BiteSize: Brain Function and Resilience: Applied Lessons from a Neuroscientist's Stroke Journey.

Ever wondered how a neuroscientist experiences and recovers from a stroke? If you're curious about the profound insights into brain function and the journey of recovery, this episode is for you.

Welcome to this episode of "It's an Inside Job," where I speak with Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, a neuroscientist and author, who shares her extraordinary experience of undergoing a left hemisphere stroke. Dr. Taylor’s unique perspective as a neuroanatomist allowed her to approach her stroke with fascination rather than panic, providing us with valuable insights into brain function and recovery.

Imagine gaining profound insights into brain function from someone who has experienced a stroke firsthand and successfully navigated the journey of recovery. 

By listening to this episode, you can:

• Understand Brain Function: Learn about the distinct roles of the brain’s hemispheres and how they influence our perception and behavior.
• Value Life More Deeply: Discover the importance of valuing life and the present moment, a perspective Dr. Taylor gained post-stroke.
• Explore Resilience and Recovery: Gain insights into the journey of recovery and the rebalancing of brain hemispheres.

Three Benefits You'll Gain:

1. Brain Function Insights: Understand the differences between the rational and emotional centers of the brain and their impact on our lives.
2. Recovery and Resilience: Learn about the eight-year recovery journey of Dr. Taylor and the strategies she used to regain balance.
3. Enhanced Well-Being: Discover how to avoid negative spirals of rumination and achieve a state of peace and present-moment awareness.

Are you ready to gain a deeper understanding of brain function and resilience from a neuroscientist who has lived through a stroke? Scroll up and click play to join our enlightening conversation with Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor. Gain the insights and inspiration you need to value life, understand your brain, and enhance your well-being.

Full Episode: from S2 E16:

Learning the Whole Brain Approach to Leadership & Resilience: Interview with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor - New York Times Best Selling Author & Neuroscientist

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:08] Well, welcome to It's an Inside Job Bite Size Fridays, your weekly dose of resilience, optimism, and well-being to get you ready for the weekend. Now, each week, I'll bring you insightful tips and uplifting stories to help you navigate life's challenges and embrace a more positive mindset. And so with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:36] In this week's Bite Size episode, I'm joined by Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, a neuroscientist and author. She delves into her remarkable journey through a left hemisphere stroke, sharing her profound insights into brain function. She explains the crucial differences between the brain's hemispheres and how this understanding can help us foster resilience and a positive mindset. Now, Dr. Taylor's insights into the brain's workings offer practical tips for embracing life's challenges and enhancing well-being, aligning perfectly with our goal of helping you to navigate life with more optimism and resilience. So without further ado, here's Jill Bolte-Taylor.

[1:17] Yeah, and you know, you hit it right on the head there by saying it was fascinating. Fascinating. You know, everybody said, Jill, why didn't you panic? Wasn't it horrible? And it's like, no, it was fascinating. I mean, my area of expertise, your area of expertise, it's internal processing. So if all of a sudden something went wrong, so I woke up in the morning and I had an excruciating pounding behind my left eye. Well, I'm a neuroanatomist. I'm a scientist. I do work in the lab. I'm not a neurologist, so I'm not surrounded or having a lot of relationships with people who are experiencing these major neurological disorders. I've read about them. I've taught about them.

[2:02] I've met individuals who have had them, but it wasn't my thing, right? So I did not know I was having a stroke. And so I woke up, I had a pounding behind my left eye. And so for me, I had had a history of migraine headache and I thought, OK, well, here we go. But I would only have maybe one migraine headache a year. I mean, it was very unusual. Sometimes I'd go a whole year without a migraine. Sometimes I might have two, but it wasn't a regular thing. But I woke up to this pounding and I had light sensitivity. So I closed the drapes. And then I started my normal routine, which was to jump onto a cardio glider, which was one of the exercise machines of the 80s, 90s. Those are the cross-country ones?

[2:52] No, it was actually a thing where you sit on it and your legs go one way, your arms go the other way. And you ride it kind of like a buck and bronco. It was a lot of fun. I loved that thing. It was great. I absolutely loved it. So that was my morning routine.

[3:07] But, you know, I'm on this machine and I'm looking at my hands and I'm realizing my hands look like claws on the bar. It doesn't just look like me anymore. And it was as though my consciousness had shifted to where I'm observing myself through a different perception than my normal experience and the pounding and the pain in the head only got worse. So I got off and then I started walking across my living room and I realized my body's very, very rigid and very deliberate. I had to actually think about moving my legs in space. Space and then by the time I got to the shower just getting into the shower that whole experience of of awareness of some muscles saying okay we got to contract when some muscles saying hey we got to relax and it was like you know all the consciousness had shifted into an internal processing and processing the external noises and the external world was was really gone on. Uh, so I go through a little drama and finally my right arm goes paralyzed. And it was then that, that the left brain rational thinking educated part of me said paralysis.

[4:24] Oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke. I'm having a stroke. And, uh, and, uh, and then the next thing my brain said was, wow, this is so cool. You know, how many brain scientists get to study the brain from the inside out? So, so, you know, I love that you say it would be fascinating because you would be fascinated. And in some ways, I think it was a positive that I, I was fascinated because I wasn't moved completely into fear. But I think the disadvantage was because I didn't move completely into fear. I didn't like go running out into the street saying I'm having a stroke, take me to the hospital. So yeah, there were advantages and disadvantages, but by the morning, by the end of that four hours, I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. And, um, and then I, I, I passed out as I was approaching the hospital and, uh, boom, you know, they, they, they start the process.

[5:22] If I may be wrong, but it took you eight years to recover from that. It did. And so at some point, your left hemisphere, I guess, did it totally go offline or part of it went offline? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it totally went offline. It was completely silent. It was very interesting to sit inside an absolutely silent mind. I mean, there's no conversation.

[5:49] There's no words. there's no language it is quiet and it was absolutely and you would notice right because then it's like wow this is like present moment boom here you are well i don't know i'm jill bolte taylor if i don't have my language centers telling me who i am i don't know my address or my phone number because my brain the left brain that keeps track of all those details reminding me it was gone so so in the absence of all sound whatsoever two and a half weeks up to surgery and then two and a half weeks after surgery I had nothing no sound inside of my brain and it was surreal because what it was was present moment all I had was the present moment and I could learn in the present moment. My mother could teach me, for example, how to put my socks on, and she could teach me how to put my shoes on, but I didn't have that linear thinking part of my left brain saying, okay, well, you have to put your socks on before you put your shoes on. That made no sense to me. So it was a fascinating, fascinating experience.

[7:03] You know, there's not been many astronauts on the face of the moon, and there's not, not as being maybe a handful of people who have experienced maybe this, especially with your background, education, knowledge, to make sense of it as you did. That is, you know, once in a blue moon, a super blue moon. The focus of this podcast, the reason I started it, Jill, was I wanted to create a resource for people to build emotional, physical, and mental resilience. And, you know, part of it is when people are feeling stress or anxiety or overwhelm. It's that inner critic that it never shuts up. The brain's just going on and on and on and leads to these negative spirals. But for you to say, you know what, there was a vacuum. It was just complete peace. I don't think anyone other than what I've read from what you've, your account has ever experienced that. I mean, my brain doesn't shut up. I think like a lot of people.

[8:00] Right. Yeah. It's kind of like a, it's like a radio always going on and you can change your channel, but it's still constant. And it's it was difficult when it started to come back on because I was so peaceful in that I felt this incredible sense of euphoria because all I was, was here. And the gift of the present moment of life is, oh my gosh, I'm alive. There's a sense of awe and gratitude of simply being alive and having eyes that can see and, and having ears that can hear. And I may not be a hundred percent in how I'm processing because I didn't have that left brain in order to make sense of it all, but I didn't care about making sense of it all. I was simply having this magnificent experience of being alive.

[8:50] It was beautiful. It was fascinating it was it was amazing and there were other people and and it was life and and it really gave me this incredible bottom line appreciation for what am i as a living being without all the details and the critics saying oh yeah but this isn't good enough and it's like oh no it's all good enough let's just make it better i was just wondering like i find it fascinating it you know when we practice a skill we can develop that part of that we strengthen those neural connections that neuroplasticity since your left hemisphere went dormant for a while and your right was an act of use when both hemispheres finally rebalanced themselves and they both came online did was your right more how can i say this did you build a skill or a habit to to be able to tame the left hemisphere a little more? I mean, was there a right hemisphere dominance?

[9:55] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that comes, you know, Jason, I think it all boils down to value structure. The right hemisphere values life. It values the experience of being alive. So, so to begin your day and end your day and have it, this infuse every moment of your day in letting that be predominant, then, then it becomes about left brain, me, me, the individual. Well, I know how fragile me, the individual is because she went off, you know, as far as I'm concerned, she died that day. And it was like, okay, I may find a new me across time, but that one she's gone. So, so, okay. What's my name? Jill Bolte-Taylor. Did I know? I had no clue. Did it matter? Not at all. Didn't matter to me. It mattered to my mother. It mattered to my father. It mattered to people in the external, but it didn't matter to me at all. I was still alive.

[10:58] So this awareness of value of, oh my gosh, I'm alive. What do I now do? How do I move this thing that is organic mass collection of cells as me? And I have manual dexterity and I have I have legs that give me mobility eventually, and I have eyes and I have ears, and eventually I'm going to be able to differentiate more and more as I recover left brain skills. But the left brain is all about me, the individual. So then I weigh everything as it relates to me, the individual. And it's a completely different value structure than when I come in as the value of how do I serve the collective whole. As long as I hold on to that as the primary value, I live my life completely differently.

[11:50] In the second part of our conversation, Dr. Taylor and I talk about the process that she went through writing those books and what she got out of it. What it helped to alleviate, and what it helped her to work through. I always find it really fascinating talking to authors about the process of what they go through when trying to put thoughts and emotions and memories down on paper. We also talk about, more specifically, the differentiation between the two hemispheres and how each of them has dedicated rational and emotional centers that process information differently. Differently and understanding these hemispherical differences means all the difference and when it comes to us trying to master and get control over the brain so we don't go down the rabbit hole of rumination if you want more why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest you will find the link in the episode in the show notes so make sure you hit that subscribe button and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational episodes on Monday and the latest Bite Sights episode on Friday. And have yourself a relaxing and rejuvenating week.

[13:02] Music.