Stroke of Insight

"Stroke of Insight - A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey" by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. was one of the books my book club read earlier this year. We have a number of medical professionals in our group who were skeptical about Taylor's writing about her experiences for various reasons but one was that it is written about after the fact and from her memory which was likely affected by the rare form of stroke she suffered in the left hemisphere of her brain -- a "major hemmorrhage, due to an undiagnosed congential malformation of the blood vessels in my head, that erupted unexpectedly."

As a lay person, though, I saw this book from an entirely different perspective and found it enlightening. It is a book that I'd like everyone near and dear to me to read because some of Taylor's insights into the care of a person who has suffered a stroke include knowledge I'd like my family to have if I ever suffer a stroke. I want to continue to be treated with respect and dignity if I suffer a stroke or other serious illness plus I want to be treated with respect and dignity as I age rather than being spoken to as if I were a child (something I've observed in how others treat those who are "elderly.")

Taylor was 37 years old at the time she suffered her stroke and, as a Harvard-trained brain scientist, she was able to view what was happening to her in sort of a detached, clinical way while also realizing she needed to obtain help. Her determination and creativity in getting that help were also inspiring. Her recovery -- while slow -- has been miraculous in itself and her experiences have brought a new depth to her work as a brain scientist, I'm sure.

Taylor was lucky because she has a mother who was able to drop everything and leave her own life in another state to stay with Taylor until she was able to live on her own again. Her mother was also patient, supportive and instrumental in Taylor's successful recovery to becoming an independent, functioning adult again. Her mother used her teaching background to help retrain Taylor's mind to enable her to regain some of the cognitive abilities she had lost due to the stroke.

Although Taylor has a lot of admiration for the abilities of her left brain, she has come to appreciate the qualities of the right brain and has chosen to reinforce and use more of her right brain while still retaining the important qualities of her left brain that have served her well in the past but discarding those qualities she doesn't want to promote any longer. She has chosen not to reawaken the part of her left hemisphere that "had the potential to be mean, worry incessantly, or be verbally abusive to either myself or others.....I wanted to leave behind any of my old emotional circuits that automatically stimulated the instant replay of painful memories. I have found life to be too short to be preoccupied with pain from the past."

Taylor has chosen to focus on ways to retain the bliss and peace she felt while focused more in her right brain. On page 134-135 she says, "My goal during this process of recovery has been not only to find a healthy balance between the functional abilities of my two hemispheres, but also to have more say about which character dominates my perspective at any given moment. I find this to be important because the most fundamental traits of my right hemisphere personality are deep inner peace and loving compassion. I believe the more time we spend running our inner peace/compassion circuitry, then the more peace/compassion we will project into the world, and ultimately the more peace/compassion we will have with the planet. As a result, the clearer we are about which side of our brain is processing what types of information, the more choice we have in how we think, feel, and behave not just as individuals, but as collaborating members of the human family.

From a neuroanatomical perspective, I gained access to the experience of deep inner peace in the consciousness of my right mind when the language and orientation association areas in the left hemisphere of my brain became nonfunctional."

I loved Taylor's insights and the fact that she is focused on ways to access that inner peace she felt after the stroke when she was more aware of her right brain's functioning.

On page 129, she says: "I confess that although I celebrate being a solid again, I really miss perceiving myself as a fluid. I miss the constant reminder that we are all one."

The insights Taylor gained and shared in this book are ones I wish to be reminded of often so maybe that is why this book "spoke" to me. I, too, believe we are all one even though I haven't had the sense of knowing this in the same way that she experienced it as a result of her stroke but I believe it is the key to finding peace within ourselves and in our relationships with those we love and with the larger world or universe. Until we recognize that we are all one how will we collectively as well as individually achieve world peace?

pazt