Day 206 of 365 - Whole Brain Living

I listened to a very interesting interview today, with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a scientist who became famous after having a severe left brain stroke, and later giving a TED Talk, as well as writing a book about her experience.  The book is called My Stroke of Insight.  Today's interview was about how she is now living in the world differently since her stroke recovery.

Dr. Jill, as she prefers to be called, still works as a scientist, and looks at life from the perspective of brain biology.  Although her stroke experience temporarily obliterated her left brain function, it helped her to give more value to her right brain functions and abilities.  In the time since her stroke, she has come to understand better how her whole brain serves her to live and function in the world as the person she wants to be.

During the stroke experience, she became aware of how her right brain acts as the seat of consciousness, a part of something greater than the self.  It was an expansive, euphoric experience.  The emotional awareness there was timeless.

The left side of the brain is all about language, detail, focus and time.  It's what get's us organized and gets things done.  The emotions here attach to the pain and strife of yesterday, today and that coming tomorrow.  Dr. Jill states that emotions happen at a cellular level.

As a society of reading and learning humanity over the past few centuries, we have become much more left brain dominant.  As a result, we often discount or judge the expansive emotion experienced through the right brain.  The left brain tends to interrupt or judge these and does not allow them full expression.

Dr. Jill says that 'emotions are part of the magnificence of being human'.  If we allow our physiology to fully experience them, to let them flush through, then the circuit completes at a cellular level.  If not, we hold onto pain memories that our left brain hooks into, again and again with its orientation to detail.

Since her stroke recovery, Dr. Jill's attitude has been that, if she's going to be in her body in this life, she needs to take the best of all the pieces into the expression of herself in the world.  The left brain wants to push and the right brain wants to pause and dream.  Both are important in the energy wave of life.  After a push, there needs to be a pause to reorganize.  There needs to be space for brilliance to infuse itself. 

She believes we have the power to choose to attend to, respect and value the component functions of both hemispheres, and to live whole-brained in the world.  What an uplifting and inspirational message!

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