Wholed It Together – W.I.T
Blog entry 6 of many
Entry: Unique
Leonardo Di Vinci has been quoted to say, “learning never exhausts the mind.” He was a Renaissance Man with interests as diverse as cartography to sculpture and mathematics to botany. He is also known for intentionally using mirror writing when writing his personal notes. This is where you write in the opposite direction of what is considered normal and with inverted letters. Mirror writing is seen in people with dyslexia and neurological disorders. It also occurs with “normal” people and some who are simply left-handed.
Mirror writing is a supreme example of how what looks different can be a symptom of an ailment or just tell the story of a unique person with a different way of viewing the world. Farsi and Hebrew are written from right to left and Chinese and Japanese are written in vertical columns from right to left. So, to a non-native speaker of French or Italian (or Latin for that matter), he wasn’t writing backwards at all.
The more expansive our curiosity and interest in learning, the more open we tend to be to finding new stories to read. When we integrate those stories into how we operate in the world, be it writing backwards or something else, we can begin to see differently as well. There’s a phenomenon that comes from being able and willing to try things forward, backward, upside down, and right side up – it’s that we begin to understand that there really is no backward or forward, it’s all interpretation.
As massage therapists, what if we began our sessions with the client self-massaging their shoulders while we massaged their feet in a supine position? Perhaps we could change the dynamic of giver and receiver to a more fluid relationship that engages the client in their own healing. Each session is an opportunity to practice mirror writing and although it might seem off at first, it could be great to try something uniquely yours.