The Examined Life
The Examined Life podcast explores the questions we should be asking ourselves with a range of leading thinkers. Each episode features a different interview, and appeals to those interested in wisdom, personal development, and what it might mean to live a good life. Topics vary from discussing the role of dopamine mining and status anxiety, to exploring the science of awe and attention.
The Examined Life
Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor - Who are we, and what are we doing here?
Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor was a neuroanatomist at Harvard when she suffered a severe stroke on the left hemisphere of her brain. It was an experience which profoundly changed her life, and opened her up to the agency we all have in choosing our attention. She explores this in her TED talk back in 2008, which became one of the most popular TED talks ever. In this conversation we explore Jill's question 'who are we, and what are we doing here?', doing so through the lens of neuroanatomy, as well as her experience of having a stroke. Many of the ideas we explore are unpacked further in her book Whole Brain Living.
And so, as I lost the left hemisphere over those four hours, what I gained was an uninhibited, a disinhibited right hemisphere of the right, here right now, and the blessing to my life, even though I fell off the Harvard ladder and I lost all the terminology of my expertise, what I gained was what it really means to exist in the present moment and to feel, to be, to know that I actually the energetic of what I am is as big as the universe connected to all that is, and it's lovely there.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Examined Life podcast with me, kenneth Bermudez. If you ever stand back and zoom out from your default mental state, you might notice that they seem to coalesce around certain characteristics. Often we might feel task-oriented, the need to achieve and to work through our tick list. It perhaps comes with a sense of anxiety, while at other times, say during or after meditation or prayer or some kind of creative activity, our attention changes. We are more aware of our bodies, of being in the present moment, our connection to other people or to nature. We're also sometimes possessed emotionally with joy, sadness, rage, jealousy. These different states of attention shape who we become and how we experience the world. As Ian McGilchrist puts it, attention is a moral act. Today's guest has more to say about attention from the perspective of someone who has a unique insight into the brain and believes that we have more choice than we think we do over the kind of attention we pay.
Speaker 2:Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor worked as a neuroanatomist at Harvard University. It's fair to say that she understood the anatomy of the brain better than most, though. On December 10th 1996, dr Taylor woke up to discover that she was experiencing a stroke in her left hemisphere. Three weeks later, on December 27th 1996, she underwent major brain surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. As Dr Taylor rehabilitated from her stroke, she became able to articulate the insights that came to her while her left hemisphere was offline articulate the insights that came to her while her left hemisphere was offline. Some of these she describes in what became one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time my Stroke of Insight.
Speaker 2:Today I am delighted to be speaking to her on the Examined Life. We're going to be exploring Dr Taylor's experience and what that revealed to her about the way that we are made and the choices we have to make, about the kind of attention we pay to the world and indeed how this reshaped the second half of Dr Taylor's life. I hope you find this as interesting and helpful as I did as a conversation. Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor, it's a pleasure to be speaking to you today. Thank you so much for coming on the Examined Life podcast. As you're aware, the conversations on this podcast turn on a question that we should be asking ourselves, and so I wonder if we might dive in and begin to open up the question that you've been personally driven by, something that has animated perhaps your personal life or your academic life, or a combination of the two. What is the question that you think we should be asking ourselves? And then we can maybe explore where to look for the answer to that or how to begin to address it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to say that for my whole life I have been fascinated with one thing, and that is how does our brain create our perception of reality? How does it do that? What am I as a biological creature and what am I capable of perceiving? What am I capable of perceiving? How does that get processed and integrated inside of me as an organism, as emotions and as thoughts? And then, what say do I have in who and how I want to be? So, who am I and what are we doing here? Is, you know, I'm just fascinated by what I, what we are as humans, and because I look at society and I see, uh, I see that I believe that we can be more emotionally and spiritually and physically and thoughtfully, uh, healthy, I just, I just think we have much more say over what's going on inside of our lives than we have been existing as a society in relationship to ourselves and the planet. So for me, I guess it's who are we and what are we doing here?
Speaker 2:I love it. Who are we and what are we doing here? Incredibly rich questions that I look forward to exploring and it seems to tap into a kind of good developing theme in this series of podcasts has been what I've termed positive maladjustment, like being maladjusted to the world around us, which often seems unhealthy in various ways, and so, figuring out it's kind of a riff on the Krishnamurti quote it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society. So the question then is what does it mean to be positively maladjusted to that society? And part of the way that you're kind of addressing that is like is like asking this question, maybe the fundamental question who are we Like, as Plotinus put it, and we who are we?
Speaker 2:And so I wonder, because I know you have some really helpful and specific ideas on how you might answer that. But perhaps we could go further upstream and say how has your answer that? But perhaps we could go further upstream and say how has your answer to that changed over time? So if we go back in time, say prior to you having a left hemispheric stroke, you're an academic neuroanatomist at Harvard. Who are we as Dr Jill Bolt-Taylor prior to that incident?
Speaker 1:Well, I'll say first that the question became an issue in my life, very young, because one of my brothers, who's only 18 months older than I, would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia. 18 months older than I would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia. So what that says to me is that my brother was very different from me when we were very young enough so that I began questioning what are we right, what are we, and how is it that he and I can have the exact same situation but walk away with completely different interpretations? So that was where it began for me, in the questioning of what is normal and because one of us was not typical, but I didn't know which one. All I knew was we were different, and so I really wanted to understand what is normal. What does it mean to be normal at a physical level, at an emotional level, at a cognitive level? What is normal?
Speaker 1:And one of the interesting things about medicine is that in order for anything to at the level of our physical body, in order for anything to be diagnosed as normal, it only has to happen 70% of the time. 70% is two more than half. I mean that's like that's not that much right? 70%, seven out of 10 times. So that means we have a lot of deviation, and variation is the rule, not the exception. And so if that's the case, then how do I take what I am, understand what I am as much as I possibly can anatomically, neuroanatomically and histologically, which is tissue cellular? How do I really envision what we are as biological creatures and then go from there as far as behavior and variation and different types of behavior? So who are we? I think before my stroke was uh, we are this magnificent collection of cells, uh, and they are organized in certain patterns and orientations so that we can have behavior and output as thought, word or deed, uh, based on the anatomy. And so I would say that's what I thought pre-stroke.
Speaker 2:Okay, fascinating. So your your way of like going into this question, obviously very personally intertwined with your experience of your brother, and you thought the way to understand who we are is through a microscope, in a sense. It's kind of anatomically, biologically. Some people might might head to anthropology or philosophy or theology, but for you that route to insight was by zooming in and understanding the way we're physiologically put together. Yes, very well done and like um I I that that world for you as you understood it?
Speaker 1:uh, did it? Did you feel satisfied with the answers you got? I did, yeah, I really did, you know? Because, um, cells, to me, are the most beautiful, magnificent creatures that exist and instead of simply being a single-celled organism, we have some 50 trillion of these magnificent organisms packaged together, so we can have the abilities and complexity of human life, and to me, we are just the most miraculous thing that has yet been created, and we're in the process still of our own biological evolution. Will we ever get there, who knows? But at least we're this magnificent entity with possibility, so there's still hope.
Speaker 2:The hope of what we might become is something that you have personally dedicated more than a decade to, and it shapes your life now and that comes out of this insight you gained into what we're capable of, what we have potential for. That you learned when you had the left hemisphere stroke. This is something you've written widely about, spoken widely about, particularly your extremely popular TED Talk. So I wonder whether we could visit that instant now and explore what occurred and how it shapes this question for you of what it means to be human.
Speaker 1:So I always refer people to the TED Talk because I can't do better than the TED Talk. So if your audience likes to watch TED Talks, I encourage you to watch my Stroke of Insight. But essentially what happened was I was a brain scientist at Harvard, a neuroanatomist. I was teaching and performing research, so I was at the top of my game. I was teaching and performing research, so I was at the top of my game. I was serving on the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which is NAMI, and this is 200,000 families in the US with family loved ones with severe mental illness. And I was on years old and I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye and it turned out that that was a hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of my brain. And over the course of four hours I watched my own left hemisphere completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information, and part of the information that went offline immediately was me, the individual, me, mine, jill Bolte-Taylor. That girl died that day and, as the death of whom I had been was happening at a cellular level, I still had this right hemisphere. That was okay and would be okay. So I lost.
Speaker 1:The left hemisphere has two things, two major differences than the right hemisphere. It's got a lot of them, but the biggest differences for me had been one my identity. Jill Bolte-Taylor lives in a tiny little group of cells, my ego center, in my left hemisphere. And the left hemisphere has temporality, it has a past, it has a present and it has a future. So if I me, the individual, I little Jill, has a past, I can remember my past and I can project my mind into the future at some time and place that is not, which is right here right now. So we have these two different hemispheres that function completely differently, with the left having me and identity, with a temporal past and future and all this knowledge-based, language-based knowledge, and then the right hemisphere, where I, the individual, I don't exist in my right hemisphere because in order for me to exist in the present moment, I have to refer to something else, somewhere else, to know what my name is, because the right hemisphere doesn't know and it doesn't care.
Speaker 1:So the right hemisphere is this experience, where we simply exist in the present moment. We are tuned into all of our sensory systems, we do not define the boundaries of where we begin and where we end, because that's in a group of cells in the left hemisphere. We don't have names, we don't have words, we don't have definition, we don't have right, wrong or good and bad. We don't have judgment. All we have is right here, right now, present moment, fantastic experience of the present moment.
Speaker 1:And so, as I lost the left hemisphere over those four hours, what I gained was an uninhibited, a disinhibited right hemisphere of the right here, right now, and the blessing to my life, even though I fell off the Harvard ladder and I lost all the terminology of my expertise. What I gained was what it really means to exist in the present moment and to fill, to be, to know that I actually, the energetic of what I am, is as big as the universe, connected to all that is. And it's lovely there, it's lovely there. So I gained these two very, very distinctive awarenesses of what these two hemispheres inside of our head do. And then, yet they communicate through some 300 million axonal fibers.
Speaker 1:So we're ultimately supposed to have all of it, we're supposed to live lives that are whole brain, yet in our society we function from the value structure of the me mine, individual of that left hemisphere. And so me, mine, I want more, more, more. I want a better job. I want a bigger bank account, I want a bigger house, I want a boat, I want, I want, I want, and and it's just this incessant, never ending. I want more. I want more where the right hemisphere doesn't need anything. It's simply grateful to be alive.
Speaker 2:So I, I'd love to dwell in this, this, this experience of yours, a little bit longer. Um, I and ask also the, the, the, the left, the ego, the, me, me, me. This is the, this is what we are kind of reared on. It's the air and the water that we take in Right, and it seems that your your right hemisphere experience, your left hemisphere experience, although you talk about whole brain living, we've got the whole thing. You talk about whole brain living, We've got the whole thing. Is it right to say that you're either inhabiting one kind of way of perceiving or the other, but not both together? They're kind of exclusive ways of understanding or attending to the world.
Speaker 1:They are exact opposite.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They are exact opposite ways. So say, for example, I look at something and as I look at something in my environment, I can do one of two things my eyes can either focus in to better define how is that made or what is in, or I can pull away and have it become a part of the bigger picture of the room. Okay, so that's a great example. You can do one or the other at any moment in time. We are constantly dancing between the two versions of awareness, packaging them together, which is the point, so that I'm looking at both the big picture and the little picture, so that I have the whole picture.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. The left hemisphere, like yourself, like E McGilchrist, talks about it's a very good servant, but it doesn't get the whole picture. There's lots that's missing from the perspective of the left hemisphere and you say that the so the way you describe it's almost like a religious experience. In fact, I think in your ted talk you use the word nirvana. Um, it's this unity of all things and and it sounds, uh, you know, like something that who wouldn't want that right Extraordinary, kind of beyond words, an ineffable experience. Is it something? If this has forever been kind of places? Or did it feel new had it been so kind of droned out by your left hemisphere attention that you?
Speaker 1:um, you know, when, when I was, when I was growing up, my brother was schizophrenia, was brilliant and he was straight A's and he was valedictorian and he was winning all the awards and he was satisfying all my parents' needs to have a high achieving child. And it was great for me because then they didn't care what I did and I was very musical, I was very artistic, I was very creative, I was very athletic, so I already was right-brained before I turned on my anatomy and my poor mother, because she's a PhD in mathematics, history and philosophy of science, of what is mathematics. My father was a PhD in counseling psychology. They were these really smart people. And my poor mother was wondering if I was ever going to become scholastic. You know is is. Is she the myth, you know? Is she ever going to like wake up? Uh, you know, my potion is so, um, and I had zero interest in that and I didn't have to because my brother was everything.
Speaker 1:So, uh, then I got to college and I fell madly in love with cadaver lab, believe it or not. Cadavers, uh, anatomy, it was it for me. I just uh, so beautiful, I mean to be able to cut open an abdomen and look and see, oh my gosh, it was so beautiful. And then it was like I wanted to know every artery, every vein, every nerve, uh, every, everything that was normal, everything that was not normal. I want to. I wanted it all. Yum yum, yum, give me, give me, give me. And then it was under a microscope. And then cells are so beautiful under a microscope and, oh my gosh, it's delicious, I mean, it was. It really captivated my soul and so it's like, okay, well, um, if I'm going to go higher education, this is definitely what I'm going to do. And in in a family like mine we had, I had to pick a field that my parents knew nothing about, otherwise I would never be the expert Right, and so cutting up dead bodies was nothing they ever they had any interest in or desire for. So it was great fun, you know, and and so I prospered and and I loved it and I was bright and and it was I. Just, I just grew and grew and grew in anatomy and neuroanatomy, uh, and then got my doctorate and then went to Harvard to teach and perform research and everything was great. I mean, I was just having a great time.
Speaker 1:And then, when I had the hemorrhage and the left hemisphere went offline. It was like, okay, I get to go back to being what I was before. You know, I could go back to my art, I could go back to my music, I could go back to. So for me, academics was something I had added on. And then I wiped that out and it was like, okay, well, I'm good with or without it.
Speaker 1:And I thought, well, maybe I'll grow up to be a landscaper, you know, something that I enjoyed physically and could comprehend cognitively, because cognitively things weren't happening. I wasn't very bright in the beginning, so that's how that was for me. And then, just over time, as I, after the stroke and after surgery to remove a blood clot the size of a golf ball, once they got that pressure out of there, then it was, you know, sleep a lot. And then, well, what do I? What do I? What can I do? What do I need to do? What can I do next? You know what? Just this constant, and then sleep, and then and recovery as a 24 seven job I mean, there's no break away from from, you know, trying, and, and so I was committed and look what happened.
Speaker 2:So the the left brain is obviously, the faculties are back, you're properly online, but you've come back different, right? You're, um, not. Not only are you no longer working in that research field at Harvard, but your understanding of who we are seem to have changed in a in a fairly profound way that that has steered the course of the last kind of decade or so. Is that? Is that the case?
Speaker 1:Yes, Cause you know the, the biggest difference between me pre-stroke and post-stroke is, um, the left hemisphere. Value is for detail and for me, at the center of the universe. And I know now that me, I, Joe Bolte-Taylor, I'm a collection of cells in my left hemisphere and because of those cells, I have likes, I have dislikes. I know where I live, I know what my phone number is, I know things about me because of those cells. But in the absence of those cells it's really hard to take those cells very seriously. After you realize, you know they're just a stroke away. I mean, I hate to say that, but boom, who am I in the absence of me? I am in this consciousness of the collective whole and of being an energetic being in relationship to the energy around me. And to know that. You know, we're in an interesting time in science where 20 years ago there were two words you were not allowed to talk about, Two things just taboo. And one is the word consciousness. Now we're all talking about consciousness. Right, it's common to talk about consciousness, but boy, if we talked about consciousness it was, you know, behind closed doors. And what do you think is going on? And then the other word is energy. The only kind of energy we were allowed to talk about was ATP, the energy producer of the mitochondria, which is an organelle inside of the cell. But we know that we are energy beings. We are this conglomeration of atoms and molecules in motion by this energetic, and there is no boundary to the energetic. And my energetic eventually will blend into yours, no matter where you are in the universe, and because of quantum physics. Now science is actually beginning to wrap its mind around the possibilities of things that it doesn't know how to use a scientific method in order to define and understand. So we're at a really interesting and exciting time, but to the right hemisphere.
Speaker 1:The value is the collective whole. I care about us as humanity. I'll come on here and put you on my calendar and come and have a conversation with you, because you care about people and the people who care about what you care about care about a life well lived and what can. How can we look at how someone has lived a life so we might gain some insight into our own growth. To me, that's how I look at you, and so it's yeah. It's like yeah, I'll show up for that conversation. I think that that's a good conversation and important for people to have. But for so, for me, it's about how do I use me as an instrument of, of movement, of hope.
Speaker 1:First of all, because there's always hope, there's always possibility, there's always new ways of being, a new ways of perceiving Um, but also, you know, a celebration of life, and the left hemisphere is so hard and it is actually wired for hate. It is wired to focus on that which is different from self and to repel against it. So that takes us right back to you know, being a single-celled organism, organism. If you are too foreign, too different from me, it is my biologically programmed instinct to push away because you don't feel safe. Well, how else do we hate one another? Who do we hate? We hate people who don't look like us, who don't pray like us, who don't speak like us, who aren't like us. Okay, well, who are us? Well, us is whatever's familiar. So this brain is this magnificent tool that can either control us or we can have really a healthy relationship with in order to explore our lives, so that we can find our own inner peace and bring the best of who we are into the world.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm very glad you did say. Yes, jill, it's. You know it's a real pleasure to be speaking to you. I'm quite interested in and exploring some of the practical ways that we can engage with what you call character four. You know, this way of attending that has us much more present to the moment.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I'm not alone. In fact I know I'm not alone in struggling sometimes to feel present to the moment, to not have that kind of whirlwind of thoughts, whether it's, you know, self-doubt or obsessing over this or that or whatever, which robs me from the present moment. I'm also aware that within me is the capacity to be very present. It's something I experience variously through, perhaps, spiritual practice, through prayer, meditation, sometimes through kind of cold water immersion, or often when I'm in the zone and I'm running, I feel very present. Or, ideally, when it's with somebody else, when I'm in the zone and I'm running, I feel very present. Or ideally, when it's with somebody else, when I'm giving them my full attention and totally present to them, though it doesn't happen often enough, and I think this is a kind of general problem that people find, particularly with the attention economy and so on. So I wonder, practically speaking, how do we engage this right hemispheric present moment attention. What are some of the ways you would suggest?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that, um, I think I think there's a few different ways of approaching this. Um, one is I can be in the present moment, uh, physically, um in, uh, you know, I, I'm in Indiana, we're always playing basketball. Right, I can get the basketball I can, I can just go out and I can just kind of of uh, practice with myself, do whatever I'm doing, engage in movement patterns in my body. I can teach myself something new. I can teach myself how to play the piano. Oh, my gosh, you know, I mean two hands. Wow, I can do guitar and I can do cello, but two lines of music at the same time. I mean this stuff. This will pull you into the present moment.
Speaker 1:But the left hemisphere then comes on with judgment and says I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm never going to get any good at this. This is ridiculous. The piano, the C, isn't even in tune. It's driving me crazy. Whatever, right, give me a million reasons to not engage. Okay, figure out what you can actually engage in so physically. That's one way of the experiential. The other way is to seek the quiet mind and of course the quiet mind is a multi-billion dollar industry right now and how to meditate and how to become quiet enough that I can say, okay, I paused in my brain for like 20 seconds, oh my God, you know. And 20 seconds is a whole lot to a brain that doesn't do that, but it's nothing compared to 20 minutes, or, you know, to be able to go there spontaneously. So I think you have to then ask yourself okay, well, if I know what my goal is, if I know where I want to go and I know what that feels like, um, what's in the way of me doing that? And that's when the four characters of the brain, I think, come into play, because, uh, the rational thinking brain of the left hemisphere, this has language and it's busy and it creates order, and it automatically creates order and it, it likes method and it likes to be the boss and it defines what's right and wrong and good and bad, and so, so you know I can define what is right, I look and look in my house and tell you five things that are wrong. Right, I, regardless of the thousand things I might think are right, I can tell you five things that are wrong. So, um, uh, the brain, it's designed for that.
Speaker 1:So, get to know that part of your brain. Uh, give that part of your brain a name. Figure out when is it appropriate for that part to come out? When does it come out? Who likes it? Who does it like? What does it do? Uh, and then think about the emotions of the left hemisphere. This is all the emotional pain from the past, this is my rage and my sadness and my trauma, this is my complaining, my worry. This is all these emotions that are in the present moment, but they're of something else. I'm mad at you because two weeks ago, you, you know, you got up and and you made me pay the bill, whatever you know, and it's like, it's like. So, so the emotions paying attention, know this part of who you are be able to honor this part of who you are, be glad for it, celebrate it, live it, recognize it. And then get to know the emotional group of cells in your right hemisphere, which is experiential in the present moment.
Speaker 1:When you dive into the water, well, where's your mind? What are you thinking? What do you feel? The temperature of the water against your body. You feel the pressure, you feel wetness. Oh, my God, I can feel wetness.
Speaker 1:How many of us wash our hands and we don't even feel wetness because we're off in a different part of our brain. And then character four that you refer to, I mean, this is the rare gem of our own divine nature is the rare gem of our own divine nature. You know, this is the part of us that is simply filled with gratitude that, oh my God, I am alive. I have been on this planet for 65 years, I'm still here, I'm still learning, I'm still laughing, I'm still growing, I'm still eating, I'm still just simply because I'm alive.
Speaker 1:Now I think it behooves people to gain a little excitement over the fact that they exist at all.
Speaker 1:Now, a lot of the people might be going what in the hell is this woman talking about?
Speaker 1:But that's it. It's this fundamental sense of gratitude that I'm alive. And if I realize that I'm alive, I'm not dead, I'm alive and I get to choose things in my world and I have mobility and I have dexterity and I have language and I have all this power. I mean, this is the power of what I am, this beautiful 50 trillion cells. And but if I give all that power away to my hostility or my pain from the past, or I give all my power away to, okay, let's just create order and let's direct everything and let's organize everything, which is all outside of me. You know, I don't know I have all this capacity. So to me, going back to the original question of who are we and what are we doing here, who are we? Are these multiple characters inside of each one of us, based on the anatomy of our brain? Get to know these different characters, watch them in the wild and then figure out okay, what say do I have in how I am, when I am and what I want to be.
Speaker 2:Until that, kind of steps into the next half of your question. We contain multitudes, we have these different characters, and what are we doing? Here is a question that is answered differently by these different characters, and so if we, you know, contains these four, how do you answer that when you've got this cacophony of we're here to be productive and get stuff done and so on, or we're here to experience productive and get stuff done and so on, or we're here to experience and love, uh, and be grateful, like how? How do you respond to that question, knowing that you contain, you know, characters one, two, three, four because I know that two and three are temporary of this form and character.
Speaker 1:Four is the part of me. It is the part of our brain, first of all, every ability we have. We have that ability because we have cells that perform that function. I can see you because I have a visual cortex. I can wiggle my fingers because I have motor cortex. I have language because I have all that complexity, and I also have the ability to feel big as the universe because I have cells that perform that function. So we are wired to have this expansiveness. So let's say, we're standing on a mountaintop and we're looking out over and, oh my gosh, there's just this incredible sense of awe. And some of us may have that sensation often and some of us may hardly ever, if ever, have that experience, but we do have that capacity. So we have all of these different abilities and I I do something with people that I I call go into the gutter, and I encourage people to go to the gutter.
Speaker 1:And what this means is imagine you're laying in a gutter. I don't know how you got there, whether you were in a car accident or you were on a bike and you got smacked, and you're in the gutter and you feel that's where you are Now. You're in the gutter. As soon as you're in the gutter and you feel that's where you are now, you're in the gutter. As soon as you're in the gutter, you're aware you're in the gutter. Right, you're probably not thinking about that meeting at work anymore. I mean, that is now beyond us because we have a sense of urgency going on. And as I'm laying here in the gutter and I can feel drips coming down, I am bleeding and I can feel drips coming down. I am bleeding, it is my blood. I can taste the blood in my mouth and I am aware that, more than likely, this is my end. This is where I transition.
Speaker 1:And as I'm in that space of knowing that I'm on the verge between this life that I have lived and the absence of life, always knowing one day it would arrive, just never knowing the circumstances, for mine, the left thinking, rational, shuts down the emotion and pain from my rational shuts down the emotion and pain from my past shuts down.
Speaker 1:I come into the present. I'm having this experience, physiological experience of saltiness, because I am a salt creature and I'm aware, in a presence of gratitude, that I existed at all. Now, if you can take yourself to the gutter on your own, in the silence of your own heart and mind, and you can let yourself just be in that space of gratitude on the edge of your life and then realize but I get to get up and I get to re-engage with my life, you're going to feel and be aware as different circuits begin to click back into position for you to go back to being who you used to be. And it's in those kinds of awarenesses then we gain a power. Once we're aware of something, we can change it, we can differentiate between a this and a that, and then we can try in order to become more of what we think or feel we might want to become more of.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing that exercise. It's really kind of emotive. These things, I think, can be really helpful and powerful, helping to pull focus on what we're valuing and then offer a choice of how to move forward from that. The psychologist, lisa Miller, led me in an imaginative exercise this was an episode last series that had a really similar impact, as in it kind of helped to engage a different way of attending one that's situated, as you describe it, within the right hemisphere. Can I ask that you know when we're attending with the right hemisphere, when we're engaging in the world in that way, do you think we're engaging with some kind of larger consciousness? Are we tapping into something that is out there rather than you know in here?
Speaker 1:Because, as you say, it's characterized by this sense of interconnection with life and the universe, if that makes sense as a question with life and the universe, if that makes sense as a question, I see it as I see it as like a porthole, uh, to the consciousness of the universe. I think it's kind of like um, otherwise, uh, you know, what is all? Is all something that is within me? What is prayer? Is prayer something that is within me or is is? Is prayer outside of me? When I mantra and I preoccupy the left hemisphere, am I just mantraing and occupying my left hemisphere and feeling a sense of connection to something that is greater than I? Is that within me or is that outside of me? Regardless of the answer to that question, I have to have the cells. Every ability we have is because we have cells that perform that function. So I believe that that is the cells of the right hemisphere, in the way that they are essentially this portal system for that capacity of having those kinds of experiences.
Speaker 2:I'm aware that we're going to run out of time, but I wonder if I might just ask kind of one last question and draw these threads together a bit. So we contain multitudes. Who are we? We are many and we have different purposes. So I think of the left hemisphere as generally instrumental. It's got extrinsic purposes. You know, get that wood, write that paper, whatever it is, and the right is it doesn't get governed by extrinsic purpose. It's maybe intrinsically. It's here to be, to bear witness, if you like to take in and feel gratitude. So if I ask you this in kind of post-stroke, dr Jill Walt Taylor, perhaps previously you know you might have said my purpose is to further knowledge of science and so on, and you're still doing that. But my sense is that's no longer your kind of extrinsic, primary purpose. Why are we here? Why are you here?
Speaker 1:You know, I think that I think I'm here to stimulate and be stimulated by. I mean, I really think it boils down to that. But then I as a human, because I have so many different capacities, I get to realign that and redefine that all the time. It's interesting Sometimes I'm very clear on what my purpose is. Like I had to get that book Whole Brain Living. I had to get that out of me. I had to get my stroke of insight out of me and then I could give it to the world. And then I just played in the world and had a blast traveling around the world.
Speaker 1:But recently it's Whole Brain Living and I truly believe that my message as a messenger from this profound experience is is whole brain living? And what the material in that book? How am I going to do it? I'm not sure. Is it going? Because we're, you know the world is going to determine that I will be available for that. But how's it going to happen? I don't know. You never know. Uh, but we don't have an Oprah anymore to fling it into the world. We don't have time 100 to fling it into the world. So so now I'm doing it differently. Do I care? No, I'm not attached to it. I did my part, I had the stroke. I wrote what I learned through the eyes of the scientists. I believe it's absolutely brilliant, beautiful material, um and um, and I'm not interested in in a full-time job again.
Speaker 1:I'm turning 65 now. That doesn't mean that something couldn't happen and I could end up being a full-time online teacher again, getting whole brain living out into the world, but I'm not attached to the outcome. That's the difference between who I am now and who I used to be pre-stroke. Before I cared about the outcome. Now it's like I know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm not attached to the outcome. I'm showing up, you know. If it's the right time for everything to fall into place, great, I'm on board.
Speaker 1:And if not, then I'm going to go back to the cove and do that and hold the energetic energetic because I'm an energetic girl. You know, I have learned the power of what I am, as as this half of me, as a human, we are powerful beyond measure. There's no question in my mind about that. Otherwise, manifesting and the secret and all this stuff wouldn't be real and and it is. I mean, it is so. So then the question is you know, what do I really want and and how do I position myself? And right now we're in a a a crazy, a crazy environment where people are terrified, and part of what I do when I go to the cove is I hold the peace. I just hold the peace and I help other people figure out how to maintain mental health during a uh, you know, a political cycle that is, um, terrifying people on both sides well, it sounds like a very liberating way of living, not not being bothered about what comes of it, but just showing up and doing your part.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm trying. Well, I think.
Speaker 2:I think within that is a is a great encouragement for anyone who's listening to go and get whole brain living and and try and learn their characters and find the piece that you are. You are enjoying, jill.
Speaker 1:You know people. It's been amazing the number of people. We've got it in school systems, not for the kids, but for the adults and the parents. You know I have people working with with physicians, with emergency room doctors, with nurses, with all these different, because it's kind of like somebody comes to me and they say, hey, I'm a, I'm a paralegal, and I want to help all the paralegals because you know we need more, you know we need a little more, right, hemisphere is essentially what they're saying. Um and so they're in that network and I say how do I serve you? You know, let me help, support you. So so if you have someone in your audience who can get very excited about whole brain living and they're interested in sharing it, I'm a user-friendly girl. I'm here to help other people figure out how to do what they think they're supposed to do.
Speaker 2:Oh, wonderful, well, uh, you heard it here. Uh, I think it's uh, um, I think it's a very exciting message, to be honest, and in an anxious generation where there's a lot to be wound up about, finding those touchstones of peace, especially that promise that it exists within you right now and right here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. And what does that mean? What's in the way of it and how do I find it? And is it real? And yes, it is real. And there are things blocking you from it, circuits inside of your brain, and when those calm down, the inhibition comes off and we have other experiences. So our capacity, we are beyond our wildest imaginations of magnificence. I'm sorry, I'm just going to.
Speaker 2:I know we're out of time, but I've got to ask you this, just because you mentioned it and you mentioned it in your book as well the secret and manifesting and things like that. There will be people and I think I'm sometimes one of them who are kind of just instantly a little bit skeptical of this idea. What would you say to people like us?
Speaker 1:Well I'd say good. I think it's important to be skeptical. At the same time, it's important to not be closed minded. And if you're not, uh, first of all I think it's uh, much of it may be language. Um, I tend to be very careful. When I talk about the brain, when I talk about circuitry, uh, when I talk about things, I don't go real woo-woo, because real woo-woo makes you know you can feel people's you just start to cringe inside.
Speaker 1:You know and it entertains me a little because that's someone's judgment you feel that experience because you're not comfortable with this other language, and that's actually the kind of thing you ought to look at yourself and say, well, what is that really, and how big of a deal is this? And is this just language? The mere concept of God, the word God, can freak out all kinds of people, but they're all okay with all these other, you know, more esoteric terms. So so getting out of our own way so that we can grow as human beings, I think is really, really important. And the more rigid and stern we are about language, the more the deeper that boxes that we're in. It's harder to loosen the box. Forget the language, use language that you're comfortable with.
Speaker 1:If I'm, you know the word manifest and the movie the Secret. This was made big because of this movie, but we do manifest. I manifest love in my home by being loving in my home and my dogs live inside of that love. Well, that's a manifestation. So you can, you know it's not like, oh, I want a big boat, and so now I'm going to put out to the universe that I want a boat. You know, people can do that, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is manifesting a comfort inside of your own being, where you are good, regardless of what's going on around you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. I can get on board with that. I think I think you might be right. The language, the language thing uh is is oh, I get it. Yeah, um well, dr Jill Bolt-Taylor sorry, bolt-taylor, right.
Speaker 1:I can't respond to either.
Speaker 2:I've so appreciated your time and your insights, which are, um, which are incredibly instructive, I think, uh, at this time, and perhaps always, uh so thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, and I love that you really you're having conversations with very like-minded, important people. I love that you are exploring the variety of us.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for adding to that variety. Jill, it's been a real pleasure speaking to you and my hope is that this conversation might prompt some more people listening to this to look into your work and what it means to be engaging in whole brain living. Thank you. If you've been intrigued by this conversation, then I recommend Jill's TED Talk, my Stroke of Insights and Amr's recent book Whole Brain Living. What I loved about it, and what I find really useful, is that Jill's experience of a stroke, combined with her knowledge of the brain, led to this conviction that we all have the capacity to become more present, more peaceful, more grateful, in a way that isn't related to our external circumstances but is available to all of us through the kind of attention we're able to pay. Jill today has provided an experience and knowledge base that I've not encountered before, but what she says seems to resonate well and speak to some other conversations.
Speaker 2:Lisa Miller in the first series on awakened awareness comes to mind, as does Dacher Keltner and all, and, of course, ian McGilchrist in the previous episodes. There's a theme emerging here. I try and allow the themes that emerge to speak to each other in my Substack writing, so if you're interested in how I am understanding and applying and processing these lessons in my own life, then do check out the substack which is called Positively Maladjusted. I hope that you're enjoying these conversations. Do please reach out and let me know how you're finding them or, ideally, stick your review online. It helps other people to find the podcast. Once again, I'm grateful to you for listening and to my brother, colin, for helping with production and just being a general source of encouragement. I'll be back in a couple of weeks time for another episode, where we'll be taking a deep dive into the questions that we should be asking ourselves.