Jill Bolte Taylor and Steven Snyder
On the morning of December 10, 1996, Jill Nolte Taylor woke up disoriented and with a pounding headache. She had a vague feeling that something was wrong. Soon she would realize how bad it was: a life-threatening, cerebral hemorrhage. She was having a stroke.
Among the 800,000 people who suffer strokes each year, Jill’s story is unique. A distinguished brain scientist, her vivid account of her stroke became one of the most-watched TED talks of all time. Also remarkable is Jill’s struggle to transform herself through a painstaking process of purposefully reprogramming her brain.
In my last blog post, I wrote about mindfulness meditation, a method to replace the operating system in your brain with a newer and more powerful version. Since your brain is otherwise functioning normally, this process can occur gradually over time. Jill had to do the re-programming on the fly. The stroke left her left hemisphere in tatters leaving her unable to function normally. She could not speak or do mathematical calculations of any kind. Her task was not to enhance old but working functionality with new improved features. Instead, she had to build new left-hemisphere functionality from the ground up.
Each hemisphere of the brain has its own unique function. The left hemisphere is the storyteller, spinning tales of the past and rehearsing future narratives. It excels in logic and making judgments. The right hemisphere is not burdened with the past or the future. It dwells solely in the present. It doesn’t make judgments. There is no good and bad; everything just “is.”
When Jill’s left hemisphere became incapacitated, her right hemisphere took over. Instead of existing as a separate entity with a separate ego (left hemisphere), Jill’s newly dominant right hemisphere experienced profound interconnectedness. No longer did she have her own identity, separate and apart from everything else. Instead, her life became an amorphous “blob,” indistinguishably interconnected with the entire universe. Her judging, egotistical, and inpatient left-hemisphere dominated self almost completely disappeared—replaced by a new person; more tranquil, serene and compassionate. As Jill wrote in her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Insight, “at the core of my right hemisphere consciousness is a character that is directly connected to my feeling of deep inner peace. It is completely committed to the expression of peace, love, joy, and compassion in the world.”
Jill was determined to rebuild the functionality of her left-hemisphere without undermining the wonderful new personality spawned by her right-hemisphere, a personality that she had grown to treasure. When she spoke at the University of Minnesota’s Neuroscience Discovery Showcase fund-raiser last week, her message was clear. Locked within our right hemisphere is the capacity for unbounded joy and unceasing love and compassion. Yet all too often, our judgmental and egotistical left hemisphere squashes these characteristics, replacing them with selfishness and self-centeredness.
Through her struggle to re-program her brain’s left-hemisphere, Jill Nolte Taylor teaches us a valuable lesson. If we pay conscious attention to the right-hemisphere’s plea for non-judgmental compassion, joyfulness and interconnectedness, we can lead happier lives and create a more peaceful and caring world. Isn’t this a brain operating system update worth installing?
