Natural Solutions For ADHD / dyslexia/ Test Anxiety: 2010

Anyone can Improve Their Own Handwriting.

Jason Mark Alster

https://sites.google.com/site/jasonalster/

12, 31,2010

The college professor was giving back the English compositions homework and held mine up high. “This looks like you spilled ink on the paper and a chicken walked all over it”. I would have thought the joke funny except that it was my paper he was holding. Even though I received a B in my first college class ever, I felt less than a success. It was 1973, I was eighteen years of age, and it would be another 10 years before the personal computer debut and the word processor. It would be another 22 years before my handwriting improved. Well let me place a caveat here, improved in English. My Hebrew handwriting was always adequate. I did not know why? Could it be that I wrote better from right to left than from left to right? Were my Hebrew teachers better than my English teachers? Probably not, after all I also could not draw a straight line for the life of me. In contrast, although I could never draw, my first painting in an art class was beautiful that’s because the teacher drew the sketch while I painted over it.

So the story behind helping people improve their handwriting began with me learning to paint and then improve my art. I was sitting in an art appreciation class in college. The art professor was showing slides of art throughout the ages. When he showed how art progressed from Egyptian pictographs to paintings rendered after the discovery of perspective during the renaissance period he said, and I quote “Art went through a transformation, and anyone can learn to paint.” That’s when I almost fell off my chair. “Anyone can learn to paint???” I thought you were “born” with artistic talent or you just didn’t have it. Thus the future title “Anyone Can Improve Your Own Handwriting” that is if you are born with the sloppy handwriting you can still change. You are not destined to have poor handwriting all your life.

It took me years to learn to paint with perspective. I could paint with color really well enough to give me pleasure and I eventually used pastels which is a medium for painters who like color. My first paintings turned out very impressionistic because I could not draw in perspective and my figures would look like they are floating in air. Perspective cements figures down in space. Only till I happened upon a drawing course named “Drawing on the right side of the brain” after the famous book by Betty Edwards, did I finally “get it”. I was now for the first time able to paint portraits, buildings, anything. But my handwriting still left much to be desired.

But there was another process happening in parallel. I became a biofeedback therapist and learned many self regulation and relaxed concentration techniques. What was evident from biofeedback was the concept of plasticity in the human physiology. Man can change, self regulate. Again, you are not stuck with the mold, but can change, improve. So here I am, changing myself and changing my clients’ lives, but my handwriting is still a mess. Yet, now there is a difference, I became conscious that I could change myself, but was not able to change my handwriting. Where as before I might have convinced myself that my messy handwriting was a reflection of my psyche’, I no longer believed that. I was Okay. My poor handwriting was just a technicality.

One more piece of the puzzle still had to occur before I could improve my own handwriting and eventually succeed in helping others. As a biofeedback therapist working with students who had ADHD and test anxiety, and many of those, not all by any means, had poor handwriting. I realized that in order for the student to succeed it was not enough for the ADHD students to improve their concentration, they had to catch up to the time lost in school if they were to truly shine. For me to help I personally had to “go back to school” and take exams and do homework with the students. That’s when I started teaching accelerated learning strategies. The grades shot up. So there you have it, anyone can change and improve with the right tools. Now it was time to tackle the handwriting thorn for myself and my clients. After all, better handwriting could help my students get better grades. Now all the pieces came together. The biofeedback and seated yoga relaxation techniques helped students with pencil grip, ergonomics of sitting properly, and focus. The art techniques helped with learning to see negative spaces and shapes, and drawing a straight line, and self critique of their own handwriting. It helped turn penmanship into an elegant art. By tutoring students that neatness counts in essays on exams, in arithmetic equations and homework led me to correct the different types of penmanship challenges and errors.

Of note, once involved in trying to find solutions to improving penmanship in myself and my students, I started to become aware of penmanship both historically and professionally. First of all, Ron Davis, the author of the book The Gift of Dyslexia (a term used for difficulties in reading and spelling with dysgraphic used specifically for writing) had come to Israel where I was living at the time and talked about his life experiences growing up with dyslexia and how he developed techniques for improving reading in dyslexics known as The Davis Technique. What really interested me was that he said dyslexics can become disorientated and stressed out when trying to read. This is something I noticed in ADHD students when they were trying to sit quietly. I also observed the effects that stress might have on handwriting handwriting. Thus, the development of techniques for stress reduction related to handwriting.

Historically, I not only noticed the beautiful handwriting that many had in the ancient world and especially the old books and letters written in calligraphy. However, I also noticed when visiting Israeli museums that many ancient signet rings, writings in stone, coins, and engravings on burial sarcophagus looked like the authors were dyslexic. I noticed that the ancient words were not written on a straight line either. Where as, the Egyptian hieroglyphics were neat and on a straight line. I found this interesting because I had a math teacher that said there were no straight lines in nature. The straight line was discovered by man and used by the Egyptians and Greeks in geometry and measurement. In contrast, the writing on coins from Israel during the Greek and Roman period were neater and as if on a straight line. I actually asked Ron Davis from the audience if he thought the early Egyptians were dyslectic because they wrote in pictographs instead of using an alphabet. He was amused by the question. Anyways, if the Greeks did not conquer Egypt, we might not have any penmanship problems today because we would still be writing in pictographs. In the end, I published three resources for improving handwriting, relaxed concentration, and art ability in children. These are “Creative Painting for the Young Artist”; “Being in Control: Natural Solutions for ADHD, Dyslexia, and Test Anxiety”; and “Anyone Can Improve Their Own Handwriting”.

Natural Solutions For ADHD / dyslexia/ Test Anxiety

Friday, December 31, 2010

Anyone Can Improve Their Own Handwriting - video version two

Monday, December 27, 2010

New videos released for ADHD and handwriting improvement - thanks