In "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who writes like a novelist, tells the story of Madeline. Madeline was a 60-year-old woman who was blind and had cerebral palsy. She was from a well-off family who ensured that throughout her life, her needs were met. So much so that she and those around her believed her illness prevented her hands from working. Madeline herself referred to them as "god-forsaken lumps of dough."
Since cerebral palsy does not typically paralyze hands, Oliver Sacks set out to see if perhaps her hands could work. He started giving Madeline challenges to compel her to use her hands. After a few weeks and a concerted effort, they found her hands were not useless; she could feed herself and hold and touch things around her. After realizing and living in this new reality, Madeline became a sculptor with local recognition in her community.
Madeline's story speaks to the power of perspective. It is a reminder that the way we see things affects our perceptions, which affects our behavior. As we reinforce our perceptions with behavior, we build confidence that our perceptions are accurate. Madeline had the perspective that her degenerative illness had kept her hands from working. As such, she and those around her behaved in ways that reinforced that idea. The more they operated on that belief, the less she used her hands and the more trustworthy the idea that her hands were useless seemed to be. When we have a definitive perspective, we do not feel the need to look or explore further. Our perception reinforces our behavior, and our behavior reinforces our perception.
It is similar to an element of the book "The Wizard of Oz" that did not make it into the movie. In the book, the Emerald City is not Emerald at all. Instead, the Great and Powerful Oz ordered that everyone who lives there wear green-tinted glasses. When Dorothy questions the Wizard, he explains that the people of Emerald City have been wearing their glasses for so long that they have come to believe that everything was green. He reminds Dorothy that the lens through which we choose to see the world colors everything we see.
In Moving Minds, we help participants identify where their perspectives are limited and challenge them to change them, even just a little. For example, in an early activity in the Moving Minds workshop, we ask participants to create a dance using a given set of parameters. They make the dance, practice it, teach it and then perform it. The moves become solidified in the participant's body and mind. Then, after they have done this work, we ask them to take the same elements and make a dance that is completely different from the ones before.
Although participants understand that this premise is possible, they still often find themselves stuck in their perspective. For example, they will say things such as: "I don't know if it is possible to come up with a completely different move because I am supposed to move my chest, and I am not sure if there is another way to move my chest other than the way I already did." Or they will come up with a move that they believe to be different, only to realize when they perform it alongside the original that it is similar to the older move.
Eventually, after a few trials, most people can develop a second and third move that all look entirely different from each other. One participant reflected that "The biggest challenge (to making a new move) was thinking that there could be one other way to make a completely different move. However, once I got past that block, I realized that there isn't just one different way to do it but many ways."
When we change our perspective, we rarely see only one new difference. Instead, we set off a chain reaction of potential. In Madeline's case, once she realized that her hands weren't useless, a myriad of ways she could use them presented itself to her. One way was to make art. It is bittersweet to think of the reaction Madeline may have had before she met Dr. Sachs if someone had told her that she would become a sculptor. What if it wasn’t because she was cured of her cerebral palsy, but instead she was able to change her thinking? It is easy to imagine Madeline seeing those comments as a cruel joke.
In Moving Minds, we try to convey the value of changing our perspective. We have so many preconceived notions of what our minds and bodies (individually and collectively) can and cannot do. We have solidified these ideas such that we rarely see the need to question them. When we start to challenge what we can do, we are not likely to realize something as drastic as Madeline, but we do begin to learn something new about ourselves and others. These realizations can sometimes feel like magic.