Last March at our weekly meditation group, we were introduced to a special guest, Polly Cady, who was visiting Paonia from Denver. Vivacious and open, Polly struck me as a "people person" and fun to be around. Polly Cady is a graphologist, someone who studies handwriting and can tell you all sorts of things just from the way you write.

From your handwriting she can pick up a lot of information about you. The three things your handwriting will not reveal are: 1) age, 2) color, and 3) sex; yet if you are pregnant, she can tell if you're going to have a boy or a girl by certain marks and letters that show up.

How she got into being a graphologist goes back to about four years ago, when a lady asked to analyze Polly's handwriting. Polly asked, "What can that do?" The lady said, "Everything." So Polly said okay and had her handwriting analyzed, and she was amazed at what her handwriting revealed. She was told, "You should be a handwriting analyst," and Polly thought, "Oh year, sure..." She was a designer at the time, an interior decorator with her own business in Arvada. At the time she thought this woman was nuts to think that she - Polly - could be a graphologist.

A sample of her handwriting was sent to Lynn Samson, a leading graphologist in the United States, who also works for the government. She read Polly's handwriting, then sent her a packet of materials to start teaching her how to analyze handwriting. Polly went ahead and took the 100-hour course and when she was through she was all fired up because she realized what she could see and what she could do. "Handwriting is amazing!" she proclaims.

So what can you really tell about a person from their handwriting?

"Everything," says Polly. "I can tell if you're a psychopath. I can tell if you're a schizophrenic. I can tell if you're sober or not sober. I can tell if you have learning disabilities." She goes to the schools and she can tell what kids are in gangs, and if they are on drugs, and even what drugs they are using - all this from handwriting!

How can she tell the kind of drug someone is using? How can she be so specific? Polly explains that handwriting is like an equation. "You take an A and a B and a B, and you multiply it, and you see the different ways that it's written, the slant and all that, and you add it and you have... you. It doesn't matter what you're doing, how you're writing, your personality traits are going to show up in your handwriting," Polly says. "Handwriting, first of all, is a thought. It starts in your head, as an impulse, and it runs down your arm, to the pencil, and onto the paper. So if you think you're going to try to lie to me... I'm sorry, you can't."

She started doing handwriting analysis and shortly after she suffered a stroke, then went through a divorce. "My husband didn't want to stay around once I became a graphologist. I found out things about him." She could see things in his handwriting and now jokes about it. "Honey, I think we have to talk..."

After a while Polly got to thinking that since handwriting is a thought, maybe by changing how you write certain letters you can change that aspect about your life. "And then I thought, 'This is really crazy. I'm really liking this.' If this is that powerful..."

She began investigating the history of handwriting. What she found out was that handwriting has been around for 3,000 years and it started in the church. "Actually, we are all naturally left-handed," Polly says, "but we were taught to write with our right hands. The intuitive side of the brain is the left side and the right brain the logical."

One of Polly's exercises is to have people write out a question with their right hand, and then answer it with their left. This gets them in touch with their intuitive part.

The monks who first knew about handwriting soon recognized the power in handwriting. Probably like parts of the Bible, they felt this knowledge should be kept from people. Legitimate handwriting analysis has been taken seriously in the United States only the last 100 years. It first resurfaced in the court system. Polly is a certified court analyst and is often hired to appear in court for the sole purpose of "making everybody nervous." It intimidates people into telling the truth, she says, since they can't hide it.

What's exciting is how you can change your life using your handwriting. There are exercises to help you get rid of fear, bring abundance into your life, change attitudes toward people, raise your self-esteem.

Polly says even physical problems will show up in your handwriting, such as ulcers, gall bladder, heart problems, high or low blood pressure. She is not a doctor, of course, and cannot prescribe anything for illness. However, she can direct you to work on certain letters that may resolve the issue that surrounds the physical illness, thus helping to relieve it.

Sometimes a person's signature is written differently from the rest of their handwriting. This usually means the person portrays himself/herself in a different way in front of others than he/she truly is - like wanting to put on airs - and hiding the true self.

And now Polly Cady has moved to Paonia, Colo., where she has become active in the Violet Light Healing Arts Information Center. She does handwriting analysis, coaches people on personal writing exercises that may improve their lives, and teaches classes.