A Stroke of Insight

I recently read a book by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who experienced the results of a stroke that incapacitated almost the entire left side of her brain.

Most people are aware that our left and right brains carry out very different functions, the left keeps time, makes comparisons, judges, categorises and labels. It contains our to do lists, our recollection of past and our future and also gives us our capacity for skills like language and mathematics. It provides us with a perception of our boundaries and a sense of who we are in the world, our name, age, occupation and our standing in society.

 

 

It was these analytical and ego functions that Jill began losing the day of her stroke, and until she had an operation to remove a massive blood clot that was incapacitating the neurones on that side of her brain, she experienced a very different world as she was plunged entirely into life lived from her right brain.

Living from the right brain

Peace

It is from this place that she had her Stroke of Insight, an insight into the beauty and peace that lies within all of us in our right brain, quietly waiting for us to access it, and as she says herself, only ever a thought away. With her stroke came a silencing of the inner chatter of the left brain and she was plunged into internal silence.

Connection and power

She describes herself in this state as feeling liquid as opposed to solid, and feeling connected to all. This sense lead her to lose her fear of loss, since if we are all connected, we cannot be separated from what we love, nor can we be attacked. She had an immediate sense of how she was intrinsically connected, not only of other people, but to all matter around her. She describes feeling immensely powerful and magnificent, and she felt no need to prove this through external validation or accomplishments.

And in this sense we are not less than, or more than, we are ALL.

Present-centeredness

The right brain is timeless as it does not register events in terms of past or future, and so our timelines are lost, plunging us into a never ending present moment.

No fear

Jill experienced an absence of fear because the left brain is the place of the What Ifs which are places in a projected future, and time having no meaning any longer, fear had no place to dwell.

Bliss

Most of all she describes how, despite her obvious incapacities when looked at from the outside, she existed internally in a state of bliss and peace – nirvana she describes it as. It is this state that many seek through practices such as meditation, exercise, yoga etc and is where we get to naturally when the left side of our brain quietens down. And it is waiting for us all the time if we are determined to access it.

A choice

Following removal of the blood clot and a lot of hard work and determination, Jill began to reclaim the functions of her left brain. And though she fought hard to get back her language, recollection and mathematical skills, she found some of the functions she regained were less welcome.

She began to re-experience frustration, fear and a sense of separation, all of the things that are inherent in the workings of the left brain. By then she had become so sensitive to the inner workings that when these emotions ran around her body, she was able to feel these states physically and found them strongly disagreeable. It was at this point that she realised that she had the choice to either fully re-learn and reinforce certain neural pathways and circuits, or allow them to go unused as much as possible in order to weaken them.

90 seconds

Jill describes how the metabolic and physical effects from the chemicals released from our brains caused by an emotional event only remain within our bodies for 90 seconds before they are flushed completely away. It is at this point that we can choose to let them go, or allow them to be reintroduced by allowing repetitive loops of thinking which we allow to take over our minds.  In essence she realised that peace was a choice she could make, and decided to make it more often.

And fascinatingly Jill says that the part of our brain that produces this internal dialogue is no bigger than a peanut – and yet we often let it run our lives and dictate to us how we should feel about situations!  A lot of our thinking is negative and repetitive.  Becoming aware of it gives us a choice as to whether we want to keep it present or not within our systems.

How to treat someone who is wounded

Jill’s experience when she in her right brain state and unable to do a lot of things for herself informed her on what is important to people undergoing similar situations. One of her messages was, “I am wounded, not stupid”. She wanted to be treated with respect, gentleness, patience and a sense of hope for her future.

She said how important it was that people communicated directly with her, despite her absence of language for much of the time. She remembered when people addressed her and looked her in the eye, waited for her response and took their cues from her. And she was incredibly grateful for those people who took the time and patience to interact with her in this way.

Though her language was impaired, her ability to read people through their body language and the intentions when they approached her was heightened. She found it almost unbearable to be cared for by people who were impatient or absentminded with her. She also found visitors who were anxious or distressed difficult to be around.

She gives a list at the end of the book of what she needed most during her rehabilitation, a list that is very moving and informative for anyone helping a loved one through illness. She wanted people to realise, “I’m here, come find me”. And she spoke of the healing power of being surrounded by people who had hope for her and positive expectations for her to recover, “even if it took 20 years”.

Reiki

Having had such a strong perception of the energy around her and from others, she speaks briefly at the end of the book about how she can understand how healing such as Reiki, where energy is channelled to another with positive intentions, can be truly healing.

EFT

It also struck me how EFT, which is an energy therapy itself, can also offer a helping hand in clearing old neural pathways of emotional responses that no longer serve us, especially ones that have become somewhat ingrained. Sending energy through the body to clear these is like achieving a re-set so that we can start once more with a fresh slate. And then choose again.

Positive intentions and visualisations

Jill spoke also of how she found it helpful for people to visualise her achieving the next steps in her recovery. The positive expectations that she could sense from those around her helped her to achieve the steps that eventually lead to her recovery. Hypnotherapy can help to plant these positive images and expectations in the mind to instruct it about what we want to achieve next, and allow energy to be directed to that purpose.

Eckhart Tolle

She also touches on Eckhart Tolle, who I’ve often written about here. He describes the awakening that he experienced that resulted in a diminution of his thoughts and inner dialogue of about 80%. He then lived to a far greater degree in the present moment (and the Power of Now) and with a feeling of bliss much like Jill describes. He did not lose his left-sided functions, but the transformation he experienced left him living from his right brain to a much greater degree, and his experience chimes with much of what Jill describes.

I am not my thoughts

Eckhart found himself thinking before his awakening and in a time of great struggle: “I can’t live with myself any longer.” And it lead him to wonder who was the ‘I’ and who is the “self I can’t live with’.  I think Jill’s experience points to the fact that the latter is the left brain with all its thoughts and fears and judgements.  And the former is our true selves, our everlasting peaceful natures that observes calmly what happens without judgement, without being disturbed; and this place resides in our right brain.

In this sense, as we are told again and again in therapies and in spiritual teachings: You are not your thoughts.  And Jill’s story gives us an anatomical way of illustrating exactly how this divide occurs.

Still Me

I also experienced a silencing of my left brain following being unable to sleep for 2 months due to sudden development of tinnitus. This lack of sleep left me so exhausted that I did not have the mental energy to remember the past or theorise about the future. I was left in a strange limbo in the present moment, within which, despite my distress at my sleepless situation, I also found compellingly peaceful and empowering. I acted on intuition and instinct to a much larger degree as I did not have my thinking mind to lean on. And it surprised me how smoothly things went when I simply followed my gut from moment to moment. It was quite a revelation to me.

In that present moment state I also found a deeper love and appreciation for those around me, as I had no energy to nit-pick or select or push away and what I felt more than anything else, despite my exhaustion, was gratitude and appreciation for those around me.

It was during those sleepless nights and from that place that I wrote my Children’s book , Still Me

About who we really are. Not our bodies, not our limits or our boundaries, but what lies within, peaceful and eternal. Jill realised that she was not a body, but existed in truth as an everlasting nature of her essential energetic. As she put it, ‘I never realised I was just a visitor here!’

Living peacefully

Within us lies the realisation of our safety and our peace. And we can make peace our starting point instead of our destination, if we can live life from our right brains as much as possible, Jill points out what a potentially beautiful world we could live in – heaven on earth. We begin in peace and we end in peace, we may as well live in peace.

Compassion

Her experience lead her to feel compassion for our human condition. As she says herself, none of us has a handbook on how to live here. The battle between love and fear is one that lies not between people, but within each one of us.

So here’s to exploration of our own left and right brains! May we strengthen the neural circuits that serve us, allow those that do not to drop away, and may we have the wisdom to know which are which.