Symmetry: A False Value?

By Thomas Myers

Symmetry, in the use of the hands, is often proffered as a positive value in the practice of our manual work. Whether you are doing chair massage, petrissage, effleurage, or “rolfage” does not matter. When you are working on two sides of the back, both shoulders, or reflexes/trigger points on both right and left extremities, you are expected to deliver the same pressure, attention, and energy out of both hands at once. Some kind of symmetry is required for this.

 Yet, when we walk away from the table, most of us are very strongly “handed” in our daily activities. Our dominant hand determines which way we will toss the Frisbee, which way we take up the guitar or violin, and which hand reaches out for the doorknob.

 Winging the Frisbee was the one I used, in my early days as a bodyworker, to test my ability to engage my left hand as I do my right. I was living in London, sharing a practice space with a friend. After work, on those northern summer evenings that stay light forever, we would go out onto Primrose Hill and practice hurling the plastic disc to the hoots of the monkeys in the London Zoo below us.

 I got better over time, but my left hand never caught up to the right in terms of the power/accuracy ratio. It was always a relief to return the Frisbee to my right hand, where the whole body seemed to coordinate into a simple but effective whip to send my friend’s long shadow loping down the grass to intercept its steady flight.

 Of course, there are other things where the two hands are more coequal. I am not aware of hand dominance now as I type this on my keyboard. Even though I am still a “hunt-and-peck” typist, both the right and left hands cover equal amounts of the keys, and I am not more facile with either hand. 

 And then there are the tasks where the two hands perform utterly different tasks.When I pick up my guitar, the right hand effortlessly selects the strings to pluck while the left boogies up and down them silver frets. Turn the guitar over and both hands are equally at sea, the right unable to finger a single chord, the left hopeless at keeping up a steady picking pattern.

In preparing to saw, my left hand holds the wood steady, while the right wields the saw. If I am in a tight place and must switch, the left hand is awkward with the saw, but my right hand is also not as adept at steadying the wood.

Lateralized Specialization
Of course, God, or the Intelligent Designer, or evolution, or your Mom (take your pick of creators), does not seem to value symmetry that much. The musculoskeletal system that we work through (and on) is basically bilaterally symmetrical — two shoulders, two arms, two psoases, etc. — but the brain that runs it clearly is not, and neither are the organs that nourish it.

Our insides are way more “prejudiced” than our hands. While about one in 11 individuals are “southpaws” (or sinister, or gauche, or out in left field — why is the left so bad and the right so righteous?), just about everyone has the liver on the right and the stomach on the left, the ascending colon on the right and the descending on the left, the heart on the left with the right lung larger. (About one in 10,000 people are anatomically reversed, and they are usually not happy campers, having multiple physiological difficulties.)
We start symmetrical, but during the course of embryological development, the organs are pulled off-center, where they function efficiently in this asymmetrical arrangement.

And the brain, while anatomically symmetrical, is functionally lateralized. We are all familiar by now with the “left brain/right brain” differences, which are likewise very consistent through the population. This brain extends its difference out into our seemingly “evenhanded” musculoskeletal system — not only are we “handed,” we are also “footed” and “eyed.”  

For most of us, one eye dominates in our vision. To test which is your dominant eye, form a simple, small triangle with your thumbs and forefingers. Pick a small object a bit away from you — a lamp or a clock on the wall — and with both eyes open quickly and reflexively bring your hands up between you and the object. Now close one eye and then the other, and you will see which is the dominant eye. The nondominant eye will have the object outside the triangle, while the dominant eye field will contain the object. If you are in doubt, try this tactic several times a day focusing on different objects and it will be evident.

When you get fitted for a snowboard, the dude will ask whether you board “goofy footed,” meaning you put your right leg forward, as opposed to “regular” — left foot forward. If you, like me, leave snowboarding for the younger and fitter crowd, you can test which is your dominant leg (I actually like the term “gestural” for the dominant leg and “postural” for the nondominant leg). In a largish room or outdoors, run up to a make-believe stream and jump over it.  You will push off from your postural leg and land on your dominant, gestural leg. To check, try jumping the other way ’round — off your dominant leg and landing on your postural — to see how awkward it feels. As with hands and eyes, the strength of the dominance varies, but it’s there for everyone to some degree.

Constant Processional Dance
While our functional asymmetry in a structurally symmetrical body may seem odd, it should not surprise us. Proteins and crystalline molecules in our bodies, which favor spirals in their chemical construction, are overwhelmingly right handed, for reasons not immediately evident to science. And recent findings in astronomy show that the fundamental asymmetry of the universe is what makes galaxies (and thus solar systems and thus us) possible. If we are created in God’s image, then it seems that God is for some reason “handed” as well, so why would we not be?

 Sometimes, we bodyworkers bow before the gods of symmetry, using postural grids, plumb lines, and right-left comparisons to determine the success of our work. But the “well-balanced” is fundamentally boring — what we are looking for instead, I now feel after years of striving for postural perfection, is the “well-lopsided” individual, able to creatively incorporate the lateralized specialization of brain, organ, and body into a dynamic whole in a constant precessional dance with a changing universe.

Thomas Myers has practiced integrative bodywork for nearly 30 years. He teaches workshops internationally on anatomy, movement, and soft-tissue work. His book, Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists, was published by Elsevier in 2001. He lives, writes, and sails on the coast of Maine.

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