The Listening Ear

New Waterlily Blossom

The yellow water lilies have begun to bloom. Here’s one of the blossoms.

Ordeal Yields Insight-3

On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor woke with a terrible headache. When she got out of bed and began getting herself ready for work, she had difficulty maneuvering in her apartment. Her balance was impaired and her movements had become jerky as she struggled to get her body to do what she wanted it to do. Eventually her right arm fell completely limp for a time.

All the while she couldn’t tell what was happening to her because her thinking had also become impaired. Eventually she realized that it was a real struggle for her to recognize numbers, letters and their meaning. When she finally contacted someone on the phone to ask for help, she found that even though she knew what she wanted to say, she couldn’t make to words come out.

What was equally bizarre, however, is that even though she began to realize that she was in real trouble physically, she also had a deep sense of peace, euphoria and of being connected with the world around her. The brain chatter that normally goes on inside us was silenced as the function of the left brain was severely impaired.

Yet, her left brain still functioned enough that she understood that if she simple gave in to lie down and enjoy the euphoria, that should would never get up again. She had to get help.

Jill describes the extreme difficulty that her impaired brain had in creating and executing a plan to seek help. In many ways it is a miracle that she was able to do it at all.

Once help finally arrived, it didn’t take to long for the medical establishment to discover what was going in in her brain. A congenital weakness in blood vessel deep in her brain had begun to hemorrhage. Brain cells in her left brain had begun drowning her her own blood!

Tomorrow, we’ll turn our attention to Jill’s long road to recovery and eventually I want to describe some of the things she learned from this harrowing experience.

Ordeal Yields Insight-2

In her book, My Stoke Of Insight Jill Bolte Taylor describes how the two hemispheres of our brains differ from one another. Even though the two sides function in tandem, each has some pretty specific characteristics. Working alongside each other they normally weave together our experience of world and our lives.

For most people, the left brain, the side that actually controls the right side of the body, is dominant. This is where the ability to speak and to understand language is located. It focuses on details, defining and categorizing everything. It is where the ‘chatter’ that we hear inside our consciousness comes from and it is where we sense the difference between past and future. Our left hemisphere helps us know where our bodies end and the world around us begins.

On the other hand, the right brain take a much more wholistic view of things. It creates a montage of all the things we smell, taste, touch, see and hear in the present moment. The right side doesn’t decode language, but it is very adept at reading body language and telling what someone is feeling at the moment.

Tomorrow I’ll look at how Jill was affected when the left side of her brain began to shut down as a result of her stroke.

Ordeal Yields Insight-2

In her book, My Stoke Of Insight Jill Bolte Taylor describes how the two hemispheres of our brains differ from one another. Even though the two sides function in tandem, each has some pretty specific characteristics. Working alongside each other they normally weave together our experience of world and our lives.

For most people, the left brain, the side that actually controls the right side of the body, is dominant. This is where the ability to speak and to understand language is located. It focuses on details, defining and categorizing everything. It is where the ‘chatter’ that we hear inside our consciousness comes from and it is where we sense the difference between past and future. Our left hemisphere helps us know where our bodies end and the world around us begins.

On the other hand, the right brain take a much more wholistic view of things. It creates a montage of all the things we smell, taste, touch, see and hear in the present moment. The right side doesn’t decode language, but it is very adept at reading body language and telling what someone is feeling at the moment.

Tomorrow I’ll look at how Jill was affected when the left side of her brain began to shut down as a result of her stroke.

Ordeal Yields Insight

Some months ago I linked to a TED talk that featured Jill Bolte Taylor giving a presentation where she described her experience as victim of stroke and some of what she learned, especially during her recovery. I knew that she had written about her experiences in her book, Stoke of Insight and last week I picked up a copy. It doesn’t take too long to read, but I found it to be quite interesting. 

Taylor was working a neuroanatomist, an expert in brain anatomy when at age 37 she had debilitating stroke. Given her area of expertise, she was uniquely able to observe what was happening to her during her stoke and recovery. In Stroke of Insight, she not only documents her experience with stroke, but also describes the insights that the experience brought to her. 

Jill’s stroke affected the left side of her brain and left her unable to walk, talk, read, write or remember much of what her life had been like. Yet that experience became a blessing and a source of revelation for her. While her right brain took over, she felt a sense of peace and euphoria. Nevertheless it took her eight years to fully recover from the incident and that recovery was only possible because she was able to get help during the first hours of the stroke and had the right kind of care and support while she made her recovery. 

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the differences between right and left brain and what happened to Jill when the left hemisphere of her brain was severely impaired.