Narrow Focus example essay topic

A Princeton researcher, Les Feh me (Brain / Mind Bulletin vol. 8, no. 9. May 1983), suggest we can optimize our overall performance in life by broadening our focus. Juggling is one excellent way to do that. He claims most people have a narrow focus, a lack of awareness of their own body sensations or emotions. This narrow focus can be very absorbing and useful, as when talking on the telephone, driving a motorcycle or getting a massage. It is as if nothing else exists except that.

When learning how to juggling, the narrow focus can be directed at a certain ball or pin. This narrow focus agrees with observations that we live in a society which sees things as fragments rather than holistic. But things are changing. And just maybe, juggling is helping to change it. In 1983 a Canadian researcher, Justine Sergeant, from McGill University in Montreal, found evidence, which challenges the notion of left brain being analytic and right brain being holistic. Instead, her findings show the left hemisphere better at detailed processing (the narrow focus) and the right hemisphere better at larger aspects of perception.

These findings found also both sides of the brain were analytic and holistic. The study further suggested, because as a society we 'see' life and things as fragments (a ball or pin instead of the pattern), this may explain why there are more right-handed people. A recent 'striking' discovery according to one researcher, Brenda Spieler of Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C. (Brain / Mind Bulletin vol. 19, no. 6. March 1984) showed left-handedness on the increase. Not only that, but according to a test performed at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, lefties scored higher in creativity than right-hand ers regardless of age.

It went on to explain four aspects of creativity -- flexibility, fluency, originality and elaboration. Since the right hemisphere is normally associated with creativity, then any activity which helps to awaken this suppressed hemisphere is certainly welcome. Enter juggling. Who could argue juggling does not use both sides of the brain? Both hands are used in juggling, aren't they? If an accomplished juggler now wants to learn a new trick, once again the focus must become narrow, the ball or pin must capture the attention (enter left-brain activity).

Like a beginning new juggler, he or she must focus on throwing a double flip with the right hand before the left hand can throw a pin behind the back. In teaching people to juggle, they learn faster when asked to tell each time they have done something wrong. At first, they have no awareness of wrong movements. Once they recognize them, they can eliminate them. Therefore it is essential to practice in order to learn juggling. The simplest movement requires complex electrical / chemical circuitry within the brain.

The study of this circuitry is fast becoming an important field of neuroscience. Perhaps someday neurosurgeons will electronically "hook up" a juggler and a monitor and the neuron action, which travels back and forth between the two hemispheres during juggling. It appears a key word to all this juggling business is just simply practice.

Bibliography

Juggling and Health. 1996, Juggling Information Services.
Brain / Mind Bullitan. Vol. 8, no. 9. May 1983.
Brain / Mind Bullitan. Vol. 19, no. 6. March 1984.