Discover the Power of Healthy Aging Today!

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Well, hello to everyone joining us today. You're listening to the Living to 100 Club Podcast, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. I'm passionate about helping people embrace psychologically healthy aging. Staying positive, finding purpose, and making the most of all the years we're given, no matter what challenges come along. This podcast is a part of a larger mission I call the Living to 100 Network, which brings together 3 powerful tools: one, my podcasts; second, my Better, Longer, and Happier card deck series; and third, the Livingto100.community, a place to connect, learn, and thrive together. To learn more, visit my livingto100.club for podcasts, join our group forum at livingto100.community, and for the card decks, go to livingto100.solutions. Thanks for being part of the journey. Now let's dive into today's conversation. Can tapping into the non-dominant side of your body improve brain health? Enhance coordination and even contribute to longevity? Powerful questions. In today's episode, I'm joined by Jim Holliston, creator of the Mirror Movement Development, MMD, method and advocate for dual dominance, the practice of engaging both sides of the body and brain for lifelong function and flexibility. Together, we'll explore how mirror reading, cross-lateral movement, and even brushing your teeth with the wrong hand can open new neural pathways and energize cognitive function. Jim shares compelling stories of athletes, artists, and historical figures like Benjamin Franklin who practiced ambidexterity, along with practical exercises listeners can try right away. Whether you're curious about neuroplasticity Exploring new tools, tools for aging well, or looking to shake up your daily routines, this episode offers simple, surprising steps to rewire your brain. No gym membership required. First, a little background. Jim Holliston is one of Earth's most ambidextrous people. He's an artist, athlete, educator, and author of the world's first Symmetric book and the father of dual dominance, which he considers to be the third pillar of brain and body longevity, the other two pillars being nutrition and exercise. Jim's book, website, and AmbiLife YouTube channel present how many of history's greatest thinkers, creatives, and athletes have developed variations of dual dominance and in the process experienced improved longevity and peak performance. More specifically, MMD increases physical balance, memory recollection, spatial awareness, and general brain and body performance. Jim's book is titled Big Three MMD: History's Ambidextrous and the Benefits of Mirror Movement Development. It's available on Amazon, Audible, and Kindle. You can learn more at Jim's website, ambilife.org. That's A-M-B-I-L-I-F-E dot org. Jim, welcome to our program today.

Dr. Joe, thank you. I'm stoked to be here.

Great. Yeah, looking forward to this. This is an exciting topic for me. I learned about it maybe a month or two ago when I heard you speak, and I followed up and bought your book, and we reconnected, so I'm glad you could be here on my podcast.

Of course, of course. First book you have two bookmarks in, you said.

That's right. That was one of my reactions. I could talk more about it later, but the book is written in traditional style, and then you can flip it over and start from the back, and that's the mirrored reading. So I told Jim, it's the first book I've had to use two bookmarks. So, Jim, what first sparked your interest in dual dominance and this mirror movement development?

I had the cursedly beautiful passion of skateboarding, and ever since the age of 12, I've been skateboarding, uh, where I grew up in Pennsylvania before moving out here to San Diego about 20 years ago. And, uh, by the time I was 22, I physically couldn't really skateboard anymore because I only ever I did everything right-handed always growing up, including skateboarding, pushing with that one foot, jumping from one side, falling on one side, skating in what's known as the regular stance for those in the skateboard world who know. And, it just completely misaligned my body. In fact, a lot of people who will skate for that amount of time, by the time they hit their mid-20s, they feel like, "Ah, dude, I'm too old to skate anymore. I can't do it." Odds are they don't actually push and practice and try skating switch. And so, It completely misaligned my body. I was going to all these chiropractors, try to get a solution and nothing ultimately worked. And that was happening at the time when I actually moved out here to San Diego, Southern California, the home of skateboarding, to skateboard, which was a very depressing time. And I had a roommate who had a skateboard and I just thought, you know what? After a year of not skating anymore, I thought, let me grab his skateboard, go to the parking lot across the street and just try skating switch. Which I had never done before. And it's basically the mirrored version of that. You're standing on the other side, pushing on the other side. And, uh, it— I found it didn't hurt my body, so I kept doing it even though it felt impossible to do. Um, I just kept going back the next day, then the next day, then the next day. And, uh, I then started being able to do tricks. And 4 years of exclusive skateboarding switch is what made my body feel more aligned and feel great, to the point where I went back to skating in that regular stance just to see how I would do, and I found I was immediately able to do new tricks that I could never do before. And it's a concept called manual transfer learning, where your dominant side gains proficiency when you focus exclusively on the less dominant side. And that moment was a good 15+ years ago, and I thought, well, what would happen if I started doing everything else switch, aka mirrored? So then I went home and I was like, well, I do everything righty, now I'm going to do it lefty. So lefty on the light switches, lefty on doorknobs, lefty eating food in the morning, so on, so forth. And just gradually I started getting into everything, and it was not an altogether thing. It was slowly, little bit by little bit, and learning a lot along the way, of course.

Yeah. So that's what prompted you to learn more about this whole movement, and it's, uh, it's been pretty big, of course, over the years, over the decades. Maybe a couple of centuries or more where people were focusing on that. So why do you, why do you define dual dominance as a third pillar of longevity, like physical exercise and nutrition? I mean, it, how do you, how do we define it first of all, dual dominance?

Sure. So you, anybody who's interested in quote unquote longevity, nutrition, exercise tends to come up as like the two major things. Biologically, physiologically, of course, relationships are important and sense of purpose and all that, but we're talking biologically, just the physical biology, nutrition and exercise, the two pillars. I call MMD, that third pillar, dual dominance, that third pillar. And it's something that body science understands when body science recognizes all the activities associated with longevity happen to also be dual dominant. They happen to be MMD, mirror movement development. So, 'cause you're using both sides of the body equally. Walking, running, hiking, cycling, swimming, yoga, and all the machines that you use at the gym, they're all designed to work out the body equally. We lose that though when, for example, no offense to baseball fans, but baseball is one of the worst examples of this, where majority of the batters only bat one side. Everybody has a glove that's designed for just one hand, so you're throwing with only one hand. You're running the bases only in one directionality. So you'll, you'll lose that, uh, that, that sense of the longevity. For me, the longevity really came in in recognizing that I've now been skateboarding for 30 years and there's so many people who I know want to feel like they can do that, like their best years aren't behind them. And I've highlighted examples of other people who have practiced versions of this, who they end up being able to play their sports longer. Um, and then of course we can get into the, the more mental stuff with the— what I refer to— the, the more sports is the macro level of MMD stuff. The whole body movement, kinesiological— excuse me, kinesiological style, whereas the micro is more the brain, the neuro, the mirror reading, the mirror writing, all that stuff. So it's two different camps of MMD. So you look at another example, one of my favorites when it comes to longevity, LeBron James, who's been playing longer than anybody in the NBA. He scored more points than anybody. He's a major practitioner of mirror movement development. The guy does everything left-handed except basketball. So when he has to do something lefty in basketball, he can easily do it. And the same example was with Larry Bird as well. And I can go on a whole lot of other top athletes who— basically all the best athletes in the world, they all practice variations of mirror movement development.

Yeah. Well, so what, what do you think? I mean, in layman's terms, what, what's going on in the brain? What's going on neurologically? When we start to balance our right and left dominant sides? And, uh, are we building new pathways? Are we, you know, waking up pathways that have been dormant? Or what do you think's going on?

So what's going on, the layman of it, when you move, for example, your left hand like this, or the left side of your body, your right brain hemisphere is what is firing off. The opposite is true. When you move your right hand, your left brain hemisphere is what's firing off. And, what's happening is you're sending blood flow to both brain hemispheres more evenly. Within that blood flow is oxygen. That oxygen provides new neurons, new synapses, makes the corpus callosum thicker. And, what I'd actually like to share, I'll plug my own book here, Big 3 MMD, because I think that I explained it pretty well on page 50. So, when your body is engaged in equal bilateral exercise, blood flow flows to both brain, uh, both sides of the brain. This blood flow provides oxygen that grows new neurons, new synapses within the cerebral cortex, motor strip, and hippocampus. This also thickens the brain's corpus callosum, which is the fibrous communication bridge at the center of your brain and crossing point of all bilateral activity. So I, I go on and say more on this. This is the whole chapter on the science of MMD. Uh, so there you go, plug for my book. You really want to know even more, folks, you can get the book.

It sounds like, um, you know, if we neglect— I mean, in —very simple terms— we neglect the garden. Only half the side gets proper nutrition and treatment and water, and the left side is kind of withering. Let's water the wet left side and see how that springs to life. And that's a very simple metaphor, but it seems like that's what we're doing. We're getting blood flow to both sides of the brain, that bilateral setup. Yeah, which we're physically designed for.

You look at the human skeleton of the average human person, it is completely symmetric. The exterior features of the average person completely symmetric. The weight distribution of the organs that are asymmetrically all over the place, the weight distribution is completely symmetric. So as an organic machine, we're physically designed for equal mirror movement between both sides of the brain and the body. Yeah, which is just like a car. The best designed car is going to weigh the same right down the middle because it's designed for equal left and right-handed turns. And you would never buy a car that only ever makes right-handed turns. So it sounds silly that we've accepted this for thousands of years. For most of humanity. But, um, apparently in all the research I was doing for my own book, the ancient Scythians had practiced this. They even made it a law that citizens kind of had to practice this, which sounds wild in a way. The ancient Greeks had a dual dominant way of writing called boustrophedon, which was mirrored and traditional and alternating lines. And boustrophedon means like the ox plows. So it wouldn't matter what side of the field you're plowing from, either the left to the right or the right to the left. You go both sides. Uh, the Eastern Islanders had a version of this writing style called rongo rongo. Um, of course I get more into that between my book, YouTube channel, blog, all that. This, this stuff is all explained at length in all those areas.

Yeah, fascinating. There's such a rich history there. Let's, um, kind of step back a minute and talk about your own personal reaction. You said you started practicing this bilateral movement several years ago using left as much as your right hand. And you talked about, which is really interesting, when you shifted back to the right foot skateboarding, you could do things that you couldn't do before you learned both sides. That's—

it was wild. Wild. Yeah.

So what other, what other benefits have you found or observed in your own functioning, your physical, mental condition? Anything that stands out?

Sure. So, so the body realignment, I mean, for one great thing, my body just hurts less. The idea of being older and dealing with back pain stuff— I mean, I'm 42. I know a lot of your listeners, they're older, or, you know, working with those who are older. But, uh, as one who used to deal a lot with back pain, my back pain is substantially less. So that's one really great thing. The spatial awareness that increases is really remarkable.

Um, and shown in, uh, spatial awareness as shown by, oh, So, um, just aware of your surroundings when—

so like, for example, with skateboarding, I consider myself one of the most just fluid, stylish skateboarders as far as like longboarding goes because of being able to push with both sides. Um, it's easier to start and stop. Um, there's a way of stopping when you're on a longboard where, uh, if you're actually going on the longboard, like if I'm speeding downhill, I can go on the longboard and turn around backwards and basically jump off the longboard, and then I'm basically running backwards in the forward moving motion. So little stuff like that, um, that I don't ever recall doing before. Um, the way that I set up a lot more things, and, and being an artist, I do a lot more things symmetrically. Um, for example, one thing too, also, if I am out at like a restaurant and maybe I'm inside the dining area but I'm looking out the window and the window has some print on it, I see it all in mirror direction and I can just easily read it. And it's all stuff that I know I wasn't able to really do years ago. That feels really remarkable. One major thing that's felt incredible has been the increased memory recollection. One thing I write about in my book, a study that I found shows that there's an understanding of memories and that memories are encoded in one brain hemisphere, but they're decoded in another. So if your brain hemispheres can better communicate, you can better recall more more details. My memory is not perfect, but it's better than average. I learned fluent Spanish in my 30s, to the point where when I was living back in Philadelphia 5 years ago, I was offered a job with Homeland Security in Philadelphia as, uh, an immigration case manager. I was their only— I was offered it as their only non-native Spanish speaker in their whole department. So it was flattering. Uh, I became a tour guide instead, which ended up working out a lot better and allowed me to become more of an expert in Benjamin Franklin, who I write at length about, along with Da Vinci. But I can get an assignment in a new state, a new city, I can read all the information in a mirror direction, and alphanumeric patterns, names, dates, things like that, I can more easily remember than not. And friends and others, they'll, they'll comment like, how can you remember all this stuff? You have like an encyclopedic memory. I'm like, well, thanks, that, that's cool. And I think that this has a lot to do with that.

I do. I do sort of have a encyclopedic memory. Yeah. Yeah.

So, well, the mirror reading will help out all the more.

That's really interesting because, as you say, one side of the brain encodes the memory traces and the other part of the brain decodes it. I wonder if that would allow for faster learning if you had to learn another language in addition to Spanish, German or French or Italian. What do you think? Would that matter?

So, well, while I was practicing MMD, I also learned fluent Spanish, and it was really hard work, and it still is. I still learn every day. Um, but I do think that it did make it easier. Now, it's hard to compare because I'm within my own brain working to learn this, um, while I'm also simultaneously practicing it. So it's something that is a lifestyle-wise, you just completely end up diving into all of this. Um, but, uh, I, I feel like you can really see great examples with this when, uh, you look at Ben Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci. Both of them, they completely lacked formal education. Franklin had the most with only 2 years of elementary school before the age of 12. But each of those men, they practiced mirror reading and mirror writing for decades of their lives. And I dissect all of it in my own book, uh, and between my presentations on YouTube and stuff. And so You can learn more about all that, read in between the lines with it. But, uh, I swear by it when it comes to this polymathic tendency of an increase of memory recollection and so on and so forth. And you can see it in other ambidexters today that I write about, uh, in my book and on my blog too.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that's a fascinating story about, uh, Ben Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, of course. But Benjamin Franklin was really a strong proponent of mirrored reading, mirrored room reading development. Um, he really was trying to promote it when he created or helped to establish the University of Pennsylvania's kind of built-in training course. And tell us about that.

So, so Ben Franklin, age of 12 to 42, he was a colonial printer composer, which would require mirror reading within the machine because all those metal letters that go into the machine, they're cast in mirror direction. So if you want to get good on cutting down on typos and subsequent wasted paper, which was a concern to he and his family because he was the 10th of 17 kids. They didn't have money to send him to school, let alone on wasted paper. You get good at mirror reading. Funny enough, da Vinci also came from a family of 17 siblings. But Franklin, he's reading in this direction during the day for work for 30 years, and then he's going home at night and reading books in the traditional direction. So he would have had an abnormally symmetric brain because your eyes are going from right to left reading mirror direction and from left to right reading traditional direction. That sends blood flow to both those brain hemispheres more equally. Fast forward to 1779, just 3 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, he wrote an essay called A Petition of the Left Hand. He creatively addressed this, this letter to educators telling them how both hands are designed for equal use and we should be teaching kids how to develop them as such. Ironically enough, that was the same year that the University of Pennsylvania was found.— and it was a school that he started 30 years before that. So we can argue over nearly 250 years have passed and that Ivy League institution that holds Ben Franklin up so much is still not teaching what he originally wanted them to teach. But I argue heavily that he got Thomas Jefferson, his close buddy, to practice ambidexterity for the rest of his life. I write a lot about Jefferson, and both Franklin and Jefferson They're referred to by author Walter Isaacson as the avatars of the Enlightenment because of their brilliance. They were both statesmen. They were both writers. They were both scientists. They both started universities. They had a lot of commonality, even though they were decades apart. Jefferson had an accident where he broke his right hand, so he had to start learning how to write left-handed. And this happened within a few years before he would have caught up with Franklin. They were separated by the ocean between France and, and the United States. And Franklin would have told Jefferson, dude, you should practice that the rest of your life. I wrote an essay all about this just a few years ago. Jefferson practiced writing left-handed for the last 40 years of his life.

Wow, great, great, great. Yeah, I know there are a lot of characters, figures throughout history, and even in the contemporary world. I remember your story about Jimi Hendrix. His father didn't want him to play the guitar left-handed even though he wanted to. Tell us that story. Yeah, so Hendrix—

so Jimi Hendrix, he was very mixed-handed. He would do a lot of things between different hands, answer the phone one hand, smoke cigarettes one hand, throw a ball with the other hand, etc., etc., right? I think lefty. Um, so his dad gifted him a guitar, and it was a Stratocaster, which is designed for the right hand. And Hendrix, though he preferred playing it lefty, his dad told him though, dude, if I see you playing that guitar left-handed, I'm taking it away because left-handed guitar playing is a sign of the devil. This is what Hendrix's dad told him. So Hendrix is like, well, better learn how to play the other side because I don't want to get my guitar taken away. So he would play right-handed when his dad was around, and then his dad wouldn't be there, he'd flip the guitar over and play it lefty. And so his sound was so different because he's playing an upside-down Stratocaster. People heard it and they were like, who's this guy? He's playing this guitar upside down and he sounds incredible. Hendrix is of course hailed for his creativity as a guitarist, um, and he's got a lot of that manual transfer learning going on from playing on both sides. Paul McCartney I write about too, because Paul McCartney used to write in mirror direction as a kid.

Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's so, uh, Hendrix continued playing professionally with his left hand, I think, left side.

Yeah, that was his preference.

His father didn't have so much influence on him.

Anymore once he became a superstar. No, yeah, no, no, no. I don't know where his dad was when Woodstock was going on, but I doubt he was in the front row. Who knows, maybe it was. Probably not though.

Well, let's shift to some of the simple exercises you can recommend to our listeners. And what kind of things can we do to develop our opposite? Mostly it's going to be our left side because, what, 90% of the world is right-handed. So what can we do to build up our left side?

So in all of this, what is so beautifully simple about this— mirror movement development is one thing. It's learning how to do everything in mirrored motion. So I tell people, imagine you were video recorded throughout the day doing everything you do throughout the day. You then take that video footage, you mirror flip it. Your goal of MMD and dual dominance is to work to learn what you see yourself in that video doing. So in the video You'd see yourself throwing with the other arm, kicking with the other foot, writing with your other hand in mirror direction, reading in mirror direction, typing on a mirrored keyboard, which I have one right here. Shout out to the company Keebio who produced that for me. You can get that on their website, the mirrored keyboard. Mirrored clock like you see here behind me, you can find on Amazon, marketed as like a wacky clock. So you can do all that stuff. But to keep it simple, and you'll find others who will talk about this too between websites and stuff, good stuff, brain hacks. A lot of them will tell you Brush your teeth with your other hand. Try that. Use your other hand for the light switch. Use your other hand for the doorknob. On my website, myambilife.org website, I wrote a blog article titled How to Become Ambidextrous. It's the most thorough on the internet when it comes to this, and I list out all these activities that you can do. I even rank them as beginner activities, intermediate, and then advanced, roughly more or less in that general order, so people can consult that. Um, but I do say two things, especially for those who have been lifelong athletes. Maybe you're an older person and maybe back in the day you played a lot of soccer, maybe back in the day you played baseball, maybe back in the day you were a quarterback. What you want to do, you want to pick those sports back up again and learn them switch. And you're going to think, dude, this is so hard. But that's the process of it. You're leaning into that, just like a great healthy diet and going to the gym might be really hard. Your body feels so incredible though when you do those things because you're your body's designed for that. And the one other major thing I say, so lifelong athletes, switch up your sport, board sports, maybe you surf, learn how to do it the other side, work to learn how to practice it. But the other thing I tell everyone, mirror read, mirror read, because all the reading you've ever done has only ever been in one direction. And young kids, they can mirror read way faster than average adults. Young kids who know how to read, they can mirror read way faster. There's developmental studies that show, in fact, it's one of the first that I cite in my book, There's a certain symmetry in the brains of young kids before they learn how to read. That symmetry goes away after they learn how to read. Theoretically, it would remain and develop though if they practice mirror reading and mirror writing, mirror typing, so on and so forth. And we all— we often comment, kids are so smart, their brains can sponge up so much stuff. We can argue the same about Da Vinci and Franklin. They all had more symmetric brains. So mirror read. And if you go to my website, look at my blog, look at my YouTube. I have a ton of content, videos, how-to, um, doing all this stuff. You can see links in my videos to the mirror— excuse me, the reading mirrors that, uh, I use. They're shatterproof reading mirrors. You can put them in your book, use them as a cell phone, they won't shatter, and you can, you can mirror read using that. Um, I produce content teaching people, showing them how to do that. And if you don't want to just hear from me learn, uh, everything that, uh, Dr. Sheila Robinson has done. She's done the primary research on all of this stuff. She's a psychologist out of Montreal, Canada, uh, and you can go to her, her website mirrorread.com. She has a web browser extension tool that will actually mirror flip your web browser. So your Google, if you're reading blogs, you can mirror read it on your computer screen. She— I've done— my brain is so much more symmetric because of that woman's work. So yeah, big shout out. Dr. Sheila Robinson.

So we can start with your book. We can pick up a copy of your book because we can— pick up the book, that's the best way.

Yeah, and then you can physically read it mirrored. Yeah, world's first.

Your site has— your AmbiLife website has exercises there, and then Mirror Read— is it mirrorread.com by Sheila Robinson? Mirrorread.com. Yeah, that's great. So a lot of opportunities to practice, and frankly, I can just share with my listeners, I picked up Jim's book a few weeks ago and I Started reading both from the front and then from the rear, and mirror reading was obviously very difficult, but I got better at it. The italics in the reverse type font were a little bit challenging.

It's an added layer. It's an added layer, but it's all that exercise too. For people who love brain exercises, you'll feel it. You'll be like, this is totally in that brain vein of self-improvement.

You'll love it. Yeah. Yeah. Initially, I could get through maybe a paragraph or two in a half hour, and now I can get through a couple of pages. So I think that's progress. And it's still challenging, but I think I'm better at it. I can see the— I can see where it's an acquired skill. It's something we can all do and we can all benefit from. It's just like scales.

It's like balancing out a scale. If you spend so much time doing one thing in one other way, theoretically, you would have to wait that much time equally to balance it out. But I theorize that no, because you're not learning something new, you're just learning a new way of the way you've always done something. You're not learning how to read all over again, you're learning the mirrored version of it. So it takes that time, but it gets easier with practice. And then one incredible benefit, when you go back to reading the traditional direction, you're way faster at it. Yeah. And you remember more of those details. It is absolutely insane. It's so good.

One interesting feature, after reading the mirrored reading my comprehension wasn't as good as in traditional reading. I could read a page or two and I can remember what I read. But on this one, when I'm reading mirrored, I don't think I— it didn't sink in as much. So I really didn't recall a lot of those chapters. Maybe does that improve?

It's part of the process. Yes, it is. It is part of the process. And then you can also see that when you do anything from your less dominant side. You know, somebody who's an athlete and they pitch and they've never thrown with the other hand, tell them, yo, let's see you throw with that other hand. They're gonna, they're gonna be like, dude, you're out of your mind. No, but they can do it. But you're learning it over time because when it comes to a macro movement like throwing, you're not just mirroring what you're doing with the other hand. All your other appendages are doing something, and you have to mirror what each of those is doing in a very subtle way. So it requires that attention, it requires focus. It drains the energy, but it, it improves everything over time. You have to mirror the weight distribution when you switch from one side of the one leg of the other, uh, in between the pitch. So that's just one— yeah, that's one example.

Yeah, because there's associated muscle movements regardless of which side of your body you're using, connects to other, other muscles. So you're rebranding your, your site in dualdominant.com and dualdominance.com. Is this, uh, yeah, ultimately I, I will.

I do have those two URLs now as of this last week, dueldominate.com and dueldominance.com. And a big part of that has just been, um, when I tell people AmbuLife and they're like, wait, what is that? Uh, or MMD, what's Mirror Movement Development? They're trying to remember what that is. But if I tell them dual dominant, dual dominance, they tend to get that more. So that will ultimately be part of a rebranding effort. But, um, I just set up yesterday my art show at the Carmel Valley Library. So that's had my, my full attention. And considering it's just 10 minutes away from, uh, University of California San Diego Neuroscience, I'm going to be working a lot to get a lot of those faculty folk out to this. And the show is called Mirror Mirror Body and Brain: What Neuroscience Is Missing Today. So that's been my major focus. After that, I really want to set full steam ahead to work with research-driven institution, whether that be UCSD, SDSU, preferably locally, but I'm open to otherwise, of, um, of a university that would be interested in seeing how dual dominance can benefit a large scale of people through their students practicing this within their neuroscience and kinesiology, um, department. So that's just some of my, my work coming up.

Um, yeah, smart move. We need the metrics, we need to show outcomes, we need to. I mean, we have a lot of anecdotal stories, but we need to show here's the study, here are so many people, and here's what we did, and here's what we found.

Science deserves it. Science deserves it. People deserve it who wanna live longer, who wanna live healthier, who wanna feel like their best years aren't behind them, wanna feel like, oh my gosh, this is what peak performance feels like.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how long is your show lasting at Carmel Valley?

For 2 months. It'll be until September 30th.

So any local listeners, So we'll get this out within a week or two, and hopefully people can, who are local, can stop in and see your, your artwork.

Yeah, I have 64 pieces that are up, uh, graphics and street art, uh, photos, uh, all sorts of different things. I'm an ambidextrous artist, uh, street artists, uh, so it's a lot of that work, but it's a lot of the work that I include within my book and website and YouTube and all that stuff. So it's very educational, a lot of QR codes to scan and go through. It's a It's a, it's a whole cool experience. So I know before we would even potentially wrap up the podcast, I know there's at least two things that I did want to plug for folks who are interested in knowing more on this. I do want to plug the book that I cite the most in my book, Big 3 MMD. So this is Whole Brain Power by Michael Lavery. He's done what I think is the most and best work on all of this. So he's been a dual dominant practitioner for years. He's inspired a lot of other people into it. Um, so that's just one thing. And considering your audience, um, I want to be able to give them what I think is a great, just, uh, inspiration on practicing this. So my roommate Rosa, who I love Rosa to death— so funny because she's as old as my mom, she's turning 74 next month— and, uh, since I— since we've lived together for the last year and a half She knows, of course, about my book and everything that I do. And she started practicing all of this, and she spent years working as a cleaner, house cleaner, hotel cleaner. And she was right-hand dominant, so would only ever do everything right-handed. And she was dealing with pains in her shoulder. And she told me months ago, she said, Jim, I've been practicing using my left hand for all my cleaning stuff for the last 4 months. And she said, the pain in my shoulder is gone, and it wouldn't be gone without this. So like, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. And in my book, I include stories of others, but you know, that's, that's been, um, a recent story. So folks who are, who are older, who— there's someone who's listening, I'm hoping that that would resonate. Switch it up, use that other hand. You have no idea how— it's a subtle lifestyle practice, it takes time to develop and do it, but as you do it, you start to receive these benefits that I think there's no one who's too old who can begin practicing this to ultimately experience benefit. The best is of course starting right out the womb, but, um, anyone I think can experience at any time.

Sure, that's what's great. Yeah, um, you know, if you could get into any kind of pain management outcome studies, that'd be super. I mean, if your roommate is able to, you know, experience some of the benefit, maybe there are others who can also, yeah, there are.

Michael Avery talks about people in his book who he's worked with who personally do that. My book, I mentioned Norman White, who was a 65-year-old amateur golfer who golfed for years just in the traditional direction, and then he had to get a shoulder surgery, and so he had to stop playing golf. He couldn't swing anymore on his traditional side, but he got some lefty clubs and started doing it switch. And I came across him on the internet He was interviewed by a local newspaper because he's had two hole-in-ones in his life. One was, I think, 15 years before he got the surgery, and the other one was recently with his left hand. And he says, my best years of golf are, are still ahead of me. Oh wow. I hope that resonates with someone too. I know golfing is an older person's sport. You got some older listeners. If you golf, sorry, but ditch your righty clubs, pick up lefty, and, and, and get at it.

My, my golf game could stand to improve, and I'll try anything that helps. So, maybe that left-handed approach, who knows?

Even, even some folks— well, Michael Avery does this. He'll take his righty driver and just flip it upside down and then just practice swinging lefty. So, and I'll tell people this too, if you're a professional athlete or an amateur athlete, you compete, when you practice, work to practice that less dominant side, that mirror movement, and then when you go to compete, you're going to be way better at it. One of my favorite examples of that is with Cristiano Ronaldo, uh, the top best soccer player on planet Earth. Actually, the top 3— Messi and Pelé— they're all major practitioners of this too. But Cristiano Ronaldo in particular, he's spent thousands and thousands and thousands of hours working to develop his less dominant side, and you can certainly see it when it comes to his extraterrestrial sense of spatial awareness and athletic ability. He's a phenom. Wow.

Well, well, looks like we're about out of time. But what's the, what's the final takeaway? What do you hope our listeners will remember from this conversation?

You know what, I, um, I'll tell you what, if you give me one moment here, I'll read something that I did want to share. Great. When you and I first met, you asked me about Einstein's brain. There you go. And I read it today and I wanted to share this because folks, obviously everyone knows Einstein. So here's what you should know about Einstein. And then for folks who want to continue the conversation, email me on my website, ambulife.org. You can reach out to me, jim@ambulife.org. Find my website. But Albert Einstein, while he was only ever photographed writing with his right hand, Albert Einstein had an abnormally symmetric brain. This feature produces greater connections between both brain hemispheres and typically occurs among the ambidextrous. At autopsy, it was discovered that Einstein's brain had a thicker corpus callosum and an exceptional number of glial cells. The corpus callosum serves as a communication bridge between our two brain hemispheres, while glial cells are responsible for the speed of cognition. The more glial cells one has, the higher their native intelligence. Einstein's genius is off— is often associated with a highly creative imagination, considering a right-brain function exercised by left-sided body movement. When talking about Einstein and his brain, it's important to clarify that MMD induced brain growth. Einstein's brain weighed 10% less than the average adult at only 2.7 pounds. If Einstein's practice of, uh, spectrum of MMD, aka a brain-growing activity, then shouldn't his brain be physically larger than average? Perhaps not. MMD may increase brain efficiency more than physical weight or mass This would be comparable to a Ferrari weighing less than a Toyota while still performing much faster. And of course, Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. So yeah, just a little note there for Einstein. Great story.

So not any bigger, a little bit smaller actually than average, but more efficient. Potentially. That bridge between the two hemispheres and more glial cells made a difference for him. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Jim. Um, this has been great. Looks like we're out of time, but before we wrap up, I just want to remind my listeners to visit my website for my blog and podcast library, livingto100.club. Visit my new community for connection and experiences, livingto100.community. And if you're part of a senior living community, don't miss my Better, Longer, and Happier card deck series. They'll be found at livingto100.solutions. Jim, thanks again for joining us today. And your website is ambylife.org, and they can get a ton of information about this. And I really appreciate your sharing your, your important message, your insights, your experience.

Thank you. There's nothing I'd rather do. So thank you, Joe, for your time too. Well, you're welcome.

Okay, thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. And hope to see you next time.