Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor On Brain Recovery, Healing The Mind, And Rebuilding After Trauma

The human brain is powerful, but what happens when it faces life-altering trauma? Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist, shares her firsthand experience with brain recovery after a severe stroke that left her unable to walk, talk, or recall her life. In this conversation with host Tony Martignetti, she discusses the brain’s ability to heal, the role of neuroplasticity, and the profound insights she gained about consciousness and resilience. From rebuilding cognitive function to redefining identity, this episode offers a fascinating look at the mind’s power to adapt and recover.

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Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor On Brain Recovery, Healing The Mind, And Rebuilding After Trauma

The Inspiring Journey Of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist. Her expertise involves understanding how our brains create our perception of reality and how we can recover from neurological trauma. In the lab, Dr. Taylor was focused on understanding the difference between the post-mortem human brains of individuals classified as neurotypical, as compared with those individuals diagnosed with severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and bipolar disorder.

Ironically, in 1996, Dr. Taylor experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain, causing her to lose the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Based on her knowledge about the brain through the eyes of a neuroanatomist, she completely rebuilt her brain. In 2008, her memoir, My Stroke of Insight, documented her experience with stroke and eight years of recovery.

She spent 63 weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. It routinely remains a top seller about stroke in the Amazon marketplace. Her second book, Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life, has become her life's purpose. I'll also mention that her TED Talk, which is amazing, has hit 30 million views, which is a remarkable accomplishment. It's truly a pleasure and an honor to welcome you to the show, Jill.

Tony, it's great to be with you. Thank you for having me.

I have to say I've seen your TED Talk and read your books. I have been completely blown away by who you are as an individual. All the things you've overcome are a testament to the type of person you are. The way you're showing up is remarkable. Not to blow your horn too much but you're someone who inspires a lot of people.

Thank you. I feel blessed to be alive. I didn't die that day of the stroke. It was try or don't try. Something in my brain said, “Try 1,000 times a day.” Isn't that what life is like? Every time we hit an obstacle and all the bumps in the road that normal living brings, how do we strategize those moments of challenge?

One thing I've seen is that people who have come on the show and have been through those moments of challenge, it's a sense of connecting to hope that there is something they can do and it's getting up and trying again.

The Power Of Sleep And Shifting Perspective

A thousand times a day. People would say to me, “Jill, how did you recover?” I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. This was a severe neurological trauma. You start where you are. Don't compare yourself to where you've been. Look at what's the very next step, not what five steps down the road are. You're either willing to take that step or not. Sometimes we get tired. It's time to go to sleep. The beauty of sleep is that it's a rejuvenator. My mom used to always say, “Wait until tomorrow. Go get a good night's sleep. Look at it with fresh eyes.” Isn't it true? It’s the power of sleep and the ability of the brain to shift its perspective from, “I cannot,” to, “I can.”

You're right out of the gates sharing such a great insight and something that we all need to be reminded of. I need to be reminded of that from time to time. Don't give up but learn to rest. Allow yourself to say that when you're tired, it's an opportunity to recharge the battery, come back tomorrow, and try again.

Also, with a new perspective. Anatomically, the beauty of what we are as living beings is that we are organic living beings. We are not machines or robots. Plug us in and we run until the hard drive burns out. It's time to get a new one. We're not that. We are biological organic creatures that are cyclical. Our cycle is awake and then asleep. Sleep in our society has gotten a bad rap where we've shifted ourselves to value ourselves more, the less sleep we get, as the great Arianna Huffington says. Imagine how much more interesting you might be if you had that extra hour of sleep.

The beauty of what we are as living beings is that we are organic creatures that are cyclical. We are not machines. We are not robots.

We're going to spend some time exploring your journey in whatever way you like to do this. As we do on the show, we explore people's journeys through what's called flashpoints. These are moments in your life that have ignited your gifts into the world, which you have many but I want to give you the opportunity to share some of those flashpoints. I'll turn it over to you. We'll pause along the way and see what themes are showing up. When you're ready, why don't you give us some of those flashpoints or moments that have made you who you are?

I'm going to give a period instead of simply a point. The point was that I grew up eighteen months younger than my brother and my brother was going to eventually be diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. I was his little sister so everywhere we went, we went together as children do. I was influenced profoundly by this other person whose perception of reality was different from mine.

Let me give you an example. Let's say we are playing kickball in the front yard. Somebody kicks the ball, usually him, out into the street. Little Jill is supposed to chase that ball out into the street. Who knows what the bigger picture intention there was but we won't go there. Here I'm chasing this ball out into the street and mom is witnessing this. She starts screaming.

His interpretation of her screaming is that she is mad. My interpretation of her screaming is that she is scared that I'm going to get hurt. That's a very different interpretation of a mother's expression of her fight or flight. It became apparent early to me that my brother looked at the world and filtered information differently than I did. He thought it was his job to put me inside of his domain because I was the little sister and I was born to be of service to him.

That meant giving him food off my plate, letting him play with whatever he wanted to play, or doing whatever he needed to do. I never got those memos. That was coming out of the gate as a real awareness. I have no perception of what is typical or not typical, normal or not normal but different. When you have a difference in your face as a child, you learn to differentiate between different kinds of, for me, behavioral styles.

There's something that you shared. First of all, this is so amazing. At such a young age, you didn't know it at the time but this is something you reflect and understand. It's almost like our reactions are filtered through our understanding of what we know at the time. We need decoder rings almost for everything that's happening. Everyone and their intentions have to be translated into the eyes of the person who's receiving the message.

That's hard because each person is at a different place in time and a different place in their understanding, especially when you have brain trauma that doesn't allow you to get through that message. That's the challenge. Even as we walk around the world, oftentimes we don't understand each other because we're not in the same place.

It's like if you're a teacher, you know you have to go to the level of the student. You can't teach a child to read if they don't understand the alphabet or language yet. You have to go to the person you're teaching and say, “What do you know? Let me build on that.” As a child, it was this interplay that was daily with this other person, a different level of awareness in body language, facial language, and what am I as an organic living being. That was a powerful influence around me. He's a bigger brother. If I don't behave correctly, what's he going to do is pounce on me. As a child, I learned to deflect or fight back. He helped me become a very determined and independent little girl. That served me when I needed it.

It sounds like this was maybe a kernel of what caused you to get into the work you're doing but maybe there's another flashpoint that you want to share that gets you into the work.

A Deeper Understanding Of The Human Body

With my relationship with my brother, I became fascinated with what is normal because I didn't know. All I knew was we were different but I didn't know that I would grow to be the neurotypical and he would grow to not be neurotypical. All I knew was one of us wasn't right or not going to fit in that normal bell curve. I became obsessed with what is normal.

With his schizophrenia, he was the child that my parents could be proud of. He was the one who was high-achieving academically. He was poetic and artistic. He was a beautiful swimmer. He swam butterfly. People would come from towns around to watch this boy in the water. He was a high achiever so I didn't have to be. That was nice for me because I got to do what I wanted to do. I was pretty much a little happy, right-brain, little girl.

I was very artistic. I love to do crafts and stained glass even as a little person. I was extremely athletic. I was doing tennis, swimming, and water skiing all the time. I was musical. I played the cello and guitar. I was very happy doing my thing. With my brother's high achievement, I was allowed to develop on my own slow time. It wasn't until he hit his late teenage years when we were all looking at each other going, “He needs some help. What's going on here?” My parents started looking at me and thought, “Little girl, is your left brain ever going to turn on?”

It wasn't until I was a sophomore in college. I was taking anatomy and fell in love with human anatomy. It was the next piece of the puzzle for me to pursue. The human body is so beautiful. I wanted to understand at a cellular level this magnificent organism of what we are as human life. That developed into, “If I'm going to go into research and study the body, the great unknown was the human brain.” That's how I ended up shifting into neurosciences.

I hate to say it but it wasn't a thing yet in those days. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, to study the brain, I had to do physiological psychology. I had a major in that and then another major in human biology. That's how I ended up creating for myself the education I wanted to understand. Ultimately, I became a neuroanatomist, the anatomy of the central nervous system and peripheral but with a focus on the brain.

What's remarkable about that is the sense that people often talk about the ocean, how vast it is, and how uncharted it is. Here we are walking around an ocean of unknowns. Our mind is unknown. In the ‘70s, we were just getting into that and trying to figure out how we get to know this tissue that's inside of our brain that is telling us and dictating our lives if you will. You were fascinated by that.

I had the same journey where I was an artist who then got into pre-med for the very reasons that you did. This almost sense of a fascination with the beauty of the body. I switched to other things but it's a great transition. When you start to be fascinated with the arts, you start to move into, “What about the beauty and science of us?” You start to move deeper into that. Your curiosity starts to switch into that world. That's what I reflect back on what you shared. It’s this sense of wanting to go deeper into that unknown of who we are.

I love knowing that you have this biological background. People tend to think biologically or they don't. Whenever I speak to different audiences, when I speak to a biologically based group, then I get to communicate at a whole different level of understanding. Cells are these magnificent little living creatures. When we look at ourselves as this conglomeration of these magnificent little pieces of the puzzle in three dimensions, what are their needs? What did my brain cells need to recover after my stroke? When you look at something like that, instead of coming in with an analysis of business perception, they're completely different solutions based on the background of the people who are coming up with those ideas.

Cells are these magnificent little living creatures. We are made of this conglomeration of magnificent little pieces of the puzzle.

You need to have a different perspective for sure in terms of how you're entering into that, which is a great segue for us to think about what happens next. Here you are studying the brain. It's a good moment for us to maybe enter into probably one of the bigger flashpoints in your life.

Experiencing A Stroke Through The Eyes Of A Scientist

At the age of 37, I was teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School. I was in Boston. I love Boston. I was at the Harvard School for Dental Medicine. I was teaching head and neck. The brain is my thing. To me, it's so beautiful. I woke up one morning. Over the course of four hours, I watched my brain through the eyes of a brain anatomist. I watched my brain circuits go offline one at a time because of a major explosion of arteriovenous malformation in the left hemisphere of my brain.

After that four hours, I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. My whole left hemisphere was swimming in a pool of blood. I have to say it was through the eyes of a scientist a fascinating experience to be able to watch my cells go offline circuit by circuit, ability by ability, and then wake up later that afternoon in this condition of completely vegetative and paralyzed on the right side of my body, paresis. I felt like a ton of lead in the bed with no organic mass in my brain capable of processing information about the external world that would allow me to communicate with it.

It's hard to even fathom that. I'm sure that in terms of your recollection of that, which you don't have, how do you recollect something like that? You can't.

You can. One of the things about the brand is that the right hemisphere is running a movie of time. The left hemisphere has skillsets that allow us to communicate with the external world. What I lost was all those skills in that left hemisphere that allow me as this organic mass to organize information in a form of language so that I can communicate it to the external world. Language is enormously complex and important in our society. What I lost were the skills of that left hemisphere but I witnessed the entire experience through the ongoing consciousness of my right hemisphere.

It's almost like the sense that you were not able to translate what's going on inside of you to the outside world but you were there. You could see people, understand, or maybe be able to witness the things around you but you couldn't interact with the things around you.

Understanding Linearity And The Ego Center

I couldn't interact with the things around me in a left-brain way. If you consider that you are these two magnificent hemispheres, they simply process the same information in different ways. I'm sitting here in my space. The air temperature is being processed by both my right hemisphere and left hemisphere. My right hemisphere is right here, right now in the present moment. That's all I had when I lost my left hemisphere.

The left hemisphere has a group of cells that has the ability to step out of the consciousness experience of the present moment. How on earth does this even happen? They step out of the present moment and compare the present moment stimulation to everything I've ever experienced in my past. This is phenomenal. The left hemisphere, because of these cells in the left emotional limbic tissue of that hemisphere, steps out of the consciousness of the present moment.

They compare that data to anything in my past and say, “Give me a reason to push it away and say, ‘No, that's a danger or a threat.’”With those cells operating like that, I don't have to reinvent the wheel in every present moment as to whether or not I'm safe or not. I have this backlog of data for that group of cells to compare the present moment too.

What I lost was linearity across time. Part of linearity across time comes from my ego and identification of self as Jill Bolte Taylor. That group of cells went offline. Linearity across time went offline. Rational thinking and language went offline. The group of cells that define the boundaries of where I begin and end as this organic thing went offline. In the absence of that form of thinking or filtering system of information coming in, what I gained was this release of inhibition. That usually dominates in our human brains, at least in Western culture.

As that goes offline, it removes its inhibition from the experience of the present moment of my right hemisphere. In my right hemisphere, I don't have the physical boundary of where I begin and end because that happens in the left hemisphere. I don't have the ego center that says, “I am Jill Bolte Taylor and these are my likes and dislikes, and all the details of my life because that's swimming in a pool of blood.”

What I'm gaining is this magnificent experience of the present moment where I experience myself as this conglomeration of 50 trillion molecular geniuses working together for me to have life. Some of them give me vision, bladder capacity, and movement in the world. What I become is what I describe as an energy ball as big as the universe. People might be going, “She went woo-woo on us.” The fact is we are capable of going woo-woo because biologically, we are that as well as the normal functioning left hemisphere in the world.”

We just label our language differently and make judgments on the kinds of words or language that people use. In reality, we have two very different ways of filtering information right here, right now where I am this life force power. I am 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses because we are. That is energy and molecular structure. It's what we are if that's all you look at us as.

This left hemisphere comes in and says, “I'm going to place judgment and meaning on all of that.” I'm going to categorize and organize all those cells so that I can define and differentiate all those different things. We're going to put it into language, communicate with it through language with one another, take the mass of this organic, whatever it is, ball of energy, and try to place it in a social norm that is also defined by our left hemispheres.

What I lost was just the left hemisphere. Once I lost the left hemisphere, people on the outside had to come to where I was as a right hemisphere. What I learned was we don't do a very good job of communicating with people in that condition. I was perfect, whole, and beautiful as far as I was concerned. The rest of the world is looking at me like, “Poor Jill fell off the Harvard ladder. Here she is. She's whatever she is but she's a lump and she has no language. She's deaf and dumb.”

It's like, “Please. What is wrong with you people?” I'm on the inside going, “These people have no clue how to help me. I'm going to have to do this myself,” so I did. It was a choice 1,000 times a day to try to take what I understood in my right brain about my brain about the right hemisphere thinking in pictures. “That's where I had the pictures of which neurons do what.” I had to rebuild my base understanding and purposely rebuild that circuitry skillset by skillset to recover function. I had no guarantee. I had no idea what I'd get back and what I wouldn't get back. I wasn't attached to the outcome. I was simply attached to the process.

You were taking step by step to move towards it. I've heard your talks and read the books. Hearing you share it in real-time, it's a sense that other people would be overwhelmed. We would be overwhelmed if we had the capacity to experience what you experience. It's an overwhelming feeling to know that we are walking around with all of that going on all at once. We need to be tamped down a little bit so we can almost be able to get through the day.

The complexity of what is to be. The journey that we've all taken, no matter who you are or where you are, you start it as a single one little bitty cell. That little bitty cell ended up with half the DNA from mom and half the DNA from dad, a little spark plug of life. Boom, we have this little Zyko cell. It is one single cell. All it has is its own DNA. It is the physical structure of the cell and the energy that is moving everything in and around that so that that DNA multiplies and the cell then repackages that new DNA, and then that DNA multiplies, and then they get repackaged.

You go from 1 cell to 2 cells to 4 cells to 8 cells. Off we're running to the point where over nine months, it's a long time to be cooking in a womb. Nine months is a long time to be multiplying cells. Those cells are multiplying at a rate of 250,000 cells per second. We are this explosion of new cellular life. What is the consciousness that is directing this energy ball to multiply and differentiate precisely so that different cells become different cell types to be able to manufacture different systems inside of our body?

The time we pop out after nine months is a little fetal ball of energy. That's all we are. It's time for differentiation in relationship to the external world. We are this incredible miracle. As a society, we miss the value of ourselves as humans. Aren't we existing in an interesting political realm where we are putting all the value on the developmental portion of who we are? As women, humans, adults, and functional people contributing members of society, all of a sudden, we don't have any value. There's a skewed perception of reality here that is fascinating.

We can't lose sight of who we are as people. We are a miracle.

We are magnificent.

Jill, you're such a true inspiration. I want to take on the world after listening to you and realize that we all have such amazing potential.

Simply because we are. The beauty of life is we are this magnificent thing simply because we are. One of the things I encourage people to do is go sit in front of a mirror, look at yourself, and say, “I have hair.” The cells created that hair. “I can smell.” Isn't it interesting that we have this noggin on the front and hangs off the face so that things can get swooped in underneath? We don't want rain falling on top. The functional design of humanity is genius. We all are that genius.

Jill, we got to figure out where we're going to go from here because you completely dropped a bomb on me here with all this amazingness. Let's talk about the journey back to eventually writing books and all the things that you've done. Tell me about what happens next.

The Journey Back To Writing And Sharing Insights

I'm in the process of recovering my brain, which means a left-brain skillset. For me to be a functional human in a society and accept it as such, I need to get my language back. I'm very fortunate that my mother moved to Boston and stayed with me for a while. Her priority for me was language. She got me so that I could walk and speak again. She tried to help me recover as much as possible.

May I say that reading, for anybody out there reading, letters are squiggles. These are these abstract squiggles upon which we place a meaning. My mother would draw me an S and say, “Jill, this is an S and it sounds like this.” I thought, “That is a squiggle and it doesn't make any sense. What is wrong with you people?” It made no sense. That portion of my brain hurt me. It was like, “Don't make me do that. It was horrible.” She made me do it because it’s the power of a mother.

I eventually learned the alphabet and then I had to learn words. I got to put meaning in words. Any child who is struggling with reading needs to go back to the very essence of helping them understand this is a squiggle and it looks like this. The orientation matters. Be compassionate. It was hard for me to relearn that. Once I get my language back, then I stick my head back in academia. I still had a right hemisphere. I was a gross anatomist. I taught the body cadaver lab.

I love the beauty of the human body. I could have sculpted for you an abdomen but I could not have labeled for you, the left hemisphere, the different parts of the stomach, or anything. I had to go back and place my terminology on top of what the visual was that I still had. I could learn very quickly once I reached that stage because I already understood the three dimensions. I regained my knowledge base.

As I was walking out the door of Mass General Hospital, because all of this happened in Boston, my neurologist, the great Dr. Anne Young, and what a great human being this woman is, said to me on the way out, “Jill, this is the kind of medical story that great books can be written about.” She planted that seed. That was a moment. If she hadn't said that, would I ever even consider writing it down? I have no idea. She planted that seed.

I started documenting on a huge sheet of paper that I put on my office door at my house. Anytime I noticed that I got something new came in, I put the date and wrote a few words. It was four years before I understood what 1 was. Everybody would say, “Jill, what's 1 plus 1?” I hunt inside my brain like, “What's 1?” Everybody would do this. They hold their fingers up like, “1. It's everything.” I think to myself, “If 1 is everything, how can you have another one?” That made no sense for four years.

Finally, all of a sudden, there was a ping inside of my brain. I understood what 1 was. How does that happen? Those brain cells got reconnected to enough other cells that understand how to organize thinking so that I could comprehend 1 to think abstractly. This weird abstract little symbol has a completely abstract meaning that has nothing to do with anything other than we have assigned a value to a symbol. As humans, we're molecular geniuses. That's what we do at the fundamental level.

In year four, I learned what 1 was and then I could learn over the course of that year how to do basic math. It became a process. Along the way, I kept taking notes, and eventually, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey came out. The stroke happened in ‘96. I self-published that in 2006. I was invited to TED before anybody knew what TED was.

I'd never heard of TED. There were only 5 or 6 TED Talks online. It was not a public thing. I got this invitation and spent a lot of time creating an eighteen-minute presentation. The question was, “Who are we?” I thought, “I know who we are. We are this consciousness of this left hemisphere and right hemisphere. Do I find peace in the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere is competitive and all these magnificent tools? What a different value structure between these two hemispheres.”

I created this TED talk that would take my audience on the journey of the stroke as I was having the stroke and blow their minds so that they could understand what I gained because of what I lost. Instead of looking at me as, “This is sad,” and all those things the left hemisphere wants to project on it and the absence of that left hemisphere, I had this magnificent experience of the present moment of where I am.

We are this magnificent life force power of the universe. When we live our lives with that value structure that we are one human family, we live a very different life than when it's all about the left hemisphere value of me, the individual, and mine getting more and more. Not that there's anything wrong with that but isn't it about the balance?

We are this magnificent life force power of the universe.

I've written a few books myself. I'll say it's not an easy thing to do but when you have to get your mind back into what 1 plus 1 is and trying to put your life back in order of what was going on is a Herculean effort. There are so many qualities that I can point to. Maybe I'll ask that. You've learned that there are some important things about yourself that you embody. What are the things that you see in yourself that you want to appreciate?

I'm going to go back to values. I lost me, the individual. I was climbing the Harvard ladder, and doing all that hierarchy. It was about me and mine. The work I was doing was magnificent in the lab of Dr. Francine Bennis. Her focus was on schizophrenia at a post-mortem level and what was going on. With the way her mind worked, it was delicious working in that lab. I lost all that.

From the external world, everybody's saying, “Poor Jill. She's a vegetative lump in the bed.” I get that but what I gained was this sense of the true value of what I am as a living being. If I could use my right hemisphere knowledge base to rebuild that left hemisphere, I have an insight into the right hemisphere, which is what we call the unconscious mind.

We humans were functioning. If you look at Carl Young and Jungian psychology, he says, “We have four parts of the brain.” I agree with that. We have 2 emotional groups and 2 thinking groups. According to his scholarly analysis, only 1 of those 4 portions is conscious. Our conscious brain is our left thinking tissue. It is rational. It organizes and categorizes. It has the language. It defines where I begin and end. It has the ego center cells of me, the individual.

The two emotional portions of the brain and the right-thinking tissue are all part of our subconscious. You had a neuroanatomist at Harvard who had a stroke, it wipes out the left hemisphere consciousness. I was still conscious. I wasn't conscious in the same way because I no longer had those skillsets that allowed me to do all the things that those skillsets do. What it did was give me a clear understanding of what is going on in my right hemisphere.

I was completely conscious and functional. The value of the right hemisphere is that instead of taking data and minimizing it, there are no boundaries. This becomes a this and that. We have a this or that. We're categorizing, organizing, placing language, and differentiating all those details and more details about those details because that's what that magnificent left hemisphere does. In the absence of that, what I have is this magnificent present moment.

The Importance Of Whole Brain Living

In the present moment, at least for me, there was this incredible sense of peacefulness and bliss. I was simply alive observing my experience of being a living being. What I gained was an understanding of how it processes information and what tools it had for me to use to rebuild the cellular circuits of my left hemisphere that had gone offline so I could regain function and become what everybody would classify as normal again.

There was nothing normal about me because I had these two very different hemispheres. I was very clear on the different parts of my brain and what their skillsets are. That is what I communicate in my 2021 book, Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. We have these two emotional systems. That's why we can have emotional conflict.

There are some real myths about the brain that are simply not true like the right hemisphere is emotional and the left hemisphere is rational thinking. No. Anatomically, they both have limbic emotional tissue and they are different in the way they process. The right hemisphere processes the present moment experiential and the left hemisphere has that group of magnificent cells that can step out of the consciousness of the present moment and compare the present moment experience linearity across time. We are the design.

My ultimate goal is the whole brain living. When we become more whole brain living, we experience more peace. We appreciate the push of the left hemisphere. Compete and do all that. The right hemisphere is the pause. Our literal genius is in the pause. You have to let that system relax, be in the present, and fuel the system. It has the value of the collective whole. We are one human family. The left hemisphere says, “I am Jill Bolte Taylor. I am separate from you. What matters is me and mine. I want more. I'm competing against you,” all the things that it does.

The right hemisphere looks at you, Tony, and says, “We are one human family. We both have two eyes, mouths, and whatever we have. We’re basic design. As humanity, what are we creating? As a society, that's what we've lost,” instead of supporting, nurturing, loving, and collaborating with one another. We're over there in the value structure of the left hemisphere saying, “Me. Mine. I want more.” It's a this or that. The right hemisphere says, “We're a this and a that.” How do we shift that value structure before we give all the power to the me that wants to destroy?

I've talked to a lot of amazing people but I will say you dropped the best conversation I've had in a long time. The insights and things that are coming up and how timely this is not just for me but for many of us is what we need to hear. This message is so powerful. It's what we, as a society, need to tap into. How are we allowing ourselves to see the collective whole and how are we using that as a way to be more us as opposed to just me? I don't even know where to go because this is amazing. I could talk to you for hours.

I blew your mind there, Tony.

You blew my mind, for sure.

That to me is the beauty of this stroke experience. I had the tools, education, and personal experience to take that experience of the stroke, recover my whole brain, and then come back and say, “As irony has it, this was my area of expertise. How does our brain create our perception of reality?” That started as a child. That takes us right back to me looking at my brother saying, “You're different from me. You're different so I'm observing and differentiating different ways that we are and can be.”

Many people feel like they get stuck in their pain from the past or fear of the future. This is a societal norm at this point. How do we rescue ourselves from this portion of our brain that is in that left limbic tissue saying, “I don't feel safe in a society that doesn't value me or I don't know what's happening?” If you go to the perception of reality and what is real and fake, we're on a fascinating journey of humanity with AI coming in and our very interesting political situation.

The beauty of chaos serves in a way that forces us to be disturbed. The left hemisphere needs facts because it can count on facts to construct a reality. If we all agree with the facts, then we're all functioning in the same reality. The human brain needs that level of reality to be able to relax, feel calm, and then re-engage to the best of its ability. That has been our norm as a society.

With the way that the political game has been played, facts don't seem to be facts anymore. Whose facts are real and whose facts are not real? The brain doesn't have that neuron to hang on. You throw on top of that the autonomic nervous system of fight or flight and fear. If I can't count on my facts, then I don't feel safe. If I don't feel safe, then I become vulnerable to the powers that be. As long as I stay in a state of anxiety and fear, I'm in the pot. I'm overpowered. It's a mind game.

There was a great book back in the ‘60s or ‘70s called Games People Play. I encourage people to read Whole Brain Living but I encourage people to go back and read that book. How do I find peace? People will say to me, “Jill, how are you doing?” I'm saying, “I'm happy and having a great time.” “How are you doing that?” “I recognize the value of what I am. I am this magnificent creature. There are certain things that I can control and there are certain things that are beyond my control.”

The Power Of Human Adaptability And Flexibility

They say, “How do I stop doing all that?” “Pay very close attention to how much of that you let into your life. I want to live a life that is free from the confusion and the muck. If I can't control the confusion and the muck and that dance is out there and everybody else is doing those dances, it's their dances to do. I want to own my power. I am this magnificent life form. I have a voice and things that I enjoy. I'm going to love the people that I love and support the people that I support. I'm going to have conversations with other people who are interested and interesting who have other people who they communicate with.”

We don't have to get caught in the fear ball of that left hemisphere. We can come into the present moment and say, “I live a great life.” Do I have some concerns? Absolutely. I am not off in La La Land. I am living a whole brain life. I know what this right hemisphere is so I can find peace in the experience of my right hemisphere's present moment and use the power of that to connect with like-minded people, build my tribe and relationships with others, and be okay.

I'm okay, regardless of what this is over here. The beauty of being human is the magnificence. This is where our power is. The power of the human is in our adaptability, flexibility, and creativity. We have those tools and we're wired for that so when we go into that part of who we are, we will adapt and figure it out. Is it going to be great? It's going to be what it is. How do I use me as an instrument of what I'm going to say the present moment adaptability with my concern and love for humanity? I'm not going to let the power of fear negate the power of my ability to adapt.

I love that message. It's exactly what we need, this ability to be able to stay with that. It's almost like a grounding back to ourselves.

That's the beauty of our brain. Our fear of either the future, the past, all that's going to happen, or all that muck is a group of cells inside of our brain that is designed to give us information that we can then explore and learn from. It is not designed to be a lifestyle. As long as we're throwing ourselves in there and it's becoming a lifestyle, we are not a happy people.

I'm here to help people realize that three-quarters of your brain is healthy and well but there's one little part of our brain that is designed to save our life. When we get caught in that fear from the past, our traumas, or our fears of the unknown, if that becomes a lifestyle, then we are living and breathing our trauma. We're complaining and whining. We're sad, overwhelmed, and depressed. We're blaming others for our lives and all of that.

It is a skillset that is designed to be in formation. We allow it to be information. We can take it with the other portions of ourselves who we are and what we are. We can learn from our past trauma and experience. We can learn about what our fears are of the future. We can learn and come back into the present as a whole human and say, “I am this magnificent human. How do I use the best of what I am to nurture, support, and love other humans in relationship with this planet and not give up hope?” That's where you began with me and that's where hope is.

Jill, we're way over time but I hope you don't mind. I have to ask the one last question and we'll start to wrap up. What are 1 or 2 books that had an impact on you, and why?

The Importance Of Everything In Its Own Time

I'm going to go with two great books. One is The Alchemist. One thing I love about it is it's short but I appreciate it for a book. The Alchemist takes this young man on this journey. He gets delayed, stalled, and distracted. Time happens. At the end of the book, that was the journey. It was meant to be. The message to me is everything in its own time. You are right where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Time is passing. You may have a dream or goal but trust the construct of the universe around you that everything is in its time. When I put that book down, I laughed hysterically. I belly laughed. I have no idea.

Everything in its own time. You are right where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Trust the construct of the universe around you that everything is in its time.

What fools we've been?

Trust that we're okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be what it's going to be. You're right where you're supposed to be on the journey. That was book number one. Here’s the second book. Probably if I could only read one book that means the most to me, it’s called Miss Rumphius. Miss Rumphius starts as a little girl. She's at the foot of her grandfather who is a woodworker. He lives in a building and the background is the sea. It's a children's book.

He says to her, “As you live your life, there are three things that you need to do to have a life of meaning. The first one is to travel to faraway places.” It is important that we travel to other places and see people of different skin colors and hear different languages to experience the diversity and beauty of what humanity is. Travel to faraway places. That's one thing.

I don't remember which order these are in because to me it's all blended. Find your place by the sea. Finding one's place by the sea places you on the shoreline of the open expanse of possibility and the beauty of the ocean. The thing about the ocean is that it breathes. It ebbs and flows. That's the incorporation of into the present moment, the open expansiveness of the beauty of the ocean. The third thing is to make the world a more beautiful place.

Little Miss Rumphius has her place by the sea. She throws seeds every day on her walks. Within a couple of years, it's lupines and roses in purple and cream. It's beautiful. For me, it was to travel far and wide. I've done some serious travel in my lifetime. I love that. The second is to find my place by the sea. I have lived on a boat for half of a year. I like deep still water. I do consider that through my place by the sea, the power of the water, and then make the world a more beautiful place.

I truly believe that my book, Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life, is a beautiful tool. I know that when people understand these four different parts of their brain and that they have the power to choose moment by moment who and how they want to be, then they can live a life of choice and peace. That's my response to my books.

I'm blown away. I couldn't relate more to the way you described both of the books. It’s beautiful. Jill, I'm completely blown away and honored to have you on the show. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for trusting in me and coming on the show.

Connecting With Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Thank you, Tony, for reaching out. I appreciate it.

Before I let you go, I want to ask where's the best place for people to reach out if they want to learn more about your work.

It’s DrJillTaylor.com. I'm very user-friendly, DrJill@DrJillTaylor.com. I'm a happy human connecting with other humans. Thank you. I appreciate it, Tony. A kiss and love to Boston.

I love it. We all received that well. Thank you so much. Thanks, audience for coming on the journey. I know you're blown away like I am. Please, go pick up Jill's books and listen to her TED talk. You will not be let down. That's for sure. It is truly amazing. That's a wrap.

Important Links

• My Stroke of Insight
• Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life
• My Stroke of Insight
• Games People Play
• The Alchemist
• Miss Rumphius
• DrJill@DrJillTaylor.com

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