This has been making the rounds on the intertubes, but was freaky enough that I thought I’d show it here. The “source” as far as I can tell is The Daily Telegraph, but I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere else, earlier.

Look at the dancer below. Which way is she spinning?

Those who use their “left brain” more will see a dancer spinning counter-clockwise. Those using their “right brain” more will see the dancer spinning clockwise. Loosely speaking left-brainers are the “logic” types, and right-brainers are the “feelings” type. If you click the Telegraph link, they have a list describing various characteristics of each.

The neat/scary thing is, though, that after convincing yourself that there’s no possible way the dancer could be spinning in the other direction, you can actually train yourself to see it spin in the other direction!

Unsurprising to anyone who reads this blog, I saw it as counter-clockwise, and it seemed absurd that it was spinning in any other direction. Well, the other direction. And then I read some comments on another blog that one person said that if they looked at the dancer out of the corner of their eye, by turning their head and looking left, then with a little concentration, she spun in the other direction. And sure enough … it works. I can’t explain it, but once she’s spinning clockwise, I can’t imagine her spinning counter-clockwise. But getting her to shift back to counter-clockwise only requires relaxing my concentration a little bit. Weird huh?

What direction do you see?