Super Soul Special: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: “My Stroke of Insight”
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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.

I'm talking to Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, who wrote a book called My Stroke of Insight, it's called, because she had a massive stroke and remained conscious the entire time and lived, obviously, sitting here with me now, to write about it.

Dr. Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist who teaches at the Indiana University School of Medicine and is a national spokesperson for the mentally ill for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center. Welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about what your life was like before the stroke?

Before the stroke, I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother diagnosed with schizophrenia. And he's only 18 months older than I am. So he was my constant companion as a child. So my introduction to the world was through his eyes as well as through my own. And I recognized as a little girl that he was very different in the way he perceived experiences around and then chose to behave. And just his overall personality.

way that he put the world together it was different from mine so I became very highly tuned into body language tone how people interact with one another what people found a value how they they made the decisions that they made so at the time of the hemorrhage though I was at Harvard Medical School teaching and performing research my area of specialty was the post-mortem investigation of the brain as it relates to schizophrenia

and i was serving on the board of directors for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was doing something that could make a difference in the lives of people like my brother. Would you consider yourself a spiritual person before the stroke?

I would describe myself as spiritual but not religious. I grew up, my father was a retired minister, and so I went to church because I had to go to church, and it didn't really resonate with me. But I could put myself in a bigger picture, but it wasn't well-defined. Did you have any particular spiritual beliefs?

Like what happened to you when you die or what we were here to do as human beings? No, I didn't put myself in a box. And I was open to the possibility. And I always wanted to be awake when I died because I thought that that would be a really cool experience. And I wanted to just have that witness. You say in my stroke of insight that you think, like most people, you say, I wanted to be awake when you died. I was going, that thought never occurred to me. It really...

No. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, drug me. Oh, no, I want to watch it.

- I wanna watch. - You wanna watch the whole thing? - I wanna watch the whole thing. I wanna have the experience. And I almost did, so be careful what you ask for. - Be careful what you ask for. So you had no particular thought about what happened to us, I mean, you were 37 when the stroke occurred. So at some point you thought about what happens when you die? Did you think that when you die your body goes in the ground and that's it? Or there is some afterlife? - I pretty much figured when it was done, it was done. - And there we are. - And there we are.

So do what you can do while you're here because this is, you know, a gift, but it's a very finite experience. So take us to the morning of the stroke. Yes. Let's begin there. Okay. Well, I began with a pounding pain behind my left eye, and it was a pulsing pain. Yeah. You want to turn the alarm off? Oh, okay.

You want the beginning. I want the whole thing. But you read it. I know. But it's in the book. But they didn't. Let me tell you what happened. Okay, tell the story. Okay, what happened was, Jill, is that, Dr. Taylor, is that the alarm went off. You hit it again, you know, to get yourself a few more minutes. You notice this pounding. Yes.

and the light was coming in from the window. - Yes. - Okay. - Yes, and it pulsed at my head. It burned my brain. It was very uncomfortable. And it was very unusual for me to have any kind of pain. So I-- - But you're not a person who gets headaches or anything? - No, I'm not a person who gets headaches. I exercise regularly. I had zero warning signs for stroke.

First of all, because because I have blood pressure is fine. My weight was fine. My exercise was fine. Everything was fine. And I should throw in there that it was a hemorrhagic stroke, not a blood clot ischemic stroke, because it does make a difference in how it manifests in the body. But this was was a congenital problem with the blood vessels that I was born with.

Okay. So I started my normal exercise routine. Yeah, because you say, I love that, how you say, I've got this pounding behind my eye. A lot of people would say, let me call in. I can't go to work today. You say, I've got this pounding behind my eye. Let me get on my cardio glider. Let's do some exercise. And maybe that'll help it go away. Exactly. That's a healthy person. Yeah.

Well, that morning I wasn't very healthy, but at least I had the right attitude. So you get on the exercise glider because you think exercise will maybe help the headache. Yeah, it's going to get my body, the blood flowing, you know, just kind of normalize everything. And then? Well, there was this shift in perception, a shift in consciousness, where I essentially became a witness to myself being on this machine, having this experience. And just the entire perception was odd.

And what went through your mind? Well, I knew something was going on, but I didn't know because, you know, I've never had a hemorrhage. I've never had a stroke. So I couldn't know that that was what I was having. So I just thought, okay, I'm just going to watch this for a while.

So I got off of the machine, and I noticed that everything in my body had slowed way down. And my thoughts had slowed, and my body was deliberate and rigid. And there was a constriction in my area of perception. I was living outside of Boston where it's noisy. I had no perception of noise. And I just became...

tuned into the workings of my body. So it was very interesting. Through the eyes of a neuroanatomist, it's very interesting. You have to understand. This is like interesting. Very fascinating. It was fascinating. Okay. So then you decide, I'm going to go into the shower. I'm going to get myself to the shower. What happened when you turned on the shower? Well, when I turned on the shower, the volume of the sound of the water as it hit the tub was just epic.

amplified and it just the the loudness just knocked me back and knocked me over and and it was and I realized at that point that I'm having a major problem and it is involving my auditory system and as a neuroanatomist I know of course where the fibers are are in the circuitry and

and and at this point i'm becoming alerted to the fact that i'm having uh... of real problem and it could possibly be life threatening ok at this point though you didn't you didn't know it was struck now you didn't know i had no idea okay so tell us what was going on there i shifted into this awareness that i'm this miraculous conglomeration of of trillions of little organisms working together for me to be and and i could do this i could wiggle my fingers and

And just because I could wiggle my fingers and I had a mind, I could reach out into the world and I could move it. And wow, what a concept. I mean, have you ever thought about yourself?

No, we are that we're this incredible miracle of life. And we've like forgotten that this is what we are. And we've lost that appreciation for for what we are as a living entity and that it's temporary. It's temporary. So take care of it. Take care of it. Nurture it. Be good to it.

Do you consider yourself a stroke survivor or a stroke triumphant? Oh, I like that! I love that! I love that, thank you. Yeah, a stroke triumphant. Yeah, absolutely, a stroke triumphant. So when did you realize this is a stroke?

Well, I had just gotten out of the shower, and I had dressed for work, and I was walking around my apartment, and I was visualizing the road to McLean Hospital asking, can I drive? Can I drive? And then the right arm went totally paralyzed. And it was just like a thud against my body. It was amazing. I never had anything like that happen before. And so when the right arm went thud against your body, that's when you said, oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke. I'm having a stroke. All right. And then the next thing my brain said to me was,

You know. Wow. This is so cool. This is so cool. That's right. I know. I know. Wow. It did. It was. This is so cool. Okay, this is what I'm dealing with. Wow. Hey, cool. It's a stroke. Yeah. Didn't you bring a brain today? I did. I brought a brain. Can you give me the brain? Yeah. Let me move my lemon out of the way. Let me move my lemon out of the way. Because you're going to show us the place in the brain where you actually had the stroke. Yeah. It's in the left hemisphere, I read. Beautiful brain. Wow.

with a spinal cord hanging down. So this is the right hemisphere, the left hemisphere. Spinal cord in the back. Very spongy, looks like one big huge sponge. Big tofu. That's the spinal cord hanging down there? That's a big beautiful spinal cord. So here, Oprah. Here, let me hold the brain. Got the brain in my hand. Beautiful. Beautiful, yeah.

So this is left and there's little spongy things. This is right. This is right. Right and left. This is back with the spinal cord. So was the entire left hemisphere left?

Bleeding? Mine, yes. It started relatively small, deep inside over here. But it was a hemorrhage, so it got bigger and bigger and bigger over the course of the morning. And the left hemisphere does what for us? That's our language? It does our language. It's our ability to think sequentially, to think methodically, to think linearly, to be able to know A plus B equals C, any kind. It's our numbers. It's our ability to communicate with the external world.

And the right hemisphere is the big picture. The right hemisphere is the big picture. It gives us depth. Exactly. It gives us the context of everything. It also gives us the more subtle kinds of understanding. It's our intuition. It's our witness or our observer. Wow. It's our ability to experience peace, deep inner peace.

So the two hemispheres are very different in their function. The entire left hemisphere went quiet. It went totally silent. Which means you lost your ego. I lost my ego. Yeah, I was essentially an infant in a woman's body, and I didn't have any of her recollection of her life. So was I her anymore? So what did exist then?

So you lost the ego. Right. You lost the sense of I am and your sense of context to, you know, I am not only a name, but I am, you know, a PhD at Harvard. I am, you know. I wasn't any of that.

that anymore. I wasn't any of that anymore. So lost all of that. Yeah. But what you had, though, was a sense of oneness and a sense of peace and a sense of connection to humanity in a way that you'd never had before. Yeah. Because all of that other stuff had been quieted. Exactly. So when I look at people who have had any kind of trauma, I ask, what have they gained? Well,

What I gained was this incredible knowingness of deep inner peace, an excitement of realizing everything was interconnected. And I lost the boundary of my body. So I felt that I was enormous, as big as the universe, because I no longer defined that this was where I began and this was where I ended.

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One of the things you say when you're telling us in the beginning of the book about the simple science of what happened to you in your brain, you say as members of the same human species, you and I share all but one hundredth of one percent of identical genetic sequences. So biologically, as a species, you and I are virtually identical to one another at the level of our genes, and there's only one hundredth

a 1% difference, and that is what makes all the difference. That's right. But 99.99% of all of us is the same. Is the same. Is the same. Doesn't, you know, when I read that, it made me so sad for all of the

wars and violence and prejudices and disagreements and arguments and when you're all 99.9% the same. Right, right. We are brothers and sisters. We have this level of hostility that focuses on our differences instead of our similarities, which is very unfortunate in the way that it then can cause animosity because all of a sudden then I see you as, oh, you're different than I am. And so you don't feel like a safe space.

But you're really not separate from me. So again, it's that left hemisphere that defines separation. So when your left hemisphere went out, literally, you lost your left mind. I did. Your right mind was still working. It gave you the perception to know that you were connected to all that is. Exactly. Yeah. Which was always there, but I wasn't privy to it because my left hemisphere had been dominant.

It had been inhibiting, actually having inhibiting fibers over those circuits inside of my right hemisphere. So I didn't have that conscious awareness. So let's talk about orchestrating the rescue. You have the stroke. And how long is all of this taking? How long is this whole process? The whole morning took about four hours. Wow. Yeah, yeah. See, I didn't get that from the book. Yeah, it took a whole morning. Yeah.

Wow. Time is running out on you. Time was running out. Yeah. Time was running out. Because at this whole time, you're bleeding into your brain. And the hemorrhage is getting bigger and bigger. And as the hemorrhage gets bigger, more and more circuits are going offline. Okay. So you finally managed to call your coworker. Yes. And...

From what I was reading in your book, is it that you just sort of remembered, your right hemisphere remembered where to place your fingers on the phone? Yes. Or did you actually remember the number? I had a number flash into my mind, but at this point I didn't really know what numbers were, so I had to match the squiggle, the shape of the squiggle in my mind to the shape of the squiggle on the pad and get it dialed out that way. And is all of this happening...

between flashes of lucidity where you're still thinking, wow, it's cool. I'm all sales. Look at this. So you are in the midst of this...

you know, in and out being lucid and not, and figure out a way to call. When you finally go to speak to call, tell us what happened. Well, when my colleague first answers the phone, he says, and I'm sure he didn't say that, but that's what I heard. He sounded like a golden retriever. And I, cause I had had a golden retriever and I thought he sounds just like a golden

I was like, wow. You know, and at the same time, I'm thinking, oh, I've got a problem. Because the part of your brain that now can translate language. Exactly. Is no longer functioning. Wow. And so I'm saying to him, clear in my mind, I'm saying, this is Jill. I need help. But what's coming out is because I couldn't get the apparatus. So you couldn't speak, nor could you understand what he was saying. I could not understand. Yeah.

So how did he understand? Well, he recognized that we're very good friends. So he recognized that I needed help. And so then he got me help. Could you in your own mind hear language? In your own mind, you knew what you were saying. Yes. Yes, clearly. I just couldn't translate what was inside my head to the external world.

Yes, because the part of your mind, because what I learned from reading my stroke of insight is that the right brain is the big picture of things. Right. So the right brain knows that there is language. Yes. But the left brain actually interprets the language. And performs the function. And performs the function. Right. I'm so fascinated by it. Okay. So when you went to speak, it was all jibber jabber. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But what also fascinated me is that when you hung up the phone, even though you didn't understand what he said and recognized that you probably weren't understood, the right brain understood that.

That he was going to help you. He was going to get me help. Exactly. Because the right hemisphere is the big picture of language, which is intonation, voice inflection, the bigger picture of the emotional content of language. So he could have said to me anything and I didn't get the verbiage. But because of the way his voice communicated, I could tell that he understood I needed help and he would get me help.

That was so insightful to me because what I realized is that probably, and for anybody else who is listening, is that for so many people who have been discounted because of their disabilities, because they don't understand us or we think they don't understand us and they cannot communicate it, they're in there. They're in there. They're in there. They're in there and they're watching. They're in there and their perception of how you perceive them is very clear. Yeah.

So they know if you're scared, they know if you're intimidated, they know if you're, that sense is heightened more so than anything else. I also thought that's exactly what animals do. That's what your golden retrievers, I have golden retrievers too. That's what your golden retrievers do. They're responding to tone, intonation, intent, that unspoken language. That's absolutely right.

And they don't have the ego issue. Exactly. They don't have the ego issue. Yeah. It's just love me, love me, love me. Happy you're home. Happy you're home. Happy you're home. So when you get to the hospital also...

Tell us about that process. There's so much to learn about the way people are treated. When I arrived in the emergency room, it was just a hustling beehive and energy coming at me from everywhere. And people are swarming the gurney and they're poking me and prodding me and giving me something to sign in this condition where it's like, I have no idea. What?

I am. I am. And I have to sign this thing. And my right arm had gone paralyzed. And I was fortunate that it came mostly back, but it was still just totally limp. And I was like, what is that? That is crazy. It was crazy. And then I just wanted to sign this. I don't even know who I am. And my right arm doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when you first arrived in the hospital, one of the things I remember you saying is that.

repeatedly different people came in to do the same thing. And that one of the first things that you learned was that hospitals should be about conserving a patient's energy instead of taking it away. Exactly. Yeah, I learned that there are two kinds of people on the planet, people who bring you energy or people who take your energy away. And that was all I had.

At that point. So I had this this precious little reservoir. And if someone was going to come and interact with me, I needed them to bring me themselves. I needed them to to look me in the eye and to touch me and to just bring their hope and their their energy to me as opposed to taking energy away. No, I love this. This is going to be one of my favorite quotes of all time now.

I really need people to take responsibility for the kind of energy they bring to me. Amen. You write that on page 120. Nice. Yes. Oh, I needed people to be walk-in conscious. Walk-in. I teach first-year medical students, so you know I'm preaching to these kids. Your patients, they may be in this totally discombobulated condition, but when you walk in the room, you've got to show up for them 100%.

And I agree. I think it should be a motto for life. Yeah. Take responsibility for the energy that you're bringing to me. That's right. And so you would ask people to soften their brows and don't come bringing me your bad energy into the room because your right hemisphere could so perceive those people who were there with the intention to help you and those people who didn't. Right.

who were going through the motions. One of the great moments, I think, that you also share in the book is, I can't remember the name of the doctor whom you had been on a... Ann Young, Dr. Ann Young. Yeah, and she came in with her team and shared that with us. Well, she was just a... I call her the queen of neurology because she had just meant so much to me pre-stroke. And she came in with her entourage because Mass General Hospital is a teaching hospital.

And she came in and I was just so glad that embarrassment was no longer a circuit that I had going on in my brain because I was in the middle of my derriere in the air and having a sponge bath as the queen of neurology comes into the room and with with her entourage.

But she came in. Entourage of students. Entourage of students. And she came in and she touched me from behind as she walked around me like a good horse handler would. And she was gentle with me and she helped position me. And then she leaned down to my face and she spoke to me. She didn't speak to her students as they were all gathered around the room. And she asked my permission. And I didn't understand the language, but I knew what she was there for. She was there for a neurological exam.

But she asked my permission to do this for her students. And I agreed. And so she performed her neurological exam and I failed everything just like I was supposed to fail it. And then but she didn't leave until she knew that that I was done with her. She allowed me to dismiss her.

But she made a connection with me, and I felt safe with her, and I felt I'm going to be fine in her care. She's watching out for me. Yes, and you say in the book, which I thought was very helpful for anybody dealing with members of their family or patients who have had the stroke or other disabilities, you say...

She recognized that I was wounded and not stupid. Exactly. Exactly. She respected me. She came to me. She treated me as an equal. She treated me as though I was wounded as opposed to stupid. And there's a huge difference in affect and energy that comes at you when someone is helping you. So then your mother came, Gigi. Oh, my God. Did I love that.

And then along comes Gigi. And so Gigi arrives on the morning of day three. Gladys Gilman. Gladys Gilman Taylor. Yes. Wonderful. Angel in my life. And everybody's so excited, though, because Gigi's coming to town. So it's like, okay, well, you know, I'm excited because Gigi's coming to town, but I don't know what a Gigi is. So your right brain senses the excitement. There's excitement. Yeah. Something's going on. Something's going on. Something's coming. Yeah. So this woman walks in the door and she walks to the side of the bed, picks up the sheet.

crawls in bed with me, wraps her arms around me, and starts to rock me like I'm her baby again. Wow. And here I am going, oh, wow.

This is what a Gigi is. Oh, isn't this nice? Because you didn't recognize her as your mother and didn't know what a mother was. No, no. Had no idea. All I knew was this very loving, kind, generous of spirit woman came in, wrapped herself around me and just took ownership of loving me. And that was the new beginning. So one day I had been her Harvard doctor daughter. And the next day I was her infant in her arms again. And it was, that was where we began.

That is where we began. Wow. Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now. It pays to discover. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card based on the February 2024 Nelson report.

New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom rack stores now. Fresh kicks, spring tops, new dresses. There's always a score. I mean, the denim section is unreal. Why do I rack? All the dresses. I always find something amazing. Head to your Nordstrom rack store to find can't miss deals on all the spring things. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

So going home, going back to your home, were the things there familiar to you? No, not in the beginning. Not in the beginning. I was just absolutely exhausted. So when I got home, it was like I just wanted to go to bed and hibernate. I just needed to recover my mind. Still no sense of identity. Still no, I am Jill. No. You know, I'm a doctor. No.

I live in this place. I own these things. None of that. I sat in an absolutely silent mind for the two and a half weeks before surgery and then up to two and a half weeks after surgery. In a silent mind? Silent. No brain chatter. No brain chatter telling me I am Jill Bolte-Taylor, I am a neuroanatomist, these are my credentials, blah, blah, blah.

Or I need to do this, this, and this, and this? None of that. Absolutely none of that. Can you describe again for us what that silent mind is like? Was it lonely in there? Oh, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was tranquil and peaceful. And I felt so whole and so enormous. And I would sit on my couch with this goofy grin on my face because I was alive. And because?

Because there was no left brain functioning, no attachment to the ego, you didn't care what other people thought. Oh, no, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all.

Ain't no difference to me. I think this is going to be so, the book is going to help so many people with dealing with, you know, children or family members with disabilities because of our own stuff. Right. We look at them and feel, oh, poor thing. You're projecting all your fears of what you think it would be like to be in my shoes, but you're not in my shoes.

Even though you're drooling. Even though I'm drooling. Even though I have no hygiene care. I have no ability to take care of myself. Somebody's feeding me. It didn't matter. What mattered was I still had life and I was still capable of honoring my own life.

I was perfect and whole and beautiful just the way that I was. That was my perception. Okay. Let's go to the surgery. You came out of the surgery, and then what happened? What did they actually do in the surgery? In the surgery, they drilled three holes, taken a blob of bone out of my head, sucked out a blood clot the size of a golf ball, put the bone back on, and said, go home and heal.

Essentially, it's going to be two years before we know anything. And when I woke up later that day, there was a brightness. I felt bright again. I had been just totally flat affect, just dull, just dull. Happy, but dull. And once that blood clot was gone, I felt like, okay...

My spirit, the energy of me, I feel like I can be enthusiastic about life again. So it doesn't matter. Whatever happens now doesn't matter because I feel like I'm me again. Did you think that the me was Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor? No, she was a long way away. She was a long way away. She was a long way away. You still didn't have an identification with an ego self. No. Yeah. No. No, it was two and a half weeks before the brain chatter started to come back.

And it was like a slate that had been wiped clean. And so I didn't remember all of my science was gone. I had to learn to read from scratch. I had to learn to write from scratch. I had to learn all my science. I still had the picture. The right hemisphere thinks in pictures. So as the left hemisphere and the brain became more normalized again from the swelling, the pictures were there.

So I had to learn language again, which meant I had to learn what my name was again. But even when you learn that this is your name, that still doesn't mean that you know that that's who you are, that that's an identification for you. Because that person died. In my mind, that person died. And so in the absence of her, I was going to be somebody new. And I couldn't be held to whom she had been because she had been a Harvard graduate.

brain scientist and I couldn't hold myself to that. I had a big hole in my head. So, so she was gone and we grieved her. We mourned the loss of her, but, but she was gone. How did you grieve her? Um, we talked about it. Um, my, my mom and my friends, my family, we, we recognized that, that we had to let the person whom I had been go because I, I wasn't her anymore.

I didn't have any of her recollection of her life. I had none of her knowledge. I had none of her education. I had none of her memories. Did you ever get to the point where you recalled those old memories? After about seven or eight or nine years, yeah, at that point. It was a good eight or nine years before I remembered items from my past that I know no one had taught me.

But it took many, many, many, many years. So you basically had to relearn a self. Exactly. I got reborn, essentially, if you will, and start from scratch. And here you go. What are you going to do with your second life?

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what an opportunity. I mean, because think about it. I lost all my emotional baggage. On top of it, I lost all my pain. I lost any suffering I'd ever had. I lost all those memories. I lost it all. And I got to start fresh at the age of 37. So as you then are developing this new self, you have a choice to either pick up

the baggage or not to pick up the baggage or to create new baggage. And so you chose not to create new baggage. Exactly. How did you know not to do that? Well, I didn't like the way it felt in my body. So I chose not to run that circuitry. It's circuitry. It's all about circuitry. For example, you can think something that makes you feel sadness and sadness has a physiological function.

feeling in your body and your throat tightens and things happen inside of you physiologically. I didn't like the way that felt. So I just decided that wasn't circuitry that I was going to run anymore.

So I said no to the circuitry. I said, no, I just, you know, you have to remember that your brain is just a bunch of cells. Right. And I look at the cells as a bunch of little children and some little children I want to play with. And there are other little children who I don't really like what they do. And I'm going to say, no, I don't want to go there. Exactly. So anybody can do that. So now you control your thoughts. We all do for. So right now you can stop and think about taxes.

How did that feel in your body? Not so good. Exactly. But you had the ability to consciously think taxes and have that experience. You have the ability to focus your mind on what you want to focus it on. Uh-huh. Okay, so let's go to the Gigi piece. So when you don't think about it anymore, it doesn't exist. Exactly.

Exactly. I'm saying let's go to the Gigi piece. The Gigi thing. I mean, you think about the power between the mother-daughter relationship. Right. And if anybody's going to have any power in my life, it's going to be my mother. Right. Well, I didn't even know what a mother was, much less who my mother was. And I really like this new entity, but she had none of her old power, which meant she couldn't coax me into doing anything the way that she used to be able to because the relationship. Because she's a mother. Right. Because the game was different now. I changed the rules. Oh, my God. I took away her power.

That's free. That's the beauty of it. When you pay attention to what's going on in your own brain and you take responsibility for the circuitry you're running, you make the rules of a new game. And as soon as you change the way you interact with other people, the rules have changed and the game has changed. It demands change to happen. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's so... It's freedom. How do we get some of this, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, without having to have a stroke? Yeah. Well, I... You write about finding your own inner peace. How do we do it? Pay attention to what you're thinking. Pay attention to what you're thinking. And you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are created by a tiny, tiny little group of cells about the size of a peanut...

sitting in your left hemisphere. And many of us let that little peanut rule our lives. And you have to recognize that it's just a group of cells that is designed to tell stories so that we feel safe in the external world. You are not your thoughts. So pay attention to what you're thinking and then decide if those are thoughts that are creating the kind of life that you want created. And if it's not, then change your thoughts.

And that doesn't mean you have to work, work, work real hard to do that. Just take responsibility for the thoughts that you're thinking and allow yourself to move yourself into the circuitry that brings you peace. Wouldn't that be amazing if we all could tap into that without having to have a stroke to do it? Exactly. And I believe 100% that anybody can. I think it's that attitude of gratitude. You know what it feels like inside of your body when you're feeling grateful? Yes. You're just...

feeling this celebration of life and oh my gosh, how fortunate it is for me to be on the planet, to have this form and who knows what the future's gonna bring and who knows what the past has brought, it doesn't matter. All I have is right now and I'm celebrative, that gratitude and that to me is the power of now.

You say it's also so important to pay attention to self-talk. Absolutely. Self-talk. Pay attention to what you're saying to yourself and take some responsibility for that voice.

I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to... Because that's all it is. It's just talk. It's just talk. And did you ever wonder when you're really mad and you're yelling at yourself, did you ever wonder who's doing the yelling and who you're yelling at? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the left hemisphere brain chatter yelling at that right hemisphere, which isn't always doing things absolutely to the detail that that left hemisphere would like because it doesn't care about any of that stuff. Uh-huh.

One of the things I wanted to talk about is when you were in this state in the hospital, you talked about in the end of the book, 40 things you needed most. And I was struck by, ask me questions with specific answers. Allow me time to hunt for the answers. Allow me time because my mind is wounded. I have slowed way down in my ability to communicate. Be patient with me.

Don't finish all of my sentences for me either because I need to be able to go through that hunt and process. And if you ask a question and then answer it yourself, I'm left out of the loop. And I learned that you don't really care to get any information from me, so I stopped trying. Wow. Yeah. Handle me gently as you would a newborn. Yes. Treat.

Treat me with that love, with that reverence and that love. So what can brain science teach us about ourselves to help us cope when there's all this brain chatter going on? Where do you focus your attention and pay attention to how things feel in your body? Because you know what you feel like in your body when you get angry.

And you have a choice when you get angry of either being angry or of paying attention to what it feels like in your body when you are angry. And when you have that kind of physiological response, when you get angry, it only takes 90 seconds.

It takes 90 seconds from the moment that you feel that trigger happen and you feel yourself starting to get angry for the chemicals to flush through your body and then flush completely out of you. 90 seconds is all. So if you start feeling, next time, Oprah, next time you start feeling yourself getting angry, I want you to look at your watch.

And start timing it. And start timing it. Within 90 seconds, it will be gone. And you'll go, okay, I just dodged that one. Really? Yeah. So 90 seconds. So then why do people harbor the same feelings for years? Because they keep rethinking the same thought that re-stimulates that emotional circuitry and they rerun the loop.

Got it. And I hook right back into that hostility and I'm going to run it again. And I can stay angry. People can stay angry for days and weeks and years. It's phenomenal. Just because they're choosing, either consciously or unconsciously, they're choosing to rerun the loops, the circuitry. So I loved what you shared with us before, that you weren't trying to get back to your old self. You mourned and grieved the loss of...

the first born Dr. Jill Bolte- The first born, yeah. First born Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor and went about creating another Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor for yourself. Right. Yes. Yeah. And how is that Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor different from the

Well, my friends tell me I'm much more fun. I have more time for people. I'm more compassionate. I'm more generous of spirit. I think that those are improvements. Well, it has been a joy being able to share this time with you and all of the

I'm glad you had a stroke of insight. Thank you. I'm glad you had a stroke of insight. Yeah, no, if I could go back that day and not do it again, I would say no. If I could choose to have it, I would choose to have it. I have learned so much. I have grown so much as a human being. And I just really feel like I have identified my purpose.

And the purpose is? To help other people recognize that they too have deep inner peace right there in the right hemisphere. Wow. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, stroke triumphant. Stroke triumphant. Nice, nice, nice. Thanks everybody for joining us. I'm hoping that we all learn from your experience, really, and that we all gain our own strokes of insight from it. Thank you. Thanks everybody.

I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.

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