Become Ambidextrous

Michelangelo, Einstein, Tesla, Leonardo da Vinci, and Truman were all physically ambidextrous. In art, the study of drawing abstract lines and shapes while using both hands at the same time is called Tribalogy. Here are some tips to learn how to do it drawn from readers, books, and the internet.

Steps

Writing and Drawing

1. Start writing and/or drawing with both hands. Pin down some paper and start drawing butterflies, vases, symmetrical objects, letters, shapes, and whatnot. Although your writing will be awful at first, write a couple of lines every day from the start. In this illustration, the two handed drawing technique "Hand Mirroring" is being used by the artist.
2. Write with your opposite hand. It is possible to write with your non-dominant hand –– it takes nothing more than practice and determination. Your hand may start to strain at the beginning, but just take a break and try again later. The tension will eventually go away.
   • Use a pen that flows easily, to aid in writing. Also, some good quality paper helps to make the experience more enjoyable.
   • Do not "claw" your hand. It may be tempting to grasp the pencil as tightly as possible, causing your hand to ball up like a claw, but this will only stop you from writing effectively and can end up hurting. Take note of how your hand is positioned and loosen it up every now and then as you write.
3. Practice writing with your non-dominant hand for a long period of time to get used to it. Every day, write out the alphabet using your non-dominant hand in lowercase, uppercase and cursive (if you know how). At first your hand will be shaky and the letters won't be nearly as neat as your other hand's but keep practicing and your writing will start to get better.
   • If you're a leftie (a left-handed person) attempting to write with your right hand, turn the page 30 degrees counterclockwise. If you're a rightie (a right-handed person) attempting to write with your left hand, turn the page 30 degrees clockwise.
4. Write with your good hand in the mirror to see how it would look writing with your other hand. This gives you a clear visual cue to the method and helps your brain to picture the same action for your non-dominant hand.
5. Follow useful exercises. For example:
   • Use your opposite hand to write "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The lazy dog decides to wake up and be non-lazy.", or similar sentences for practice. (The sentence suggested is a good one for practice because it is a pan-gram, meaning that it's a phrase that contains all of the letters of the English alphabet.)
   • Another way: Find a small paragraph and practice writing the paragraph over and over again. Also, look at the difference in the writings, and see which letter you need to get better at.
6. Write Zig-Zag/Like a DotMatrix. To take this all to the next level, write from left-to-right (normal direction) with your right hand, and from right-to-left with your left, writing backwards sentences that look correct when held up to a mirror. (This is called boustrophedon.) This is useful because righties are used to writing "from thumb to pinkie", and may write more naturally with their left hand while writing backwards.
7. Practice these techniques daily for at least a month, maybe longer. Soon, you'll be writing as fluently with your non-dominant hand, with very few mistakes.

Strength building

1. Strengthen your non-dominant hand. Try lifting weights with your opposite hand to help strengthen the muscles. Start with light weights and as you get stronger, use heavier and heavier ones.

Other activities

1. Do everything with your non-dominant hand. Even if you only care about becoming ambidextrous for a specific task, it's still better to use your non-dominant hand for everything because skill of the other tasks in your non-dominant hand will partly transfer to the skill of that task, making it faster and less frustrating. Use your non-dominant hand all the time for each task, not half the time. If your goal is to get the highest efficiency at completing a task with either hand, then it's pretty useless to make your dominant hand even more skilled and is more important to focus your attention on gaining skill in your non-dominant hand. Another reason not to use your dominant hand at all is, that although using your dominant hand can't remove skill from your non-dominant hand, not using your dominant hand will lower it's skill and make it feel like less of a nuisance to use your non-dominant hand.
2. Try cooking with your opposite hand. Mix the eggs or the cake mix with your weaker hand. Stir or beat with a whisk using the same writing motion you'd use for that hand if doing cursive.
3. Perform simple tasks with your non-dominant hand. Where you usually brush your teeth, eat with a spoon, smash meat with a tenderizing hammer, or bounce a ball with your dominant hand, try doing those things with your non-dominant hand. There are hundreds of simple tasks that you perform every day, so getting good at doing those with your other hand will help you become more ambidextrous.
4. Start doing fine motor tasks such as mirror writing, playing pool, and cutting cords out of shrimp with your non-dominant hand once you have practiced with simpler tasks. Doing this will also help you to practice the general skill of automatically transferring skill from an action to its mirror image, so that the next task you start doing with your non-dominant hand will be a tiny bit more skilled at doing it with your non-dominant hand than when you first started. The ability to transfer a skill from an action to its mirror image also gets built up each time you do a task with the opposite hand. You can also skip the first 3 steps if you want to hurry to become ambidextrous and can't handle the boredom of completing these tasks more slowly at first.
5. Keep using just your non-dominant hand for all complex, non dangerous tasks. Once you do this, your originally non-dominant hand will exceed your originally dominant one in skill level. If you were to instead start by using both hands, one would catch up to the other in skill level and you would start to drift back to being having a slight bit of the dominance you originally had. This would happen because the muscle memory in your originally non-dominant hand will be a shorter term memory than that of your originally dominant hand.
6. Learn juggling. Try starting with three and four balls. This is a great way to train your weaker arm.
7. Play an instrument that involves two hands. For example, learn the piano, flute, guitar, saxophone, etc. This can help strengthen your weaker arm and give you greater dexterity in both hands and arms. In piano, however, the main parts are given to your right hand, and it will only make your right hand stronger

Tips

• Stay patient, take it slow, and have fun. You'll get it.
• If you wish to advance quickly, try just writing a paragraph (left-to-right) each day with your non-dominant hand. After one or two weeks, you should see great improvement. Remember: Rome wasn't built in a day, but no nation has benefited from a hundred-year's war.
• Don't expect to have perfect writing in a week of practice with your non-dominant hand; remember, it took you longer than a week to perfect pen control with your dominant hand! Buying a handwriting book designed for children and following along with the exercises can help.
• Try writing with your opposite hand every day for 15 minutes a day. Later, after practice, try writing with both hands and see how it works out!
• If your non-dominant hand is weak and you want to use it with tools or for heavy activities, pick up a couple large Chinese Stress Balls (they need to be the big ones), and try to exercise your hand and fingers. This way, when you're on the phone, mousing, etc. you will eventually get to the point where you can fluidly spin the balls in your palm without them touching.
• Mirror your activities: Do things clockwise and counter-clockwise simultaneously.
• You could also try playing sports with the other, weaker hand if the sport is easy for you with the strong hand.
• Another great way to practice is by painting your nails.
• Try squeezing a plastic grocery bag filled with ice if your opposite hand twitches or you feel the desire to shake it out.
• Bouncing balls up and down to help build coordination in your non-dominant hand.
• When you're taking notes at school or work, use your non-dominant hand.
• Don't keep writing the same paragraph every day. Write a different one every day so your non-dominant hand doesn't get used to one paragraph only.
• Whenever you start learning a new skill, start with your left hand. For example, if you've never played guitar, your right hand doesn't know how to play either, so both hands are on equal ground. Training you left hand for use also trains your right hand; a person who can use both hands can use their right hand better than a purely right handed person can. This is call autonomic bilateral synchronicity.
• Throw a ball in the air a few times and catch it with your non dominant hand.
• Try writing in cursive if you know it, because the line will be more fluid and smoother to write, than in print where letters become wavy. Also try writing different words in the alphabet to see how some are easier and some to work on.
• Just keep on practicing because the harder you practice the sooner you'll get it.

Warnings

• If you're shaving with your non-dominant hand, be careful not to cut yourself. Since you're not used to using that hand, it won't take much for you to slip and accidentally cut your face, legs, etc. The same goes for hammering nails in-- be careful to not smash the dominant hand holding the nail!
• Don't just use your non-dominant hand when training to become ambidextrous. This could lead to your dominant hand becoming less-dominant.
• The possible primary consequences of converting handedness are as follows:
  • spatial disorientation (uncertainty concerning the left and right)
  • memory disorders (especially in the recall of learned material)
  • legasthenic problems or dyslexia (i.e. problems in reading and writing)
  • disturbances in speech (ranging from stammering through stuttering)
  • disturbances in concentration (being easily tired)
  • disorders in fine motor skills that manifest themselves in handwriting

Related Articles

• Write With Your Opposite Hand
• Become Left Handed when you are Right Handed
• Use Both Hands Equally
• Determine Your Dominant Hand
• Bowl Left Handed With a Right Handed Bowling Ball

Sources and Citations

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambidexterity

See also

• Have Good Handwriting
• Have Beautiful Writing
• Write Neatly
• Improve Your Handwriting
• Improve Your Handwriting Style
• Change Your Handwriting
• Sign a Cool Signature
• Write With Your Opposite Hand
• Have a Nice Signature
• Copy Someone's Handwriting

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