- Nothing brings me more
joy than helping people better understand the tool they have to live their life on purpose. We have this magnificent brain, and it has different predictable parts, and the better we get to
know those different parts, then we have more power over who and how we wanna be in any moment. The brain does not have
to be such a mystery. We can actually understand
it, differentiate ourselves, and then behave in ways
that bring us less anxiety and more peace. It thrills me. I love brains. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I'm a neuroanatomist, and the author of "My Stroke of Insight," and "Whole Brain Living." I'm a neuroanatomist. I study the anatomy of the brain, so I can visualize in
my brain the circuits of how all the information comes in in order for me to be able to have a perception of reality. When we look at the human brain, it has emotional tissue
in the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, and it has thinking tissue
in both the right hemisphere and in the left hemisphere. So we end up with these four
very specific groups of cells, modules of cells, that result in very specific skill sets, resulting in very specific personalities that we all exhibit. So we have left thinking that
is structured and organized, and it's what we call our
rational thinking brain. It categorizes and organizes, it has language,
the ability to create sound, and then another group of cells places meaning on top of that. I know when I'm being analytical
and I'm being structured and organized and I'm planning
things for the future, or I'm counting one plus one equals two- I know that that's my left
thinking portion of my brain. The left emotional part of our brain has miraculously stepped out of the present-moment consciousness and given us the ability to
remember things from our past or to project ideas into the future. Now, with that, I can create
an individuation as well as the linearity across time. And now because I have
linearity across time, I can learn from my past experiences. The right emotional part
of my brain is then, 'How does it feel to be in my
body in the present moment?' What does it feel like
when I dive into the water and I feel the pressure
push against my body? What does it feel like
to feel water as wet? I'm not on the clock.
I'm lost in the flow. I've got this excitement, and
I have a level of curiosity. And then my right thinking tissue is simply the consciousness of me, big as the Universe, connected to all that is. And this immense sense of
gratitude that I exist at all. "Oh my gosh, I'm alive!" We are living creatures made
up of these magnificent cells. And there's an awe and a wonder, and this deep sense of gratitude. Once you start realizing the four different
characters inside of yourself and being able to
recognize those in others, you can't not see it anymore. And once you understand it, it's like, "I have so much more power
over what's going on inside of my brain than anybody
ever taught me, wow!" It's beautiful. So I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who's diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. So my focus was on, how does our brain create
our perception of reality? Because my brother's perception of reality was so different from mine. And so I was teaching and performing research
at Harvard Medical School, and at the age of 37,
I woke up one morning and I had a major hemorrhage happening in the left hemisphere of my brain. My brain says, 'Oh my
gosh, I'm having a stroke. I'm having a stroke!' And then another part of my brain is saying,
'Wow, this is so cool, I'm having a stroke! How many brain scientists had the opportunity to
study their own brain from the inside out like this?' And then when I awoke
later that afternoon, the left hemisphere was
completely shut down. I no longer had me, the individual. I didn't know where I
began and where I ended. Jill Bolte Taylor died that day. And I was literally laying in this bed, and felt like a ton of
lead in the present moment. And when you're in the
right here, right now, and you have this expansive openness, big as the Universe
experience, then you see how everything is interrelated and energetically impacted. So I still had those portions
of my brain functioning, but me, the individual, I was gone. And we really had no idea
even following surgery what I would get back or if I would have any ability
to have any recognition or recollection of the identity
that I had had for 37 years. So what the stroke gave me
was this new introduction to the depth of these emotions. However, my sadness, my grief, grief is a whole body, whole envelopment, and it takes you to your knees, and it takes you to the floor, and it just flood with
this incredible emotion, and 'Wow, I feel this because I loved, this is
the beauty of being alive!' But it's not designed to be a lifestyle; it's designed to be information that I can then learn from and hold onto, and find meaning in my world. The emotions, the power of the emotions are so beautiful, so rich, so everything, that without 'em, we would be one plus one equals
two, and who really cares? It took eight years for me to completely recover all function. I knew that I had completely recovered when that organizational
part of me came back online and said, "Now I wanna be the boss again." And the rest of my brain went,
"We are so glad you're back, because we need your skill sets to be a functional human
being in our society. But no, we are not gonna
live based on the values of the left hemisphere. We are now gonna live as a
collective democracy inside of our own head." I have to have that
left hemisphere in order to be a functional human being. But even though my ego center
is in my left hemisphere, my left hemisphere is not who I am. I am a left hemisphere
and a right hemisphere. If we are hooked into the emotional part of our left hemisphere that
says, "I don't like that, it's not familiar, I don't
feel safe," that clamps me down and I become constricted. And I can fuel that by
sharing those biases with those whom I am familiar with, then we all become more constricted, we all become more rigid. We all become more we versus they. Yet, we have the capacity
to say, "I am a part of a magnificent collective whole in relationship to a magnificent world." And as we engage with the
world in a healthier way, the world becomes healthier. We have the capacity to understand and have a healthy relationship with all the different
parts of who we are. And when we look at the anatomy
of the brain, when we get that streamlined activity
between the two thinking parts of our brain, the two
emotional parts of our brain, and we're having a whole brain
life, wow, things change. I think the first thing we
need to do is be willing and open to explore what's
going on inside of our own head. Get to know who you are. Get to know your four characters. Get to know how they engage in your life, who they have relationships with, how they feel inside of your body. How much time do you want to spend in each of these four different parts? Once you know that, then you
can create a negotiation. And to me, that's personal freedom, to be able to know I have
the power to choose moment by moment who and how I wanna be, regardless of my external circumstance. And it's a wonderful,
wonderful way of being.
