My Stroke of Insight
By Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD
This is a book of many layers. Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD was inspired to write the book after experiencing a stroke which reduced the left-hemisphere of her brain to barely functioning. As a neuroanatomist, at 37 years old she had studied the brain in a way most humans haven’t. As a result she generously invites readers in to her experience, from the first moment of the stroke that changed her life, through eight years of recovery, and how the experience expanded her understand of herself and the miracle of life.
She began with the science, offering readers enough synopsis of brain anatomy so that we could understand her physical experience. The stroke occurred in the left hemisphere of her brain, where speech, movement, memory and other functions essential to daily life are controlled. She had to relearn to walk, talk, hold utensils, and a host of other tasks I take for granted. Her early chapters also, offer a tutorial to educate us all on the warning signs of stroke. But she quickly moved into a metaphysical experience, describing the level of consciousness remaining to her with half of her brain nonfunctioning.
She offers a picture, from the inside out, of a stroke victim’s experience. She gives insight to the medical community involved in caring for a stroke survivor, clues as to what’s happening in that person’s experience, not just the physical nuts and bolts of anatomy.
And the unitive experience she had as a result of her stroke along with subsequent eight years of recovery, led her to a new way to experience her world. She talks about learning to balance the left and right hemispheres of her brain with their seemingly diametric functions. She talks about her experience with neuroplasticity and retraining or rewiring her brain to perform functions which she had lost. I especially valued her perspective on how quiet, sleep, and creative time were essential to her healing.
But I was most inspired by her new conviction that the potential for deep inner peace, a unitive spiritual experience, is wired into our brains.
She says, “Based upon my experience with losing my left mind, I whole-heartedly believe that the feeling of deep inner peace is neurological circuitry located in our right brain. This circuitry is constantly running and always available for us to hook into. The feeling of peace is something that happens in the present moment. It’s not something that we bring with us from the past or project into the future. Step one to experiencing inner peace is the willingness to be present in the right her, right now.”
The intersection of spirituality and science. She describes her experience of living as part of an eternal flow of energy and molecules from which she cannot be separated. I hear these words also when I read the mystics, when I get tiny glimpses of quantum physics.
“My right mind realizes that the essence of my being has eternal life.”
Bolte-Taylor did not die and return with stories of an afterlife. She lost function in the organizing half of her brain. She experienced not just the quieting of her chattering mind, but the complete loss of its function, and found a new understanding into another type of consciousness for which we are all wired.
She encourages us all that we too can find the same place as we find awareness for our thought patterns, learn to quiet our minds, and open to that experience of flow.