

Thomas Armstrong in his new book, Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and Other Brain Differences suggests that instead of calling the above "conditions" dysfunctional, we should view them as aspects of the brain's function. He focuses on the brain as an ecosystem rather than a machine.

Brain differences among individuals become as essential and enriching as differences among plants and animals. He would like to use the concept of neurodiversity to reverse the trend to medicalize and patholgize people who respond differently to life's challenges.

Armstrong says, "Knowing we are all connected to each other just like ecosystems means we need to have a greater tolerance for those who neurological systems are organized differently."

Funding for brain research deals with what's wrong with the left hemisphere of the brain. Armstrong indicates, "Little research, however, exists on an area in the right hemisphere that processes loose word associations and may be the source of poetic inspiration,"

He hopes researchers, teachers and families will assist these "labeled individuals" to discover their places in the web of life rather than to let them exist as outcasts with dysfunctions. They need to learn what they are doing right.

Spend a day acknowledging what's right about your experiences, challenges, and writing!

Write about what you do right!