The road to happiness is in our brain: this is the extraordinary testimony of Jill Bolte Taylor, Harvard’s neuroscientist defined in 2008 by Time Magazine one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Struck by a devastating stroke at only 37, it was thanks to her in -depth knowledge of the brain which managed to “monitor” what had been happening to her since the first moments of hemorrhage and then for the following 8 long years, during which she experienced the dual role of doctor and patient. She managed to consciously live an extraordinary experience that allowed her to see the characteristics and potential of the mind in vivo and find out where the way is hidden to be able to live happier.
In his book The discovery of the gardens of the mind He witnesses himself and describes the “mystical” experience lived, linked to the temporary deactivation of the left hemisphere and temporary dominance of the right hemisphere.
He tells his decision to study the brain because his brother had been diagnosed with a disorder: schizophrenia. As a sister and as a scientist she dedicated her life to try to understand what is wrong with her brother’s brain.
Years dedicated to the mapping of the brain to understand which cells communicate with each other, with what substances and through what circuits. Until one morning he says he woke up herself with a brain disorder.
A blood vessel exploded in the left hemisphere and within 4 hours saw his brain deteriorate and lose the ability to elaborate information, speak, write, walk and remember episodes of his life. A condition that describes how to be “a baby girl in a woman’s body”.
The human brain is made up of two hemispheres, clearly distinct and separated from each other. They cooperate to make all our cognitive functions work correctly, but each of them works and experiences reality in a different way and expresses different and complementary personalities and values.
“By using the language of computers, it can be said that the right hemisphere works as a parallel processor while the left hemisphere works as a serial processor. The two hemispheres communicate together through a part of the brain called Calloso body, consisting of 300 million fibers. Apart from this, the two hemispheres work in a completely different way and separated from each other; each hemisphere thinks of different things, he has a different things, “Different personality”.
Our right hemisphere is concentrated on the present, “here and now”, thinks in images, learns Cinetensically through body movements. The information flows simultaneously through the sensory system to place themselves in a huge collage that is the representation of the moment present with all its sensory components: images, colors, smells, flavors, sensations and sounds. Through the energy of the right hemisphere, we are connected energy with each other, “energy connected to the energy that surrounds us”. It transmits the sense of unity and interconnection between us and the rest of the world, without the perception of boundaries to oneself and others. For the right hemisphere there is only the present, no past, no future. The right mind is intuitive, creative, artistic, outside the box, empathic.
Our left hemisphere is completely different: think in a linear and methodical way. It organizes information from the right hemisphere in temporal and linear sequences, thus building the sense of a before and after. It focuses on the details, builds logical stories from the multitude of data that we perceive every moment. It is the left hemisphere that refers to us the sense of the self, of the “I am”. It is the left hemisphere that creates family thought schemes, which allow you to save time in interpreting perceptual data, coming to understand what we are experiencing thanks to the call of these archives of past experiences. That underground mental chatter that continually reminds us who we are and who suggests every moment what it means to give to what happens to us.
It manages the past and the future and its task is to take the enormous amount of information of the collage of this Collection, analyze and organize them. He associates them with what we have learned in the past and project all our possibilities in the future. And the left hemisphere thinks through a language.
“It is that continuous chatter that connects me and my internal world with the outside world. A calculating intelligence that reminds us of what we must do and is also that voice that gives us our sense of” being us “, separated from the others. It makes us feel something distinct from the flow of energy that surrounds us”. This is the portion of the brain that the researcher has lost the morning of the stroke.
He tells about his experience of changing the perception of the body, the change in movements, the feeling of no longer being able to distinguish and define the boundaries of his body, “as if the atoms and molecules of my body were one with the atoms and molecules of the surrounding space”.
He says he could only hear “energy”. He remembers that he asked himself what was not going but the chatter of the left hemisphere was dumbfounded. The mind was silent and it was a shocking feeling. Then he recalls that he was kidnapped by the beautiful feeling of energy that surrounded her. The feeling of being enormous and expanded. Feeling one with that energy was beautiful.
“At times from the left hemisphere a feeble voice emerged that said ‘we have a problem! Ask for help!’ But then I was kidnapped by that beautiful state that I love to call “La La Land”.
Any stress linked to work or anything else compared to the outside world had disappeared. The 37 -year -old baggage of disappeared emotional life! A great sense of peace and euphoria “.” While the centers of the language of the left hemisphere were becoming more and more taciturn and memories of my life moved away, I was comforted by a growing sense of bliss.
In that void of superior cognition, my consciousness raised itself to a sort of omniscience, so far, so to speak, to be one with the universe. It was something irresistible, pleasant, like finally returning home. “
He experienced the feeling of being one with space, things and people around him, with the mind silent and quiet. Remember to have thought of finding Nirvana and still being alive, and if she was alive and had found Nirvana, anyone could do it. Men can enter this space when they want and choose to be able to access their right hemisphere and find this peace.
“Before the hemorrhage I thought I was only a product of my brain and that I have little voice in my sensations and thoughts. After, I opened my eyes and I understood that, regarding what happens between my ears, I actually have a great freedom of choice”. Thanks to the enormous plasticity and brain recovery ability, Jill Bolte Taylor has reconstructed its mind, making it a more welcoming place.
How do we live our life? Can we devote more time to our inner peace circuit of our right hemisphere? “We are equipped with two minds and we have at least in part the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. In the here and now we can enter the awareness of the right hemisphere where they are part of the energy of the universe and connected to it through the trillions of nerve cells, or I can enter the awareness of the left hemisphere, where I am a solid, unique individual, separated from the rest and flow”. Which we choose and when?
According to what neuroscientists call “neurplasticity dependent on experience” our brain changes continuously on the basis of what we think and feel: how much more frequently we will activate a certain circuit (e.g. criticizing ourselves or others), as quickly and easily that neuronal circuit will tend to trigger. Becoming slightly more automatic and involuntary.
To choose to activate one circuit rather than another, we are us. This is a really powerful message. It does not mean that it is easy or that there are no more favorable basic conditions than others, but that we each have responsibility for their happiness, every time we decide to react in one way or another to the stimuli.
The neuroanatomical processes that determine the internal and external world of which we experience can be directed and practiced by us, just think of the studies and applications of Mindfulness or the discoveries of neuroscences on the rulation mind.
