Jill Bolte Taylor's quotes (sethmessenger.fr - Some short news to get away from it all).

#37638
The limbic system colours the information that our senses transmit to us with a particular emotional state. As it also exists in other less evolved creatures, it is sometimes referred to as the "reptilian brain" or "primitive brain." When we come into the world, the cells of our limbic system connect to each other in response to certain sensory stimuli. It is not insignificant to note that our limbic system then hardly evolves until the end of our days. That is why, even in adulthood, we still sometimes react to a particular situation like when we were two years old.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37639
It should be noted here that school learning methods that take into account the functioning of our brains are actually based on what neurobiologists have understood about the limbic system. It is about creating a reassuring and familiar environment in the classroom where the amygdala will not trigger any reaction of fear or anger. The role of the amygdala is to review the external stimuli that are constantly reaching it in order to determine the level of security of the present situation. The cingular circumvolution of the limbic system allows us to concentrate our attention. When external stimuli show no abnormalities, the amygdala has no reason to panic. The nearby hippocampus then stores new knowledge without too much difficulty. However, as soon as unusual or threatening stimuli reach our amygdala, our anxiety increases and we think only of protecting ourselves, to the detriment of the memorization abilities of our hippocampus.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37640
Our limbic system constantly dissects the information that our senses transmit to us. When our cerebral cortex receives a message for deep reflection, we have already associated a "feeling"; of pain or pleasure, for example. Although many of us like to think of ourselves as sentient thinking creatures, biologically, we are rather, and conversely, sensitive creatures capable of thinking.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37641
From the moment my left hemisphere regained the fur of the beast, it seemed natural to accuse others, or simply the force of things, of my mood. I know, however, that no one can force me to feel anything except myself. Nothing outside of my conscience has the power to take away my peace of mind. This one's up to me. Far be it from me to control everything that happens to me! However, it is up to me and me to decide how I look at my experience.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37642
I had to travel five kilometres in a row several times a week carrying weights for four years before I found a flexible and natural gait.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37643
The following year, the eighth after my trauma, my perception of my body changed: I no longer felt fluid but strong. I started water skiing: asking my organization for an effort to the limit of its abilities allowed me to consolidate the grip of my mind on my body. I must confess that, despite my joy at feeling strong again, I miss not seeing myself as a fluid and not constantly reminding myself that we are one with the rest of the universe.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37699
The more we mobilize the networks of neurons that arouse us in serenity and sympathy for others, the more our entourage will feel it and the more peace will extend, by contagion, if I may say so, on our planet. A more detailed knowledge of the type of information processed by each half of our brain will make us more able to define our behavior as individuals, on the one hand, but especially as members of the immense human family.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37700
Tibetan monks and Franciscan sisters were invited to meditate or pray in the brain imaging apparatus and then pull on a rope when they felt as close as possible to God or to the highest degree of their meditation. Changes in their neurological activity in specific areas of their brain were observed at that time. The language centers of their left hemisphere stopped working and the little voice that usually babbling in them fell silent. Their associative area for orientation has been put on hold in the parietal circumvolution of their left hemisphere, the region of the brain that allows us to represent ourselves in space. When it slows down its activity or when our sensory system no longer sends it information, we no longer know where our body begins or ends, which tends to merge for us with our immediate environment. I understand better now why, when the language centers of my left hemisphere were silenced and information from my senses ceased to reach my associative area for orientation, I experienced a new state of consciousness by seeing myself as a fluid inseparable from the rest of the universe.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37704
Alas! compassion does not often have a voice in our societies. Many of us spend a lot of time (and waste a lot of energy) devaluing or criticizing others (or, worse, themselves!). When we are burdened with reproaches, we should ask ourselves who, deep down, hustles us and on whom we praise our recriminations. Have you ever noticed the unfortunate tendency of negative thoughts to increase our hostility towards ourselves or our anxiety? And the pernicious influence of our inner monologue on our relations with our loved ones and the reactions we elicit in them?

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37705
As biological creatures, we have an extraordinary hold on ourselves. Our neurons communicate with each other according to established circuits, which ultimately makes their activation quite predictable. The more we focus on a particular network of cells, that is, the more time we spend maintaining this or that thought, the more our nervous impulse will tend to follow the same path in the future. In a sense, our minds look like sophisticated research programs that focus almost exclusively on the purpose of their quest. If I enjoy seeing red around me, I'll soon spot it everywhere. Maybe not that much at first but, the more I focus on my desire for red, the more I will distinguish in my environment.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37706
Each of my two hemispheres sees things from a different angle, awakens in me particular emotions and encourages me to behave in this or that way. My friends guess just at my posture or the crease that bars my forehead what half of my brain just took over the other. My right hemisphere only cares about the here and now. He frolicks with unbridled enthusiasm without worrying about anything. He smiles constantly and is very friendly. My left hemisphere focuses on the details by organizing my daily life according to a strict schedule. That's my most serious side. It is because of him that I clench my jaws and take into account my past experiences when I have to make a decision. He is also the one who sets limits on me and judges what is good or not, just or not. And, I forgot, he too is digging this famous crease across my forehead.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37707
My right brain focuses on the fullness of the present moment. He enjoys what makes my life so rich. Eternally satisfied, he never renounces his optimism. He does not judge in terms of good or evil; everything exists from his point of view in a continuum; it's all relative. He takes things as they come and adapts to situations as they arise. It's cooler today than it was yesterday. I don't care! It's likely to rain this morning. What does it matter? He will notice that one person is greater or richer than another without inferring a value judgment. My right hemisphere considers us all to be equal members of the great human family. My right brain doesn't perceive differences in ethnicity or religion, or at least it doesn't stop there.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37708
My haemorrhage was a blessing for me in that it allowed me to "give a boost" to the neural networks that caused my joie de vivre. My stroke made me free to explore the world around me with a childish curiosity. In the absence of any obvious danger, I feel safe in my environment and I crisscross the whole earth as if I were walking in my garden. It is my right hemisphere that blows me that we form together the fabric of the universal canvas of the potential of humanity, that life is beautiful and that all the beings that populate our planet are wonderful as they are. My right brain has an adventurous, sociable and generous temperament. He is receptive to non-verbal communication and the emotions of my loved ones. He's overflowing with empathy. It puts me in tune with my surroundings and gives me the feeling of merging with the whole universe. It is in my right hemisphere that reside my mystical tendencies, my wisdom, my faculties of observation, intuition, foresight. My perpetually awake right brain lets itself be caught by the passage of time.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37709
My right hemisphere is tasked with renewing my perspective on things: it allows me to u p d a t e the "records" of my brain by correcting outdated information. As a little girl, I didn't pretend to swallow a bite of pumpkin. Since then, my right hemisphere has convinced me to give the pumpkin a second chance, and today I love it. Most of us judge by placing ourselves from the point of view of our left hemisphere without necessarily agreeing to revise our opinion by "turning right" (i.e. letting their right hemisphere speak). Once they have made a decision, many of us stick to it for the rest of our lives. Most dominant left hemispheres don't want to share the limited space they occupy inside our skull with their much more open right counterpart! My right brain feels ready to consider any eventuality. It does not allow the conventions assimilated by my left hemisphere to restrict the flow of my thought. My right brain never hates novelty. It shows admirable creativity. He knows that chaos is the necessary first step in any process of invention. He appreciates my body's ability to move smoothly in its environment. He is attentive to the subtle messages that my cells communicate to him, which translate into what I call my instincts. He explores the world through my five senses. My right brain enjoys complete freedom. He doesn't let my past get in the way of me. He is not afraid of the future. He relishes my life on a daily basis. He is happy to feel my body healthy. He cares not only about me but about the vitality of those around me, our well-being in one society, and our relationship with our mother earth.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37710
Not content with scaffolding tales to sleep standing up which he then took for cash, my left brain showed an unfortunate tendency to redundancy, that is to say to constantly rehash the same ideas. Many of us see our thoughts going on without respite and are more often surprised than in turn to imagine disaster scenarios. Alas! our society does not teach children to "cultivate the garden of their minds." In the absence of self-discipline, our thoughts follow one another by automatism. Since no one teaches us to control what is going on inside our skull, we remain vulnerable to what others think of us, as well as to publicity and attempts to manipulate opinion by politicians.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37711
I decided to draw a cross on the part of my left hemisphere that encouraged me to pettiness, incessant harassment and denigration of myself and others. Between us, the effect that this kind of attitude had on my body did not please me at all! My heart tightened and my blood pressure skyrocketed to the point where I was a headache. It was better to give up the neural circuits that brought back painful memories in me. Life seems too short for me to care about the sufferings that belong to the past. I discovered during the long process of my healing that the stubborn, arrogant, persifleous and envious part of my personality resided in the center of the "me" of my bruised left hemisphere (which also encouraged me to be a bad loser, resentful, to lie and even to feed desires for revenge). My right brain did not want such traits to reappear. In the end, I managed (not without difficulty) to resurrect the center of the "me" of my left hemisphere without the old neural circuits that I disliked regained a voice.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37712
Take charge! I would define responsibility as the ability to decide at any time our reaction to the stimuli sent to us by our environment. Some programs in our limbic system (the origin of our emotions) are triggered by automatism by releasing chemicals that diffuse throughout our body but disappear in less than a minute and a half of our blood circulation. Let us take the example of anger: we sometimes get carried away as if by reflex in certain circumstances. Chemicals that disrupt our physiological balance then invade us for a minute and a half. They then dissipate and our automatic reaction no longer needs to be. In summary: my anger lasts more than a minute and a half when I let the corresponding neural circuit activate in a loop. Nevertheless, I remain free at all times to wait for my reaction to dissipate by focusing on the present moment rather than being caught up in the repetitive functioning of my neurons.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37713
Nothing has given me more self-confidence than to discover myself at last free not to repeat thoughts that generate suffering. Of course, there is no harm in thinking about what saddens us, provided we do not lose sight of the possibility that we are constantly offered to stop activating the corresponding neural circuits. It freed me from knowing that nothing prevented me from chasing my negative thoughts when I had had enough. What a deliverance to convince me that it was up to me to let myself be invaded by love and tranquillity (of my right hemisphere), no matter what happened to me! All I had to do was "turn right" and focus on the present moment. I often consider my surroundings from the point of view free from any judgment of my right hemisphere, which allows me to maintain my joie de vivre by escaping the emotional burdens too strong. In the end, I am the only one who decides whether or not such an incident affects my mood. Not long ago, I was driving, singing loudly to the sound of one of my favorite records. When I was very disappointed, I was stopped by police officers for speeding. (I guess my enthusiasm was over the limit!) Since I had to pay the ticket, I had to repeat myself a hundred times at least that I did not have to let myself down for so little. A little disapproving voice kept rising in me trying to undermine my morale: she wanted to re-establish the incident at length when it would not have changed anything! Frankly, I consider this kind of rumination on the part of my left hemisphere to be an emotionally draining loss of energy. Since my stroke, and, in short, thanks to him, I have learned to take charge of myself and not to chew on the past by focusing instead on the present.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37714
For me, it goes without saying that we are sympathetic to others: after all, none of us have come into the world in a manual explaining to him the art and how to cope in life. Aren't we ultimately the product of our genetic heritage as much as of our environment? When I measure the gravity of the emotional baggage that we are biologically programmed to drag after us, I like to show compassion to those around us. I quite accept that error is human, which does not mean that I have to be a victim or take the decisions of others against me. Everyone has their own cross! Nevertheless, we retain the possibility of attaining serenity or witnessing kindness to others. Nothing prevents us from forgiving ourselves, ourselves as well as others, for that matter. Nor does anything prevent us from considering the present moment as a pure moment of happiness.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37715
When neural networks that I can't control take over, I wait a minute and a half for my emotional and physiological response to dissipate before addressing my brain in the same tone as a bunch of unruly kids. I say to him, very sincerely: "I am grateful for your ability to bring into me emotions, but the ones you have just awakened do not tell me anything worthwhile. Please move on! Basically, I ask my brain to stop stimulating the neural circuits that cause the thoughts that disturb me. Others than me do it differently. Some simply exclaim, "Enough! Enough! Shut up! ».

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain (Essays and Documents))

#37718
My protests in the name of my authentic self are not always enough to impose on the little inner voice of my left hemisphere, which in short does its job! It is more receptive to the discourse of my right hemisphere when I take a sincere tone from the bottom of my heart. When my brain is reluctant to obey me, I add a kinesthetic component to my message: I wave my index finger or stick my fists on my hips. A mother who reprimands her child redoubles her persuasion by using an angry tone that allows her to convey her message to different levels of communication, verbal or not.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37719
I remain convinced that 99.99% of the cells in my brain, and the rest of my body, want to see me happy and healthy. The little voice that tells me tales does not seem entirely devoted to my happiness: it takes pleasure in re-ingching reflections that undermine my inner tranquillity. I gave a bunch of bird names to the group of cells that control it. One thing is certain: it does not lack resources when it comes to lowering my morale. It is she who arouses in me jealousy, fear and rage and who exults when she complains, moaning to anyone who wants to hear her that nothing goes right.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37720
In some extreme cases where the cells of my little inner voice (which is expressed in the name of the center of the language of my left hemisphere) persist in making me deaf, I ask my authentic self to impose a strictly monitored schedule. I allow my little voice to moan all her drunk from 9 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., but if, unfortunately, she misses the opportunity to complain, I don't allow her to spread before our next appointment. My brain soon realized that I'm not joking by saying I don't want to chew unpleasant thoughts (at least on the condition that I pay sustained and constant attention to those of my neurons that connect in a loop).

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37721
I think it is vital for our mental health to monitor our little inner voice. We will take the first step towards tranquillity when we stop tolerating in ourselves the expression of constant criticism or reproach. It gave me confidence to learn that the part of my brain that tells me tales is no bigger than a peanut!

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37722
Having said that, I often find myself obliged to endure the whims of my little inner voice in reaction to my instructions. Like young children, the cells of my left hemisphere call into question the authority of my deep self by casting doubt on my resolve. When I ask them a little silence, they keep quiet for a short time before immediately or almost reactivating the circuits of forbidden neurons. If I don't persist in my desire to think of something else by stimulating other sets of cells, the ones I don't want to see take over soon monopolize my attention again. I have come to draw up a list of expedients able to counter them: 1) I remember a fascinating subject of reflection on which I take pleasure in me, 2) I think of something that makes me madly happy or 3) I think of a project that is close to my heart. At worst, I still have the opportunity to fall back on one of these three tactics.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37723
While I welcome my brain's ability to experience a variety of emotions, I take care of the time it devotes to activating a particular neuron circuit. The healthiest way, to my knowledge, to overcome an emotion is to give in without restraint when it overwhelms us. When I am subjected to an automatic reaction, I resign myself to seeing the corresponding neural circuit activate for a minute and a half. It seems to me that it is easier to recover from one's emotions from the moment one listens to them and accepts them. The intensity and frequency of the most painful tends to decrease over time. Influential thoughts are perceived as such insofar as they involve a multitude of emotional and physiological programs. On the other hand, what we would call neutral ideas only use uned worked circuits. Keeping an eye on the neurons that are active by illuminating the wiring of our brains with a brighter day, allowing us to cultivate the garden of our mind more harmoniously.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37724
I have unconditional love for my cells. At any time of the day, I sometimes cheer them on with warmth. They are the ones that make me able to transmit my energy to those around me. When my intestines empty, I thank them for ridding my body of its waste. When my urine drains, I admire the volume of fluid that the cells in my bladder manage to store. When I'm craving and have nothing to eat on hand, I remind my cells that I have fuel on my hips (in the form of lipids). When I feel threatened, I thank my cells for getting me to take my legs to my neck (or adopt a low profile until I can fight back).

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37725
Based on my experience, inner peace comes from a circuit of neurons in the right brain that, because they never quite rest, remain likely to take over others at all times. Our sense of tranquillity is anchored in the present moment. It does not come from a memory of the past or a projection into the future. To achieve inner peace, it seems imperative to allow ourselves to be absorbed by the here and now.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37726
Your mother probably forbade you to play with food when you were little. It seems to me, however, that as long as you're only having fun in the privacy of your dining room, there's nothing to complain about! One thing is for sure: having fun with the contents of your plate is a great way to get rid of stress or anxiety!

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37727
Of course, silence can also be wonderful. I really like to dip my ears under the water of my bath, thus isolating myself from the outside noises. I then pay attention to the murmur of my body and praise my cells for their tireless efforts to keep me alive. The slightest excess of auditory stimuli tires me or it is my responsibility to preserve my brain from overheating. I often work or travel with earplugs that, more than once, have saved me from going crazy!

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

#37728
Another expedient to escape the rumination of our left hemisphere is to simply ask him to drive away the harmful thoughts that disturb us. The effectiveness of repetitive incantations such as mantras (a term that literally means "resting place of the mind") cannot be underestimated. All I have to do is breathe my lungs and repeat "I'm overflowing with joy" or "I want nothing more than what I have" or "I am one of the wonderful children of our mother earth" and immediately fall into the consciousness of my right hemisphere.

Jill Bolte Taylor
(Journey beyond my brain)

Seth Messenger : Jill Bolte Taylor's quotes

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