Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Famous Neuroscientist: Instantly Reduce Stress & Find Peace by Understanding These 4 Parts of Your Brain, with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

The Truth About How Your Brain Really Works You NEVER Knew!    The Neuroscience Secret to Feeling Stress Free and Increasing Your Intuition!   You’ve heard the myth: left brain = logic, right brain = emotions. BUT WHAT IF EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG?   Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, renowned Harvard neuroanatomist and author of My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living, is here to DESTROY this misconception and reveal how understanding the full power of your brain can TRANSFORM your life!   Dr. Taylor shares her incredible insights after suffering a life-threatening brain hemorrhage & stroke, which not only led her to become the expert in how our brains shape our perception, emotions, and reality, but also changed her perception of life and death forever. Find out how the 4 different characters of the brain control your actions, thoughts, and relationships – and how you can take CONTROL over your emotions and mental state.   Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor also breaks down: - How trauma, pain, and even ruminating thoughts are all connected to your brain's wiring and how YOU can fix it - Why cruelty might just be a reflection of someone's inner trauma – and how to heal from it - The secret to unlocking more joy and awe in your life (your brain is wired for it!) - How meditation, gratitude, and physical awareness can bring you back to the present moment & into deeper harmony with yourself. - Tips on how to move past your emotional triggers, address cravings, and even tap into alternate energy frequencies to shift your mindset - Her take on psychedelics and their connection to the rise of schizophrenia   This is an episode that will leave you questioning EVERYTHING you thought you knew about your brain, your emotions, and your life. TUNE IN to MBB today!!   Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's Books: - Whole Brain Living: https://www.drjilltaylor.com/whole-brain-living/ - My Stroke of Insight: https://www.drjilltaylor.com/my-stroke-of-insight/   BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To me, the gift of this stroke is that a neuroscientist, a neuroanatomist who thinks in terms of circuitry had an opportunity to shut down what was going on in the left hemisphere to the point where she could really discover what does it feel like to be completely without those skills of distraction from the present moment. I am watching my own brain experience a major hemorrhage. I'm literally watching circuits go offline one at a time to the point where I cannot walk, talk, read, right, or recall any of my life. When people meditate, when people reach that space of transcendental goal,

it's actually a quieting of the conversational personalities of the left hemisphere designed to focus on detail, me, the individual, my relationship between me and the external world. When I lost that left hemisphere, what I gained was an non-interrupted or inhibited experience of the present moment. People are trying desperately to find this piece. They're trying to figure out,

how do I get out of my fear, out of my anxiety, out of the pain of my past, the pain from my trauma, the fear of the unknown in the future? How do we get out of that and step into the part of ourselves that is peaceful? It's Miami-Bi-Alex breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. Because you know she knows a thing or two.

And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down. Hey, I just found out something astounding. Approximately 63% of those of you listening to or watching Miami-Bi-Ox breakdown are not subscribed. We know you're listening and we know you're watching because of all of the awesome comments you leave telling us how MyM. Biolk's breakdown is helping you lead a happier and healthier life. We love that. But the best way to support our show is to subscribe. It's also the only way to get latest updates

and to know when new episodes drops. So anywhere that you listen to podcasts and on YouTube, please subscribe, hit the bell icon so that you know when a new episode drops. Thank you so much. And on to the episode. Hi, I'm Myam Bealik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. This is the place where you break things down so you don't have to. Today is a great day because it's not. not often we get to speak to neuroscientists. And we have got the neuroscientist, I would say, of neuroscientists. Jill Boltey Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroscientist who's also going to talk about

the different parts of our brain and how understanding and integrating them can literally help you transform your life from what may have felt like stagnation, in trauma, in pain, in rumination, and how understanding these four. distinct parts in a way that I have never heard described before is actually a simple, very simple, accessible way to change your awareness of your human experience. My jaw is on the floor here. She talks about how to activate and deactivate circuitries in the brain, meaning that you can turn things on and off, and that can help you create different choices in your life. because you're going to respond to the world differently.

She describes that each one of us has a brain that is designed to create ecstatic experiences, that we're wired to create awe and joy and how these things can transform our lives when we truly experience them. A lot of us have heard about right brain versus left brain. How about that's not the way to actually think about your brain? It's not like you have one side that's rational and another side that's emotional. Both sides have the capability to process information and emotion. You need all components of both sides of your hemisphere to create a whole experience.

And what strikes me the most about this approach to understanding our well-being is that if you've ever felt torn between what you wish you could be feeling and experiencing and what your brain seems to want you to think and experience, if you have ever experienced that conflict, this approach helps you dissect that out and integrate it so that you can stop fighting inside of your brain. That's mostly what I feel like my challenge is in life. It's not fighting with Jonathan or people on the street or my kids, although I do a lot of that too. It's the conflict in my very own brain that will not allow me to experience joy when I want to. It will not allow me to access things in meditation that everybody else, else says they're having, right? If you are a person who has felt stuck and like maybe you are

not your own worst enemy, but maybe you're in a prison that only you have the key to, I absolutely guarantee that you will feel differently about how to open up that prison after listening to Jill Boltey Taylor. Break it down. I have to say, I've known about you for a long time, you know, not only as a student of neuroscience, your story really ricocheted through, I mean, the world. And your book introduced people to so many aspects of not only the unbelievable experience that you had and the tremendous amount of insight you had about that experience, But for many people, it was the first time they gained an understanding of the brain and nervous system, which people like me chose to study.

But a lot of people were like, what is that? Why are you doing that? You're a nerd. You're so stupid. And then your book came out and everybody was like, oh, this is what you study. Thank you. Oh, I'm honored. And may I first say, fan girl, fan girl. And anything good science, Big Bang, anything, you know. mystery, nerdy, yeah, nerd macro. So happy to be here. And yeah, no, it was quite a ride for everybody when that book, when that experience came out with the TED Talk. You were getting your doctorate right around when the TED Talk came out because the TED Talk hit in 08. There's so much I want to talk to you about, you know, obviously, you know, for people who who have not read my stroke of insight, a brain scientist's personal journey.

It is such a fantastic book. And also, you know, whole brain living, which we're also going to get into, the anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive our life. You know, I didn't really know what to expect. You know, you said that you really never thought you'd write another book after my stroke of insight

unless you had something kind of new and novel to introduce. And indeed, what you're presenting is, I mean, the best way I can describe it is it's a combination of parts work, which we do in therapy, with not only practical neuroscience kind of structure, but the insight that comes from what you experienced. So I'm really excited to get into understanding what these four characters are, how so many things about how you describe these four different, parts of your brain and your psyche can really be utilized to literally create a better understanding

of yourself and change. But I really do think before we get to that, it would really help our audience to have a little bit of framework for what happened to you in that December. Can you talk a little bit about sort of how we got here? Certainly. So first, I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who is 18 months older than I, and he would eventually be diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. So as children, of course, we don't know that a brain is not normal. All we know is that my brother is very different from me in the way he interprets his experience, our experience,

and then how he chooses to behave in response to it. So just like, say, for example, we're playing kickball out in the front street in the front yard, and the ball goes flying into the street. And mom is screaming like a lunatic at us, and he's interpreting her as being angry, and I'm interpreting her as being terrified. Well, that's a significant difference in perception of reality. And so I just noticed that we were very different. And so because of that, I became very focused on, well, what are the differences?

Who is he? Who am I? How can we be different? And biologically, this boy is the closest thing to me that exists in the universe. So I figure at some kind of biological level, the level of the brain, that's where we're going to find these differences. So I grow up to become a neuroanatomist. So I study the anatomy of the brain.

How does stimulation come in? How is that processed? And so I was teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School. I was 37 years old. I was in the prime of my life. And I love the brain. I'm a gross anatomist. I love the body.

Everything's cellular. And then I wake up one morning and I am watching my own brain experience a major hemorrhage in the left hemisphere. So I'm literally watching circuits go offline one at a time over the course of four hours to the point where I cannot walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. Well, obviously, I did get help. It had a happy ending. I had a major craniotomy. They removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball out of my left hemisphere. and it took eight years for, they sent me home and said, we have no idea how much you're going to get back. We just have no idea.

And so it took eight years for me to completely rebuild the cells of my left hemisphere in those circuits to regain those abilities based on what I had still retained in the right hemisphere. So that's how I wrote my stroke of insight, a brain scientist personally. journey. Miami-Bialx breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine.

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$199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my and Bial, let's break down to help support the show. Okay. I'm going to, we need to just like, we need to hit pause here because that's an, it's an unbelievable, it's an unbelievable arc of a morning.

Yeah. But what is more, what is more. believable is, first of all, because of your insight and your really intellectual understanding of the brain, there was a certain amount of cognition that you were able to have. And what's really cool about the book is it takes you through everything that you just described. It takes section by section to introduce you to the part of the brain that is responsible for what you started having deficits in, right? I just want to read a little bit of a section. You were basically, it felt like a migraine.

You basically thought you were having like the worst migraine of your life. And you like tried to like get on the treadmill. Like you thought like let's work out a little bit. Like you're just trying to sort of work through it. And you decided to get into the tub, right? You thought like, let's get a bath. And you had already noticed that like your movements were weird. But you said it seemed odd that I could sense

the inner activities of my brain as it adjusted and readjusted all of the opposing muscle groups in my lower extremities to prevent me from falling over. And you said, I was momentarily privy to a precise and experiential understanding of how hard the 50 trillion cells in my brain and body were working in perfect unison to maintain the flexibility and integrity of my physical form. And this sort of leads to what you ultimately discuss in this book, which is that you basically got to perceive the thinking mind, you got to perceive the feeling mind, and there then was a place where you were able to consciously experience the gradual removal of the conscious experience. Can you talk about kind of the steps that went from sort of the practical of like, oh, I'm having trouble.

with my vision or I'm a neuroanatomist. I know that like something's not right with my movement to what you described as the harder I tried to concentrate, the more fleeting my ideas seemed to be. And you met a growing sense of peace. You said in place of the constant chatter that had attached me to the details of my life, I felt enfolded by a blanket of tranquil euphoria. And you felt a oneness with the universe. Can you talk about that. Can you talk about it? about sort of this specific progression that happened in your conscious awareness? Yeah. So, so first of all, imagine if this happened to you, because you have studied the brain. And I'm guessing that any time you experience any kind of neurological weirdness, one, it catches

your attention. And two, you would explore it and find it fascinating, right? Because it is. It's fascinating. And so my consciousness did not move into fear circuitry that said, oh my God, I'm going to die, I'm having a stroke. I need to get help. Instead, it moved into watching and mapping what's going on at the level of now deficit. So as I get up, the first thing I notice is the light is too bright. while this happens with migraine, I close the curtains. I'm thinking, okay, let's see if I can beat this thing and get some blood flowing. So I get onto my cardiac glider and I start the movement of my body, which is my morning routine. But as I'm doing that, I'm realizing that my hands look like claws, primitive claws, grasping onto the bar. And I'm observing my body in action instead of simply being in

my body. Well, this is circuitry inside of the brain, and this is what I was teaching at Harvard. So, so, you know, for me, now I'm mapping, okay, I'm clearly having a problem, which cells are having the problem, and I'm thinking, okay, well, this isn't helping me. So I get off this cardiac glider, and I'm walking across my living room purposely having to speak to my legs saying forward, move forward, move forward. And so I'm pacing across this living room and I get into the shower and it was everything kind of came to culmination in the shower when I, as I'm lifting my leg, I'm literally hearing this conversation of negotiation between my, my, the different parts of the muscles,

you guys contract, you guys relax and I'm going to lose my balance. I mean, I'm literally hearing, it sounded like a workforce of little cells that all had to perform their functions. And now I'm privy to that level of conversation of my somatic balance and workmanship. So I'm not even at my emotions. I'm not even at my thinking. I'm just slowed hearing these grinding chains. working in order to keep my body, and it was very low frequencies, which is fascinating. You know, I mean, it was fascinating. So I get into the shower, and as I turn on the water,

I remember turning on the water and the volume, when the water hit the tub, it was like this big explosion of energy and sound, and I fell back, and I'm propped up against the wall, and I'm looking at my arm against the wall and just there was no differentiation between those different things. It was just atoms and molecules in motion in relationship with one another. And that's when I really realized, I've got a really big, I got a problem going on here. You know, at some point it's like scientists has to stop being fascinated and go get some help. first of all, even as a neuroscientist, I think I'd be freaking the fuck out. And I'm a person who like gets migraines and has a lot of neurological stuff. So I think you have a presence of mind that

most of us would not. But I wonder if you can talk a little bit more. I mean, I'm also thinking like, do we all have a constant like army of voices in our brains that are like, do this, do that? I mean, that's fascinating to me. And I know on an electrochemical level, we do. I want you to talk about when you put your hand against, you know, the wall, like, it sounds like you're tripping balls, but you're not, right? Like, you're not on drugs. This is not a hallucinogenic experience. And this is not a transcendental or schizophrenic experience. You are, you're getting a window into an aspect of perception and consciousness. Talk a little bit more about this atom molecule situation. What did it actually look like when you felt like there was no difference between you and a wall?

It looks like if you look outside of a window and you look into trees and you look at the leaves on the trees and you've got a little motion going on and you're not focusing on anything. You're just kind of having the wide peripheral experience and different pieces are just kind of dancing a little bit in movement. And there's no real discernment of any detail. Instead, everything, the trees blend. together as the forest. I mean, this is why we talk about, you know, the forest versus the trees. You know, are you looking at the trees or you're looking at the forest? Because this part of the brain, the part of the brain, that left hemisphere circuitry that was key at zooming in and differentiating detail and creating boundaries between things,

that was now floating in a pool of blood. And in the absence of that, though, as it releases any kind of inhibition off of the big picture, all I had then was this blurred vision, but it was still a knowingness. There was still a level of consciousness just different than when one focuses on detail. So my perception of self also evaporated me, the individual, skin is where I begin and end. the absence of that, I become a part of this big, what I describe as an energy ball. And I'm now this massive energy ball in relationship with all the energy all around me. And the sense of myself becomes literally as big as the universe because the group of cells in my left hemisphere that

define me as Jill Bolte-Taylor, here's where I begin and in, here is my name, here are the details of my life. With that in the absence, I become open and expansive. And so the morning of the stroke was this waffling between the left hemisphere being turned on and doing what it needed to do to help me the individual interact with the external world so I could get rescued versus slipping off into this experience of oneness with all that is. And there's peace there. And it was lovely and I liked it. So I felt no, there was not this awareness of, okay, I got to get back over to that other part of me, but it was like I'm, I was good with whatever was. And fortunately, the left hemisphere managed to grab back onto my consciousness enough so that I could do what

I needed to do to get help. In many ways, what you're describing is a forced version of what a lot of the spiritual teachers explain is the process of coming outside of ourselves and feeling connected to something greater than just our physical experience. And I'm struck that you were forced to have that. Did you have a sense of spiritual practice before? Were you very much studying the structure of the brain and things operated on a mechanical level? or had you explored spirituality or religion, did you meditate? What was your life like before to then go to what is almost a transcendental or enlightened state

through this wild, almost breakdown of your physical being? So I think that what you just described is completely true. But I think that what happened for me was I don't attribute my consciousness of shifting out beyond, the cellular structure of what I am. So I believe that when people meditate, when people reach that space of transcendental goal, wherever that is, it's actually a quieting of the conversational personalities

of the left hemisphere that is focused, designed to focus on detail, me, the individual, my relationship between me and the external world. In the quietness of that, the inhibition is lifted from the right hemisphere consciousness and we experience the consciousness of what's going on in the right brain. So for me, when I lost that left hemisphere, I lost me the individual. I lost the details of my life. I lost my past. I lost my future. I lost all linearity of time. But what I gained was a non-interrupted or inhibited experience of the present

moment. And in the present moment, I don't know what my name is until that group of cells over there tells me what my name is. I don't define the boundaries of where I begin and end until a group of cells in my left parietal region defines the boundaries of where I begin and where I end. Wipe that out. And everyone would have this experience based on the anatomy of our brain. So for me, I never went before the stroke. I had been very athletic. I had been a late bloomer. My poor mother wondered if my left brain was ever going to turn on.

She was a PhD in mathematics. My dad was a PhD in counseling psychology. Is Jill's left brain ever going to turn on? And it took anatomy in order for me to fall in love with a subject that I actually cared enough to study. And that was my second year of college. So by anybody's measure, I was technically a late bloomer. But I was musical. I was artistic.

I was creative. I was very present-based before. So when my left hemisphere had this stroke and it went offline, I didn't freak out so much because I already had, I think, a pretty healthy right brain to fall back on. It was more my natural. And as far as a religious, I had rejected my mind. my father's Episcopalian ministry, that didn't work for me because I wasn't willing to say I was born a sinner because in my consciousness, I was born a beautiful little ball of life. And so I resonated much more with the teachings of Native American. So, but there wasn't, you know, a practice going on. There was just a real relationship connection to nature.

One thing that struck me about what you said, and I want to ask if I'm interpreting this accurately, is that the consciousness in our right brain, structurally and atomically, actually has this experience of, for a lack of a better word, enlightenment happening all the time for everyone. and that it's only through the dominance or being attuned or listening so much to the left brain that we are distracted from this thing that is available to us and exists. People think that it's this large journey to get there and it's this elusive thing. But what I heard you say is that actually it's right there and it's available and accessible. I'm a firm believer that every ability we have, we have because we have brain cells that perform that function. And different groups of cells packaged together resulting in very specific skill sets that actually manifest in the external world as personalities. And I'm guessing that you have had moments

in your life where you were so creative, so caught up in the moment, be it with art, be it with music, be it with nature, be it with whatever, that you were lost in the flow. And oh my gosh, I can't believe three hours of past, right? Well, where were you? You were in your head. Jonathan, lost in the flow. Three hours is a minimum amount of time he gets lost in the creative flow. Every day until mine says, what am I supposed to be doing next? There you go. So what you're doing, it's not just what are you doing, it's what are you not doing, And what you're not doing is organizing and categorizing and doing all those beautiful tools and applying those tools of the left brain.

And if you can escape that part of your circuitry for a while, and you actually, this is to me the beauty of whole brain living. I wrote whole brain living because people are trying desperately to find this piece inside of themselves. They're trying to figure out how do I get out of my fear, out of my anxiety. out of the pain of my past, the pain from my trauma, the fear of the unknown in the future, the political, all the la, la, la, we're being buried, right? How do we get out of that and step into the part of ourselves that is peaceful? Well, most of us have some tool to do that, I think. We play a

musical instrument or we do something that we play with the puppies. We fuel ourselves in different ways. and it's brain circuitry. And when one part is excited, it is generally inhibiting the opposite cells that are doing something else. And then they release and then those can action. And of course, we're dancing all over the place between this brain. And to me, the gift of this stroke is that a neuroscientist, a neuroanatomist who thinks in terms of circuitry had an opportunity to shut down what was going on in the left hemisphere to

the point where she could really discover what does it feel like to be completely without those skills of distraction from the present moment and to be able to then communicate what it feels like to be there so that other people can say, oh, I can read this collection of of, of, of assets and attributes and abilities. And as I allow myself to become more open and expansive, it inhibits then the part that is trying to become more narrow and more small and more detailed and more blah, blah, blah, in the left hemisphere. And it's like, oh, I know that part of myself.

Okay, if I know that part of myself, then I can, can I train myself, and I believe, of course, yes, I can, to do that, get there more quickly. I love meditation because it's a tool that we use to quiet the left brain, but if we don't know how to really jump into the right hemisphere, we're in this process of quieting the left brain, still listening to the left brain saying, am I there yet? Is this it? What's it going to take? Oh yeah, I forgot to pick up bananas in the morning. You know, all of that. So to me, the beauty of whole brain living, the second book, is it introduces you to these four. parts of yourself so that you can exercise them, feel what they feel like inside of your body to

be that part of who you are, bring those parts of yourself into communication with one another so that moment by moment I can pick and choose who and how I want to be regardless of the external expectation. Okay, Jill, you win. Let's do it. Let's meet the characters. Let's do it. I have many other questions. I have many other things about the transendental experience. But I cannot help it because you are fucking awesome. Let's go there. So the notion of the notion of these four characters, which, you know, as someone who uses or whose therapist uses parts work in the work that we do, this really, really resonated with me.

And I kept seeing echoes of it. But you're coming from a very different, you know, kind of perspective. So just for people to know, this is a fantastic book for you to have because what Jill does is she goes through these four different parts of you, two from the right hemisphere and two from the left hemisphere, and explains the very specific different purpose that they serve anatomically and also not just physiologically, but psychologically. But the reason that I particularly love it is because it's using the structure of the brain as an explanation for the way you are, whereas a lot of times we're just told,

your mom did this, your dad fucked you up, your sister was mean to you. There's actually, you know, the Buddhist notion is there's, the only thing wrong is your reaction to what is wrong, right? There's always going to be pain. Suffering is optional. So you talk about this in particular when you witnessed a friend of yours die and you realize I have a choice. This can either be the most traumatic event or the most beautiful event. And what you would argue and what I'd like you to explain is that that is all

in our control. We have power. We have ownership. It's our like God-given brain-given ability to be able to navigate emotional reactivity through understanding these four different characters in the brain. And what I love about the book is it talks about what did these parts of your brain look like in the world at the beach? Like if you took them out on an outing, what would they do? And it's a great way to understand them. So I'd like you to walk us through these four characters. Who are these four characters in your brain? What do they control? Most of us have been taught that the right hemisphere is emotional and the left hemisphere's thinking. And that's simply not correct. At an anatomical level, our emotional system is equally divided

between our two hemispheres. And our thinking tissue is divided between our two hemispheres. So each hemisphere has thinking and emotional groups of cells, modules of cells. And an emotion is a very different thing than a cognitive thought. So we do end up with four distinctive modules of cells. So fundamentally, the right hemisphere, right here right now, we are right here right now beings. We are living creatures. We are living in the present moment. We don't live in the past. We don't live in the now. We don't live in the now. We pray in the now. We eat in the now. Present moment. We have a life in the present moment. And the right hemisphere is a right here, right now machine. So my emotions that I'm having in the present moment are very experiential.

What is the experience of the present moment? And that's what's going to be packaged inside of that right emotional tissue. What does it feel like to jump into the lake? What does wet? How do I describe what is wet? What is wet? I feel wetness when I dive into the water. The present moment is information coming at me.

I can be curious. I can be put different pieces together. I can be innovative. I've opened a possibility. So that's the natural skill set of that emotional tissue of the right hemisphere. And then the thinking tissue is big and open and expansive. Again, I don't have boundaries in the present moment because I'm an energy being having an energy relationship with everything's just a big universal ball of energy. and there's no boundaries.

So in the present moment, I'm open to the possibilities of the present moment, and I'm observing that, not in an experiential way, but I'm simply having the experience of it. And generally, there's this sense of awe in gratitude and openness. So that's what we all have. But a lot of us don't spend much time in the present moment, because we have this miraculous group of cells in the left email, emotional tissue that has the ability to step out of the present moment. I mean, this is a miracle.

If this isn't a neurological miracle, I don't know what is. These cells can step out of the present moment and step into memories from our past so that we can take the present moment information and compare it to our past experience and say, have I seen this before and does it feel safe and doesn't feel familiar and it feels safe and familiar, then okay, I might want more of it. But if it doesn't feel safer, it looks different, then I'm going to move into alarm, alarm, alert, alert. That doesn't feel familiar. So can I trust it?

And so we become more constricted and more narrow and more just push away that which we can have as a fear based on data coming in. And so we have this whole part of ourselves that is left emotional based on our past experience and based on the projection of potential fear into the unknown of the future. And then we have this thinking tissue, which is our rational thinking brain. And the rational thinking brain is this magnificent tool that we can use. It has an ego. It says, I am, Jill Boltey-Taylor.

I like red, white, and black colors. This is my phone number. This is my address. I love brains. I want to learn about details, details, more details about those details. So then I start taking information and I organize it and I categorize it and I relate me, the individual, to the external world in a rational way. So we end up with these four different groups of cells and I don't, I give my names and I call them

left thinking rational brain character number one left thinking tissue is the part that organizes categorizes takes me and relates me to the external world it cares about details details more details about those details it's good with mathematics it organizes it can recognize a symbol and place a meaning on that abstract symbol and create a bigger picture understanding through rational thinking It likes to control people, places, and things. It controls time so it can be punctual. It likes to be the boss. It knows that these glasses on my face are separate from me.

How do I know that? I know that because I have cells in that part of my brain that defines the boundaries of where I begin and where I am. So I call my, that part of me, Helen, hell on wheels. She gets it done. I, you know, she, she has relationships with people. She has, has, you know, she goes to work. She's busy.

And my guess is, and, you know, she cares about, I have order in my house. And my Helen is strong enough that even my drawers have order, right? So what about you guys? It sounds like, Ma'am, you've got a pretty good one. I'm wondering about J.C. I want to put Mime's left brain and Jill's left brain together and see who wins. Myem is pretty strong. Her drawers are very organized.

If they're not organized, they're being reorganized. Everything needs organizing. Well, I wonder, Jill, if you could sort of, first of all, that was a really, really great explanation. I wonder if you can sort of concisely, you know, narrow them down. So if left brain thinking is this sort of like rational, organized, like the part of me that loves labels and lists and marking everything and categorizing. Okay, so that's left brain thinking. Talk to me about left brain emotion.

I just wanted to say that while I'm teasing, it's very helpful to find the things in your house when they're organized. It is. Every house needs a character one. Otherwise, we look like hoarders. Right? And so, okay, so the left emotion, I call this character number two. Character one is the left thinking, rational part. Character two is the emotion of the left hemisphere. Now, again, the left hemisphere has linearity across time. So this is the part of us that has autonomic nervous system, fight, flight, flee. I'm going to have reactivity to information coming in because this is designed to save my life. And it saves my life by looking at information that's already come in that I want to push away from or I want to advance toward.

So this is a part of me that it's one of my little children inside of myself. It is often not very happy. It is also going to blame others. It's often going to be angry or it's going to be sad or it's going to be belligerent or it's going to go on the attack to push away. it wants it you know it comes out loud often it comes out quiet often you know depending on who we are and and who we're in relationship with but this is a part of us that most parts work so my am you talked about parts work i love parts work but most of parts work focuses on all the pains of this little

character two character two is trauma right it's the one that's essentially categorizing the devastation the emotional experience. Yes, and having a reaction to it. Yeah. So that's a little character, too. It may lash out. It may be mean. It may be cruel.

It's really asking to be loved, but it doesn't know how to do it in a way that is safe. It doesn't know how to do it in a way that's healthy. No, it doesn't. Whenever I see anyone in pain, whenever I read anything negative, the negative comments on the anonymous internet, aren't they lovely? My heart goes straight to imagine the pain that that person was in

in order to express that ugliness, even if it's anonymous, into the world. So this really is the expression of our meanness or our ugliness or our internal trauma, our pain, that we don't know how to hold ourselves. And so we spew it and we can look scared. So we may not get our needs met by others, much less we're not self-nurturing. We haven't reached that point. Okay, so we've spent enough time in the devastation of the left hemisphere. Let's move over to Jonathan's side of the fence where nothing is organized but everything is possible.

Let's go to the right hemisphere. Possibilities are endless. And may I say we exist in the U.S. in Western world? skewed to the left. Our societal norm is based on this hierarchy defined by the left brain of everything. Where do I stand on that hierarchy? How rich am I? How big is my house? How big are my toys? How much power do I have over other people? Just this hierarchy, the function of the left hemisphere. And the thing about the value of the left hemisphere of always wanting more is it always wants more. It's never satisfied. It might have a moment of celebration,

but it's never satisfied because there's always another rung to go up. And so there's this natural discontent that just keeps pushing, pushing, pushing for more, more, more, how much is more and more, skew myself to the value of my external things that I have instead of what I have internally. and then the right hemisphere becomes the consciousness of the internal world. And this is all what Carl Jung and many others would describe as part of our unconscious or subconscious brain. And so to science, the only part of our brain that is truly conscious is that character one

left thinking, rational part of our brain, leaving three quarters of our brain, the two emotional systems in the right thinking tissue, as all a part of our sense. subconscious or unconscious brain. So on the morning of my hemorrhage, I was technically perceived to be unconscious because I could not communicate using the tools of language through that left rational thinking brain. But I was completely conscious. I was just perceiving things that they weren't interested in knowing that I was perceiving. So right hemisphere, the right hemisphere emotion Information streams in through our sensory systems, and then it heads for the cells of our emotional, both in the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere.

And so that's why we are so reactive. Information is coming in. We're having a response, a reactivity to it, and then the thinking tissue can have fibers going down in order to regulate and modulate what's going on. And so everything that we're doing with trying to help teach children about emotional reactivity is because we can actually use the higher thinking tissue to purposely nurture and regulate what's going on emotionally. So in Character 3 is what I call the right emotional tissue. And it's in the present moment. And it's as big as the universe. And it's like fun because

life in the present moment is very interesting. I'm a biological creature. I'm processing billions of bits of data all at the same time. It is a miracle. This life is a miracle and there's an excitement to and it's like, yeah. And because everything's connected, I want to chum up with others and play with others. And we can be creative because we're not fit in the box of the left brain. So we can be innovative and we can be open to possibility and we can just just have this experiential existence in the present moment. I can do, I can do jazz. in the present. I can create new music in the present. I can, I can, I can, I can. There's just all these possibilities. And so I call mine pig pen because, you know, the art space is not the cleanest

spot in the house. Character three, you describe as someone who is so excited to get to the beach that they forgot to bring the sunscreen. That's this part of your right brain. Exactly. It's excitement. It's in the present. Oh, my gosh. I never forget the sunscreen because I burn very easily. Well, you might not have the right flip-flops. You don't care if your shirt matches your shorts. You might have forgotten your shorts, you know? I mean, the excitement of this part of who we are because it's really great.

And then so that's little character three. And little character three knows no limits. So little character three, because we, that's emotion too, so it never matures. Right? that's one of the things about limbic tissue, the emotional tissue. It never matures. So let's say all of a sudden, you know, my neighbor's got a swimming pool and it's like 3 o'clock in the morning and we've been like being excited up until this point in time. And it's like, come on, let's sneak over into the neighbors and let's jump into the pool. And yeah, that sounds like a great idea if you're not looking at your left hemisphere

saying, well, we got rules and laws and regulations. And so we go and we do that. And then, you know, the alarm go off and we land ourselves in jail. So you have to be really careful about this part of who we are because it doesn't think about consequences. And, you know, when we stop and we think about our teenagers, oh my gosh, what's happening in the teenage brain? Bring me back for another whole conversation on the teenage brain because people need to understand what's going on during that period of neurological development or not going on. So anyway, so Character 3, it's open to the possibility, it's creative, it uses everything in any way that it wants. And then the right thinking tissue, it's simply right here right now in awe that I exist in all. And oh my gosh,

I'm literally big as the universe. I'm, I'm not, I am life. This is character four, right? This character four. The wonder that I exist at all. And I mean, it's just, I live in a sense of gratitude that, wow, I'm here. I am alive, having voice. I have manual dexterity. I have mobility. I mean, oh my gosh. And when you live in that sense of wonder and awe, that seems to be where most people will meditate and meditate and meditate to achieve that one moment of glimpse of, oh my God, there is no separation between what I am and what everything is. And in that space is this incredible sense of love and peacefulness. And when I experienced the stroke and it wiped out characters one and two of me,

the individual, and I had no energy left in my body. So character three was silent. All I had was that state of feeling as though I was a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. And it was beautiful there. And in that consciousness, recognizing, but I'm not dead. I am in this space, but I am not dead, which means I'm wired for this. And if I could somehow figure out how to get enough of my neurons connected so I could have me the individual, I could regain language, and I could communicate this, message of awe and wonder to the rest of humanity, then, oh my gosh, first, might it be easier

for people to access that part of who they are, but also bring a sense of peacefulness to our own lives? I think I get credit for only interrupting twice as you went through all four characters. I just want to acknowledge. It was really hard for me, but I did it, and I really appreciated your explanation. As you were talking, I opened your book, my stroke of insight, to literally page 67, where I had dog-eared and flagged. The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. Finer than the finest of pleasures we can experience as physical beings, this absence of physical boundary was one of glorious bliss. I'm going to skip a little bit.

My escape into bliss was a, I'm going to cry. My escape into bliss was a magnificent alternative to the daunting sense of mourning and devastation I felt. Every time I was coaxed back into some type of interaction with the percolating world outside of me. So you've done two things here. You've both described what we seek as humans. in terms of a transcendental experience, experience with something greater than ourselves, understanding ourselves,

as more than the vase that we are poured into in this existence. But you also are describing what many people who suffer from depression and addiction describe. And what it is is that this world feels too painful, I need something to make it less so. And people do often experience this sort of freedom, right, which comes at a very high price if you're using drugs, alcohol, food, sex, even work. It comes at a very high price to our physiology and our psychology and our psyche. But I wonder if you

can speak to that because the way you describe the bitter sweetness of this experience, where you realized you were getting to experience a shift in perception that made you unattached to material things, to what you looked like, to how much you weighed, to how much money you're making, to who loves you, to whatever trauma you came from. Can you talk a little bit about how this character can be, you know, emphasized for us in our waking life so that we don't feel devastated by the matrix that many of us feel devastated to exist in. Yes, beautifully put. So I'm a true believer that when people study their own four characters and they get to know, and I don't mean just study it, I mean feel it. I mean you go for a walk in nature

and you allow yourself to expand. And that's why Whole Brain Living got written. How do I communicate this in a way that people can train themselves to know these four parts of who they are? So that I'm not just analyzing these four parts of who I am, but I actually know what it feels like to embody them because, you know, little pig pen,

she comes out even in this kind of a conversation and she's bouncing and she's going, and she may be drawn on the intellect and the details of my left hemisphere, but I am so in the present right here right now. What does it actually feel like for people to be in the present moment? Because in order to be in the present moment, I must be willing to put my pain from the past and set it aside. And if I'm so attached to that trauma that that's my only story, then it's like, well, all my energy is going into just that character two part of my brain. So if I'm in my pain, when I'm in my pain, I can still step into the glory of my character for that says every experience I have, whether I would define it as positive or

negative or good or bad, left brain as making that definition, I am capable because I am a live of feeling miserable. And I always say to my friends, I don't mind if you're miserable as long as you remember to enjoy it because you're capable of being miserable. But when you're being miserable, consider where is your mind? What thoughts are you thinking that take you back into the trauma? And then what does it feel like when I'm in my pain and I'm in my trauma or I'm I'm in my anger and I'm fighting with you.

And then the telephone rings. And all of a sudden, the ring brings me into the present moment. Phone, got to go to the phone because, you know, it's my phone. So I, hello. And all of a sudden I have allowed myself to shift out of that part of who I am into a different part of who I am. And the thing is, we are doing this all the time. We are always bouncing between these different pieces of who we are.

And what whole brain living does is it helps us figure out how to pay attention to when I'm in which of these characters so that I can actually really become familiar with that part of who I am. So, you know, step one is going to be awareness. Am I willing, willingness number one, to become aware of when am I? I being which part of who I am. Now, say for example that I have a friend who's very structured and organized and oh my God, anytime I ever want anything done, I'm going to call that person because they got a really strong character one. And we have a character one, character one relationship, and we get a lot of stuff done. That is not the person I'm going to call when I'm in pain.

When I'm in pain, I'm going to call somebody who is either going to be in pain with me and, you know, misery loves miserable company, or I'm going to call somebody who's going to say, sweetie, I got you. What's going on? And they're going to be in their character for, and they're going to provide love for me. And for me, that was my mother. Okay. Wait, this.

I can't. Go, girl. Go. I can't handle this. This, I, no, I want to, I want to pause here because I just flashed to a very good friend of mine who I often have a very emotional, spiritual relationship with. It's a lot of our friendship. And she recently made a career shift where she needs help with categorizing and organizing. And I got to step into, I mean, that's my favorite role. Like, give me a clipboard and I'm yours all day.

And she couldn't believe that I wanted to be helpful. And I said, no, no, it's like literally not even a problem. It's not attacks on me. I don't feel stressed about it. This is like the most enjoyable thing is for me to fix something that has no impact on me, but to help you categorize, right? But what it made me think of is when you pair up with someone as a romantic partner, what we do is we say to that person, hi, you have to understand character one, two, three, and four, and you need to know which character one, two, three, or four, I need you to be without me saying it so that I can decide that I'm happy with you. You're the person for me. And when I call Jonathan and I have a problem and he makes a joke or points out how everything's going to be okay, I would like to sever

his little chicken neck with my fingernail, right? Because I'm expecting the character that I want to echo my pain instead of where is he meeting me? What's his experience? How can I learn from that? So it just occurred to me that not just in friendships, but in relationships, this is a very good explanation of what is actually wrong in your relationship. Yeah, you got it exactly. In any relationship, if there's four of me and there's four of you, there's eight in every relationship. And so maybe, you know, in the beginning, in the beginning, we don't usually show our little unhappy character two, right? We show our character ones. They may get along. We play together as character threes. They get along. We might share something spiritual. Great if we do. Some people can't find that

spot. Great if we do. But boy, when two character twos come up against one another, there will never be a resolution. And this is why when we fight with people, if I'm in my two and you're in your two, we will never have a resolution. Someone has to step out of the two and say, okay, in this moment, I'm going to let you be your little unhappy self, and I'm going to love you in spite of yourself using my character for, and then I'm not doing the dance with you anymore. So you're either going to shift out of your character two into your one so we can talk about it and have a rational conversation or we're going to go play together as little character threes or we're going to hug and kiss and just be peaceful together as character fours. Jesus, if he doesn't ask me to

play every day. You spoke about how we have to get out of the feeling threatened, having our emotional baggage come in so that we can access this more. joyous, present side of ourselves. However, most people don't realize that they're filtering it this way, right? They see a present situation that in some deep part of their brain reminds them of something scary or that there's a resource constriction or an emotional withholding or some sort of emotional threat. And what's happening is that it's being activating some deep unresolved issue, but they think it's in the present. So they don't realize that the threat is coming from the past.

So how do we move out of that space if we look around us and we've projected the past into the present and we really think, hey, that person is going to hurt me or that person is saying mean things and I don't want to interact with them and makes us retreat? I think that what we are now doing here in this conversation is we are learning. to differentiate the different parts of who we are. But you're right. If I don't recognize that I am different and I have different parts and that I can actually practice and get to know those parts of who I am, then I cannot differentiate. And all I have is this soup of an experience of life. And that's where a lot of people are. And we have been trying to train children for over a decade.

in how to take some recognition of when we are feeling emotionally reactive and triggered, and what parts of the anatomy of the brain are actually involved with that, and how, some tools that we can use in order to step away from feeling emotionally triggered so that we can calm ourselves down and get back into a different part of who we are, essentially. And those tools, I mean, nothing thrills me more than hearing a little three-year-old saying, my amygdala is not happy. And then they take themselves into the corner and they give themselves time out. Because time out is essentially, you know, when you think about whether it's a physical reflex or an emotional reflex, things run pretty much in 90-second loops. So if emotionally I'm triggered and now I'm ready to go, I can actually watch my watch,

which takes me out of just running the circuit of emotion, but now I'm observing it with a different part of my brain. I'm feeling it erupt in my body. I'm feeling my physiological response to my emotional trigger. And then I can actually watch it dissipate from me and I can be calm and now I can come back. to a rational conversation. So, you know, count to 10 or take a walk or, you know, all these things that we do automatically, we're doing them in order to allow this physiological response of 90 seconds to run its course and dissipate out of us so that we can run a different circuit by choice. So I think it all becomes education. I mean, if we only had hands, and this is all we know, a hand is a hand,

and we don't know about the fingers. We cannot differentiate finger use. Then we still have a hand, like a brain. We can use it. We can push things around. We can grab things. We can use it in a certain way. But as soon as our brain says,

we have these individual fingers that can do different things, now I have manual dexterity to a level far beyond just having a hand. And the same thing is true for the brain. When we can understand and differentiate, different parts of our brain, and then learn to bring them into communication with one another, where I am now negotiating between the different parts of who I am, then I don't experience conflict because all four parts of my brain have participated in the conversation. And this is how I truly believe we can all live a peaceful life. But that is, I believe,

the evolution of who we are as humanity. And right now, without the differentiation, we're doing exactly what you're saying. We are just running the thing. We are having experiences. We are having emotions. We are having judgments. We are having all this experience. But we're not creating any order out of it. And so we feel like we're not in control. We feel like we don't have free will. We feel like we're, you know, life is a struggle because we can get caught up in that part of our brain that believes life is a struggle. And I have all this evidence to support that life is a struggle. So of course I'm in my trauma because my trauma is real. And of course, trauma is real. But trauma is information. It's not meant to be a lifestyle. It's meant to be information. So then I can look at the trauma,

compare it to in the present moment I am safe. I had this bad experience in the past. I can now look at that and learn and grow from that so that as new experiences happen, I can guard myself away from more of what I had before, but overall that now is information for me to exist again back in the present moment. So I truly believe we are destined for whole brain living

is the ultimate goal. Amazing. You have eight pointers that we're going to get to and we're going to get more specific. And I'm a full believer. I want to be clear about where my next question

is coming from because I believe that in this process and at the same time, I feel slightly overwhelmed for the people I know who are out and really struggling

and having a really hard time separating themselves from the reactivity. right? I hear about training children and I'm like, great, 100%. New generation needs psychoeducational information, physical embodiment, understanding how the structures of the brain work and how that impacts their perceptions and their feelings. Amazing. Wouldn't it be like what a difference we could make in the world if the next generation of human beings has that education? And for the, like, what, do we do with all the people in their 30s and 40s and 50s who don't have any of this,

who have this very ingrained way of being, who have a much harder time separating their reactivity from reality, meaning their perception of what's happening from maybe a higher vantage point, they're doing meditation, they're working out, they're trying to be mindful. and yet still it's a very long slog. Are there anything other modalities that you're like, okay, here's the shortcut. For example, hypothetically, well, you really need a lot more fish oil

because that helps promote healthy brain living in order to maximize the resilience of the right hemisphere. Or is there magnetic stimulation that helps quiet the left side and increase the right side? Now, I know some of this is, not necessarily accessible to every person, but I'm just wondering what else is possible for the people who are in the middle

and have not had that education to start with? Ma'am, would you do me a favor and hold that book up? I'm serious. You're saying, give me tools. Here you have a brain scientist at Harvard who experienced a major hemorrhage in the left hemisphere, lost all the pain from the past, lost all knowledge of individuation and individual and self,

and lived for eight years in the consciousness of the alternative, and then used that consciousness to rebuild the skill sets of that left hemisphere to be able to communicate in an easy-to-learn format, but it's a practice, just like everything is a practice, to know what are you missing? Well, what are you missing? And it's not just what do you have? It's what is getting in the way of you're having something other than what you're having? What are your options? So, yeah, there are all kinds of things that we can do. But if you want an easy, in my opinion, understanding, understand who you are. What is the tool? If you're not happy with the, the part of your brain you're running, what are my choices? And can I identify? And this book can help you identify what are those choices? And then once you recognize those choices, then you can start

realizing, you know, when the boys call me up and I go and play basketball and I'm shooting hoops and I lose track of time and then I get in trouble for coming home late because I've just been lost in time, oh, I can purposely understand and embrace and embody that part of who I am. So in an instant, if I'm feeling like, oh, my God, I've got to make a dreadful phone call, right? And it's like, okay, well, what are my choices? How do I do that? Well, I can step into that in the present moment, loving open possibilities part of who I am. But it's a practice. It's no more of a practice than meditation. People will meditate for 20 years and maybe have a glimpse twice.

And I'm saying, okay, well, wouldn't it be easier if you're going to meditate and you actually know what that means? What that means is that I'm trying to shut down my character one language center. I'm going to use a mantra or a prayer or I'm going to use something to preoccupy the language center. So I'm not all about the external world and all the details and all the pain. and I'm going to bring my mind into the present moment, and I'm going to notice that as soon as I realize, oh my God, there's a deer over there, and I'm, oh my gosh, it's got spots on it.

It's a baby. In that instant, what just happened to the circuitry of all my trauma and all my pain? It shifted. It lifted. How did it do that? It did it because I actually came into the character three part of who I am. And when I pray, if I pray, whatever the circumstance, when I bring myself into a sense of awe and wonder,

my pain is a memory somewhere beyond that moment. So when I know what my choices are, then I can engage in those choices. Now, sure, you can do all these other things. Some cause trauma to the brain. Some do not. Some are, you know, interesting. but why not just go to the root of the issue and get to know who's who inside of you? Who's who?

Who are your options? And then take responsibility. Now, nothing is more delicious than my circuitry of pain and anger. Nothing is more delicious than when I get on a rant and I am just and I don't want to give it up because it's delicious. But it's just a circuitry I'm running inside. out of my brain. And it is no more delicious than when I'm categorizing and organizing a brand new space and creating order and making it pretty and making it the way I want it to be. And it's no more

delicious than when I get on my paddleboard with my dogs and we are out there playing and then all of a sudden one of the dogs goes nuts and we all end up in the lake. And it is no more delicious than when I am simply sitting in that space of total, oh my gosh, I'm alive. And when I know those choices and I know how to embody those choices, to me that's personal power and it's personal freedom. I mean, that is an unbelievable,

unbelievable explanation, not just of your book, but of an entire way of being that most of us really, really are craving I want to get practical. In Whole Brain Living, you have eight things that you recommend. And, you know, obviously, I don't believe that you can incorporate these without kind of understanding these other aspects more deeply.

But I do want you to highlight, let's pick a couple. I mean, the first one, what do you recommend when you first wake up and when you go to sleep? In those moments, I recommend bringing. yourself into the present moment in a sense of gratitude and awareness of the body? To me, all of this boils down to awareness. Can I be aware? Can I, am I willing to try to be aware? When I lay down at night, let's say my character one might still be busy.

It might still be running that to-do list of, oh, my gosh, what's my schedule going to be tomorrow? No. I don't want to have character one. I lay down in the morning and at bed to go tonight because I want it all to go quiet. So to bring myself into my present moment, to bring myself into the awe of, oh my gosh, I have bladder capacity. And because I have bladder capacity, I'm probably not going to have to get up very much tonight because I have bladder capacity.

And I thank myself. I have a beautiful, ongoing relationship with these beautiful cells, because the consciousness of my 50 trillion stemmed from the consciousness of one single cell. And that one single cell held the molecular genius to transform itself by multiplying and dividing and multiplying dividing so that every cell in my body, except for like 100,000 red blood cells, all have that same DNA a consciousness of wonder of all that I am. And I have a relationship with myself. And I do that through my character for consciousness. Because in that gratitude, and this is also, I'm a true believer in how we heal and how we heal ourselves. My character one might get me to the doctor's

office or might get me to take my pills on time, but my character two might be in fear of my illness and my character three might be whatever it is because it's spastic and whatever it is usually but it's my character four in that love of knowing these beautiful cells and I have this magnificent relationship and how can I use my mind and my emotions to work with those cells in order to give them what they need during the rest of the eight to ten hours that we're going to be in silence together Number four is to tune in randomly throughout the day. So what are your favorite ways to tune in to try and have this calibration continue throughout the day? Because a lot of people will start their day with a meditation.

And unbelievably, it actually does start to change. If you give that a week, like it really does sort of start to shift things and change your mood. Like it's a very, very simple free thing that you can do. But what are we doing throughout the day wrong and how do we do it right to try and regulate this? Well, I'm not going to say we do it wrong. I think that it's going to go back to the awareness. And the reason why, if I wake up in the morning and I do a meditation, or I wake up and I just say, oh, my God, I'm alive. And as I'm alive, I wiggle my little toes. And it's like, oh, my God, I got little toes. And then I wiggle my little fingers. And it's like, oh, my God, I got manual dexterity. And I sleep with a couple of dogs. And it's like, oh, my God, they're just so beautiful. And it's just love fest in the morning. And it's, and it's. you know, just a sense of awe and wonder. And the more I practiced that, see, I just became that. I didn't just say that to you. I went there and I felt that because I know how to go there and how to feel that. It's a real part of who I am. So throughout the day, paying attention to, I mean,

I know when Helen comes on because I'm not a primary character one when I live on my boat out in the middle of gorgeous, you know, cove and nature and beauty and God. I'm more of a character three out here. So in order for me to become a one, I've got to get on the schedule. I got to get on the computer. I got to know what time it is. I got to put on clothes. I got to bathe and make sure I got clean hair. I mean, when I know these different parts and they negotiate with one another, and it's like, okay, I'm willing to let Helen come online and clean me up and get me at my computer on time so I can have a conversation online with somebody, but that's not what I'm usually doing, right? So, but I trust Helen. And so Helen is going to put it on my calendar. She's going to put it on my wall.

She's going to give me an alarm on my phone just to alert me to that so that I can like actually show up in the world and be somewhere when I'm supposed to be there and do that. So, so, if you're a lot of, It's as I, this is one of the beauties of knowing your four different characters, is when you know your four different characters, when they're in negotiation with one another, and they all give you permission to go be what you really are. So if I'm going to go play and I'm going to paddleboard, I know that character one is going to bring my butt in two hours

so that at least if I end up in the lake, I got time for my hair to dry, right? I mean, it's the little things in life, but that's what Character 1 cares about. And because I have said to Character 1, I will come in two hours ahead from the lake, from play, even if I have to have an alarm on my phone that you're going to put on there so I can remind myself, then Helen leaves me alone and I get to go and play. I'm not gnawing, oh my gosh, is it the right time? Oh, my gosh, did I do this? Oh, my gosh, do I have to worry about that?

Oh, my gosh, there's none of that going on. because I have negotiated with the different parts of who I am, so they all get their needs met when they get their needs met. And it's like living with a really healthy team inside of my head instead of, oh, well, I need more, oh, I need this, or no, I want to go be that. It's like, you know, character for us going, you girls, you just need to like figure it out together,

but could we do it in a more peaceful way? So, yeah, I mean, it's just this ongoing, conversation and willingness. There's nothing worse than wanting to go play as a character three with character one gnawing on you, right? Saying, no, you can't do that. No, that's a waste of time. No, that's not doing it.

That's like my whole life. Jill, Jill, Jill, that you've literally, you've described my whole life. And what I'm getting from this conversation is the conflict in so many of our brains is that we do not have distinction between these parts because we do not have awareness of these parts. So even in all the parts work I've done

and all the trauma work that I've done, right, I'm still approaching it like, this is my, this is my kind of corporal, like this is my existence. And I got all these things going on. And I have, oh, I'm such a busy mom. And I'm divorced. And this is hard. And I have a job and all these things.

But what you're talking about is I think what a lot of us experience, which is that when we try to enjoy ourselves, when we try to relax, when we try to pray and get in touch with something bigger than ourselves, there is still a part of us that does not seem to know its place. It doesn't need to know you're not needed right now. Thank you. Take a seat. And if something happens where I need to, you know, compile an emergency kit for my car, you will be the first to know because you're the one to do that job. But this kind of competition, and it's not bad. We don't want to, as my therapist says, we don't want to exile these parts. We want to integrate them appropriately. So they stop

interfering when we're trying to have sex. And all we can think about is what did I not get at the market? And when is this going to be over so I can vacuum? Just, just. an example. That's up. You just summed it all up. Right. You just summed it all up. And when Character 1 and Character 2 are so hold on to me, hold on to my identity, hold

on to the schedule, because that's how I value myself. And the more I do, then the more value I have, and da da da da da. So what? Going and paddle boarding, this girl lives on a boat for six months. What a waste of time? What is she doing out there? Well, because I allow myself to play when I play, when I come in, I work my butt off because now it's time for that. And there's this balance that happens. And in the balance becomes this healthiness.

And it's like, and I love them all. You're absolutely right. My pain from my past, how many people have said to me, Jill, I just want to lobotomize that part out of me. And it's like, No, no, you don't, because it is in the richness of those deep emotions that life is so beautiful. There is nothing more beautiful than being overtaken by the envelopment of grief and let it take you to the floor and feel in every cell of your body. And oh my God, I can feel this because I loved and now I don't have a place for that love to go. go. And so it just erupts in my whole soul. And then that wave passes. And when I allow myself to have these waves, then the time between them, I love grief. I think grief is one of the most beautiful, wonderful, horrible things that I'm capable of feeling, but it's so magnificent.

You know, but the thing about it is that those of us who know how to grieve and allow the wave of grief to take us over, then it's a long time before the wave of grief comes back. It's when we stop it and say, no, I'm not going to feel that. No, that hurts. No, I don't like it. No, I don't want to grieve. That it just keeps banging up against us saying, you know, I'm a pipe and I have to flow. And as long as you don't let me, if you're not going to feel it, it's just,

just going to keep coming up. And that's how we heal ourselves. We allow ourselves to feel that depth. And then it releases us to learn from that experience and say, wow, you know, that's the beauty of being alive. Is it all good? No, I'm not jumping on the happiness bandwagon. I think happiness is important, but I think it's a part of who we are. It's circuitry inside of our brain. and that I learned from these other tools just as much as I do from my joy. That's so unbelievable. I'm going to ask a really inappropriate but hopefully humorous question. What is Jill Boltey Taylor like when she does drugs?

Have you done drugs? Have you had psychedelic experiences? Because I feel like I can't even imagine. I mean, I would imagine that you don't feel a need for that the way that like, let's say, I used to crave Coca-Cola, which is really bad for me. It's not good for my body, maybe for some people. I was so grateful when I stopped craving Coca-Cola, right? Like, that left me.

And I wonder if because of your experience, you don't crave that kind of escape that people want, or like, let me take a drug that for eight hours lets me not be in that part of my brain that holds pain and ego and so. super ego, right? I want to escape that. What have you had those experiences or do you simply not need them because you are in kind of a suspended state, not of fantasy, but of awareness? Yeah. So, you know, I had a friend come and visit me last week. And she said to me, Jill, you do not pollute yourself. And I said, that's a great way of putting it. I don't pollute myself. I'm very careful about what I put in my body.

It's not so that I can say, oh, I have clean living. It's I don't have any desire for alcohol. I don't like the way, I like reality. I know how to step into my character three in an instant and go have a blast. Whatever my circumstance, I know how to do that. So I do that. I, you know, so I don't do drugs. I, but my drug is nature.

I go jump on a paddleboard. I feel a yearning to go jump on a paddle board and be on glassy water and paddle. I mean, that is, you know, that's my thing. I know the Coke addiction. I had that years ago. There's something about Coke, right? But it was so bad for my gut. It was, I just felt like, you know, and then I didn't like the way I felt in my head.

And so then it was like, well, maybe half a Coke, right? And it's got to be a fresh Coke. It can't be in a two litter body because that just doesn't taste right, you know? So, you know what I mean? It's connoisseurism, right? It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, so craving is also a part of character too. It's inside of the insular cortex.

and when that gets wiped out in people, they actually lose their craving and they lose addiction. And, you know, people may stop smoking. They may stop whatever. But it's like, so now when I have any kind of craving, if I have a craving, I actually look at the craving. And I think to myself, I'm having a craving. I'm having a craving.

Isn't this exciting? I'm having a craving. But then it disappears. right? And it's like, okay, but I had a craving. It was really, I had a craving. And then it'll come by again, and it's like, oh, I'm having a craving. And I think about when I'm craving, my craving, my craving happens in my belly. I mean, I feel it in my belly. And it's like, okay, that's where my craving is. And I'm a neuroanatomist. I'm a gross anatomist. So I'm actually visualizing what's happening in my nervous system in order for me to have a craving. And then it's like, oh my God, I'm capable of craving.

How wonderful is that? Most of us are not comfortable in the discomfort of craving. I'm great in the discomfort. I'm great in the discomfort of a bee bite. Be sting. I'm great in the discomfort of whatever because it is what it is. And when I accept what is is, it doesn't mean when I get stung by a bee, I'm not taking a bee line directly to my aloe plant in order to get rid of the pain. But it's like, wow, I am capable of having this pain. Pain is information. Again, character two is information, not a lifestyle. And many of us make it a lifestyle. And when it becomes a lifestyle, we succumb to it and we live to the mercy of it instead of simply recognizing, this is information. I have one more question that you talk about a bit in my stroke of

insight, and I feel like part of it is, you know, kind of intuitive from the journey you take us on, you know, really in both of these books. A lot of people fear, if not death, then prolonged deterioration. But let's just say, like death, dying, you know, many people who have psychedelic experiences, have this ego death, which, as you describe it, ego death does not have to be scary. It can actually be quite beautiful.

But I wonder if you can talk about what you understand about death and dying. And, you know, you mentioned that you pull angel cards or in the past you have pulled angel cards. You know, that's something that some of us do behind closed doors because we don't want to tell people about it, right? I'm curious. Talk to us a little bit about your understanding of what comes next, your relationship to it, and how your stroke and this sort of way of seeing your brain and your body has changed your perception of death. So I'm, I was so, this is how I kind of describe what happened to me when I had the stroke, left hemisphere shut down,

character three shut down, character four was all I had. And I kind of visualize it like I was literally so enormous in space as a consciousness that I thought I would never be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body. I really that was my perception. And so that would be the process of recovery is how do I get this body back to 100% functional to the point where I had been before. And it was a pretty good body before. And because of that, it was probably going to live for another 20 or 30 years because I was so healthy when the stroke happened. I know that sounds weird, but it was a congenital malformation that blew. It was very unexpected. So my relationship.

relationship with death. I do this visualization, and sometimes I do it with others and sometimes I just do it with me, but I call it going to the gutter, going to the gutter. And to me, I visualized that I was just in a horrendous car accident and I've been thrown out of the car and I'm laying in the gutter. And I'm overwhelmed with this sense of knowing that probably within the next few minutes, I'm going to die. And to me, what that means is the left hemisphere is gone. It's, you know, I'm right here right now. I feel my blood. I feel the weakness in my body to I cannot move. And I just know I can feel this consciousness of me shifting away from these 50 trillion beautiful cells into this just this release into whatever that is.

And I'm at peace with that. I'm at peace with, you know, the concept of every day is a good day to die. Star Trek. I am of that because it's not about what more I have or what I lose from the future

is what I have had during this period of time, this wealth of time called my life and to be exist in a state of gratitude

for what I have had. This wow, just wow, I have been alive. Over all this time, and that was it, and now I can evaporate away. Now what happens out there once I'm out, I don't have an idea. I really don't. But what I do know, what I, my experience was,

was in the absence of the left hemisphere, in the absence of the boundaries, I return back to an energy force literally as big as the universe, so I believe I fold back into that all-knowing. There is a different level of consciousness in that all-knowing. To all-know is very different than to need to have language to take a big concept. Like, let's say we're watching the sunset. And as the sun is setting and the sun is molding into the water.

Now, I can describe that. I can write about it. I can take a picture of it, but I can feel it. And feeling it, there are no words to describe accurately that feeling. And for me, that's the same thing of life and then the dissipation of life. So, you know, I live a life that is filled with gratitude for every moment I have. And it's something that pulls me home to the heart of who I am as that enormous consciousness that I had shifted into looking at my body going, oh, my God, there's no way I'm ever going to squeeze myself back inside of that thing. So that's what it's like for me.

And can you touch a little bit on where kind of the mystical, you know, comes in for you or where, you know, talk about what angel cards are for people who don't know and what it brings you, especially as a scientist, to let yourself tap into that kind of creative possibility of inspiration. Yeah. So, so, you know, let's talk about the word science. You know, the thing about being a scientist, I went to my boss when I was at Harvard and I said, I'm an artist in my heart, and I have chosen science to make a living. So give me all of the projects where you want them to be aesthetically pleasing. And she listened to me, and she did. And so my experience with science was absolutely beautiful as we discovered. We were the first people to show three neurotransmitters in the same piece of tissue. It was, but it was a process of experimentation and an unfolding. But in that process of experimenting and unfolding that literally took nine months to 12 months to discover the exact recipe that would allow us to do that,

the thing about science is the scientific method. And by method, method is a linear process. And in order to satisfy the scientific method, it has to be reproducible, which again is going to be jumping through these different steps in order to come up with the same product. Well, that's great for a part of the physical world that we can actually use measurement on. But what about the part of the world that doesn't have that level of measurement? What about the part of the world where we are all connected? Finally, quantum physics is actually beginning to dance with concepts that make sense to how the right brain organizes in.

information. So to be a scientist in this world, to me to be a really good scientist, means to remain curious, not stick me in a box and make me just jump through the hoops. I value that tool. I think it's really important to understand that. But we're at a time in our society where we want to understand the bigger picture that is not defined by a method. And so for me, an angel card is an energetic energy. So in a group, I have a little box of angel cards. I have them right over there. They're spread out in a little bowl. I use my left hand because that's connected to my right hemisphere. So if I can draw on the bigger picture of all possibility, and I'll just sum and say, you know, what gift is there for me today? And I will draw a card. And let's say it's kindness. And what that

does is I then allow that part of my right hemisphere to hook into kindness. What is the energy behind kindness? When I advance in my life as a kind person, that's a very different Jill Boltey Taylor than somebody who advances with judgment. And so it helps me open myself up to the possibilities inside of that circuitry. I might get love, but my favorite angel card to draw is the one that is empty. And I call it the void, because in the void was where I existed as when I had that stroke. And in that void is all of it, in the magnificence of all of it, and anything is possible. And whatever it is, it's fantastic simply because it is.

And oh, my God, I'm alive to have that experience. So I use it as a tool. Let's say I'm going to make a tough call where I'm going to disappoint somebody. And it's like, so I might draw an angel card that can then help me tune into a vibration that, yeah, that's going to be how I carry myself in that phone call. And it just brings me, again, into a level of differentiation and awareness of the power that I have to choose moment by moment who and how I want to be. I'm really struck by a scientist, and I love your definition of science and the limits of it.

talk about vibration and energy of something, of happiness. And we've talked in the past, and I really recently had a conversation where I was describing the notion

of tuning into something like a radio frequency that states all around us exist. And it's not like happiness needs to be created. It's like, oh, we have an intent. and we can tune in to frequencies that exist all the time, and what are we tuning into and then amplifying through our physical bodies that then resonate to our emotions and our behavior?

You know, when you look at the brain and you look at brain waves, you know, alpha wave is a very different vibration than a delta wave, and they have different impacts on the brain, and then the beta wave comes in like a march. and we march in the vibe. Alpha is the big picture, the delta is, boy, I'm on my way to sleep.

You know, that we are these energy beings. Cells are molecules moved by energy. So put together 50 trillion of them and you got a whole bunch of molecules and you got a whole bunch of energy. And what is consciousness? I mean, isn't that the conversation?

What is consciousness? And then how can I tap into the different? consciousness energies. And, you know, when I'm in my joy, I'm in a whole different energy than when I'm in my grief or when I'm in my let's go organize. When you look at us as sensory beings, what are we? We are, there's a drum and pound on the drum and there are these little earocicles and then they move fluid. And then there are these hair follicles that are being stroked by this membrane, which is then transmuting that into a neurological circuit that goes into the brain. It's all frequency. So, yeah, you know, I think it's the, we are in an age. When I was in school in the 80s and the

90s, there were two subjects we were not allowed to talk about in public. I mean, we could do it around the, you know, the neuroscience. You're giggling, you know, it's the same thing. One was consciousness. And I think every neuroscientist goes in, to study a neuroscience because we're fascinated by consciousness. But boy, are we going to write papers on that? Well, Deepak Chopra, but you've got to be Deepak Chopra to do that, right? And I know you've had a conversation with Deepak. And then the other one was energy. And the only energy we could talk about was the energy created by the mitochondria, you know, which is the powerhouse of the cell. But there is another energetic that we are now opening, becoming more open to the reality of what we are,

that the scientific method is trying to figure out, well, how do we measure any of that? How do we manage that? And there are some brilliant scientists like Andrew Newberg. And if you haven't chatted with Andrew, you might want to do that. And, you know, he wrote a great book among many called Why God Won't Go Away. and he ran this beautiful study where he took a bunch of monks and a bunch of Francescun nuns and said, you know, go pray or go mantra. And when you find God, pull on this string.

And then we'll start taking some spec pictures of your brain and we'll find God in the brain. And what they found instead was that the left hemisphere circuitry becomes more quiet. And as that becomes more quiet, the right hemisphere then has this, the inhibition is removed. have this experience of the bigger picture connection to God. So, you know, we are, we do have some magnificent scientists who are trying to cross that border of, oh, there is science and there is spirituality and they are opposites. And it's like, no, open science, good science is going to say, well, simply because we can't explain it, it doesn't mean it's not real. And for people who are going to talk about it, you know, I think a lot of it boils down to language. When I had my stroke,

I went back to the science, to the language of science. I went back to the language of the brain, but boy, there's a whole lot of what people would call enlightenment or spirituality. That's not my language, but that's what they resonate with because that's their language. So I think, you know, I think that language is so important in how we talk about these. things and that, you know, we're in more agreement than we're in disagreement when we actually boil it down. Now, no, I can't say that about all scientists. One more push in this direction, which may be getting too far, but I, you know, I love the way you're describing the approach to these unknowable scientific, or how science is approaching some of these more esoteric or

unknowable parts of mysticism. So there's two parts to this, which are related but not, but different. First is the notion of like energy healing or miraculous healing that has been described or can happen through the changing of either hands-on work or emotional release where people are able to release stored emotion and then have physical, you know, drastic physical change. And the other is this idea that all knowledge in the universe exists in what has been described as the Akashic Records, and it goes to this notion that we can all access this, and both past and present exist at all times. And why they're related is that it starts to get

into an idea, both of things beyond ourselves, but also that these are accessible. It's not simply quieting my part of me and becoming more joyful. There's literally information that exists, and there's ways of navigating and building a skill set outside of our five senses that can bring health, healing, happiness, insight, and information. I think it really is the part. I think that the left brain is so attached to its linear thinking. Linear thinking, you cannot linear think your way into answering that question

that you just asked me. I mean, your linear answer is going to be very different from the actual experience of knowing that. And the thing about the way that Character 4 thinks is it doesn't think logically. It doesn't need to. It doesn't reason. It simply knows. So what you're describing is if Character 4 is the part of us that simply knows everything. I mean, you want a miracle for a physiological recovery.

No one expected Jill Boltey. Taylor to recover her brain. No one. And the expectation for who I would be, my mother's only expectation, was that I would be able to live independently without her. That's how far gone. I could not walk, talk, read, right, recall any of my life. I was completely missing. Jill Boltey Taylor died that day. and if I did not regain any of those left brain circuits, I would be existing in a whole different level that would be defined as disabled, vegetative, and everything else, even though I knew I had consciousness. So no one expected me to be able to recover. How did I recover? I listened. I got calm. I got quiet. I knew what I had missed because I had been it before and everyone else was modeling it. But I didn't have

language. I didn't know what a word was. I didn't know what an S was. And my mother would say, this is an S, and it sounds like s. And I looked at my mother and I thought, you are nuts. That is a squiggle, and it doesn't make any sound. And it made no sense to me whatsoever. So how did I use what I had? I used this consciousness of awareness and belief that if I listened to my cells. And I gave them what they needed. And most of the time they wanted sleep. And then when I wasn't sleeping, they wanted nutrition. And then once I had been fed and I had been taken to the bathroom, my mother would stick something in my hands and tried to teach me something that I thought was a horrible concept. Why on earth would people read? I thought it was ridiculous.

us. Numbers, forget it. Didn't know what one was for four years. So it was a long, slow, 24-7 job of giving myself what it needed for eight years to get to the point where I could talk to you and you would think I was a normal human being. All right. So how did I do that? I listened, but I didn't listen using my left hemisphere. I listened by listening to to the whole of what I am, and use that knowledge to give it what it needed in order to regain health. Now, I'm a believer that we are capable of healing our wounds. I'm an example of doing that, and I do it on a pretty regular basis because I beat myself up a lot. And so I know how to do that for me. Can I teach that to other people? Yeah, but there are a lot of other people who do.

it and they don't need me. But I believe that when you allow the energy to flow through all the healthy cells and that we end up with a wound, well, there's going to be a disruption of the wound of the space, but how do we get the energy to flow back through so that that neighborhood can function again the way that it's supposed to function because it's a neighborhood that used to be a neighborhood. and if now cells are gone or muscles are gone or bones are gone or traumas there, whatever it is, how do we bring, can we consciously flow that energy through us? And I'm one of those people who every morning I get out on my paddleboard with my dogs and I'm watching the sun shine on the water, these beautiful sparkles.

And I pull that energy from those sparkles because I know that's what I am. that's all I am, is one big sparkly energy ball with physicality. So I take that energy every day, every morning and every night at sunset, and I flow that energy through my body to bring me help. Well, why wouldn't I do that? Now, people can say, oh, this girl, she is nuts, but she's a healthy nut. Jill, I can't tell you how unbelievable it is to speak to you. For me, as a neuroscientist who kind of, you know, learned about you so early in my neuroscience career. And for us as, you know,

mental health, well-being, you know, science and spirituality intersection people, I mean, you're kind of like, you're it for us. You're like the whole freaking Sunday. And also, it's gluten-free and vegan. Like, you're just perfect for us to get to talk to. So thank you. I did want to mention one more thing from my stroke of insight that struck me very deeply that I want to mention to people and that I'd like to end with. Jonathan's brother was thrown from a car when he was 17. Jonathan was 14. And his brother landed on the front left of his head. And the family was told, as you can imagine, that he would likely never walk. recognize people do anything. He was a very athletic, very vibrant, you know, teenager. It obviously

wrecks an entire family. And as you talk about with your mom, like the entire family is impacted by this kind of thing. And Jonathan was very young when this happened. So what he watched was, as he describes it, the person that he knew as his brother died, and another person came back and they didn't know who that person would be. And what happened was his brother was in a coma, as you can imagine and they did surgery on, you know, his front temporal lobe, you know, that sort of junction. And, you know, the beautiful story is his brother skis, his brother reads, his brother laughs. His brother is part of our lives, albeit in a different way than he would have been. But there's something that you include as an appendix in my stroke of insight, which is the 40

things that you needed most. And one of the most kind of devastating and also in your terminal. beautiful parts of this book was your description of what it was like to be a person receiving care in a medical facility after what was deemed, you know, an unrecoverable, right, stroke by many people's understanding. And in addition, what you responded to, that certain nurses treated you like an object, and certain people didn't seem to even hold out hope that there was someone in there and how much it meant to you when one doctor in particular, and you said, you weren't even able to speak at this point, but you remember that she touched your toe as she

left the room and you, the part of you that was still alive, conscious, aware, and able to access information knew, this is a safe person. Someone is going to protect me. And I don't only bring this up as we close to think about what happens if, God forbid, what Jonathan's family experienced happens, and you start to wonder what's in there, who's in there? Are they ever coming back? How are we teaching them to read and speak and walk? But also, when I think of people who are in pain and how many of us have autoimmune conditions or trauma, and we go to doctor after doctor, after specialist, after therapist, and well-meaning people on the street tell us what we should do. And it's kind of like those things in this appendix, I kind of want to print them up and just have them out, right?

Because these are the things I need. I needed to be treated with dignity. I need to be told I'm going to recover that there's a part of me that is whole and sacred and beautiful and born from light that cannot be hurt by all of the things that character one and two are cataloging, right? So I wanted to end with that. And I wanted to just give you a minute to give us any sort of reflections based on what you needed and what you think we all need as we recover from whatever challenges ail us. You know, I love that you've gone there. Number one, love me for who I am now. Love me for who I am now because we don't know if that person I used to be or how I used to be is ever coming back. And that cannot be the goal. The goal has to be, I love me for who I am now.

And when you come to me, look at what I can do, not what I cannot do. Focus on my abilities and help me grow what I can do. Don't focus on my disabilities because I can't do those. So, you know, everything when it comes to recovery is we're not going to run until we can walk, until we can crawl, until we have balance until, until, right? We have to go every step of the way. And if you, you know, one of the things people would always say to me was squeeze my hand, squeeze my hand.

And I would literally look at people, I don't know what a squeeze is, and I don't know what a hand is, and I'm going to disappoint these people. And because I'm going to feel that, I'm going to feel their disappointment. It's like, oh, my God, is she even in there? And all I can do is look at these people and say, I'm feeling abandoned. I'm feeling abandoned. If all your focus is on what I cannot do, or you're questioning the value of me as a living being, it's like, I need your love. I don't need you to question me. I need you to love me because it is in your love that I gain energy that I can refuel and I can then attain something maybe. And so what I needed

was I just needed people to love me. I want to go out on the subject of how I feel about the storm of psychedelics that is moving into and across our human brain. I understand the value of the psychedelic because essentially in my language, it blasts us out of our characters one and two into the character four right-thinking tissue and gives us the big expansive open perspective, and then it's pretty hard after you've had that experience to go back into the little me, the little I am, all my pain, all the pain from my past that was 20 years ago, because now I have something to compare it to. So I do recognize the value. However, the brain's natural response to psychedelics is

neurogenesis, creation of new cells, and neuroplasticity, which is the brain's natural response to trauma. So regardless of what we're doing, we are creating cellular trauma when we are using psychedelics. Now, I as a neuroanatomist care deeply about the health and the well-being of the brain cells. To me, every ability we have is because we have brain cells that perform that function. And it's one thing to go in and say, okay, I'm going to have this experience and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to be all better. Well, all you have to do is look at, at the, the research that is going on and the research that has been done and look at the inclusionary and the exclusion criteria for participating in one of these studies. And you'll recognize that,

you know, 85, 90 percent of the population is not going to qualify for one of these studies. And why is that? It is because these psychedelics can be done. damaging to those individuals. So say, for example, my brother is one of these individuals who smoking the weed of, you know, the 70s and the 80s turned on, and actually he, and psilocybin, so mushrooms, turned on his hallucinating circuitry. Well, his brain never got the memo to turn off. So my brother ended up with a lifetime of schizophrenia because he, dabbled with these drugs when he was a teenager. There is currently epidemic levels of schizophrenia in response to the new marijuana that is being going on, and then psychedelics is only going to make

those numbers worse. Now, you know, it's the fad. It's the newest thing. And all I can say is, just know, if you're thinking about doing this, then be very, very careful about what you're doing. And I am so motivated that I'm actually working on creating a workbook for people who, if you insist on taking that psychedelic journey, get to know your four characters. And what I have learned is that the people who have gone to know their four characters first, when they end up in their hallucination, they're looking at all four parts of themselves and having a huddle conversation in order to help themselves find peace. and then they come back, and then they don't need to do a second dose or a 10th dose or a 20th dose. So that's, I just wanted to express my concern about this is physiological, anatomical trauma at the level of the cells. And these cells are so precious, and we don't know who's going to respond positively

and who's going to respond negatively, but the researchers know so much that they have a huge list of criteria that say, no, we did not include them in this because we didn't want to hurt them. I really appreciate you clarifying that. And also, it's really significant to me that the message that you're giving is not, no one should do drugs, you should just be high on life, because it's not that simple either. But what you're talking about is what any good therapist who is licensed to take people on, for example, psilocybin or even ketamine journeys, which we don't have to get into ketamine because I know it's a whole different category and different neurotransmitters.

But what's important is that, you know, many people sort of do these things recreationally. And in many cases, it's fine or, you know, we don't see these kind of adverse things. But when we live in a place like L.A. or, you know, places like that where everybody's, like, selling psilocybin for you to, like, have a journey and let's all get together and see what happens. That's a very different experience than, you know, we had Rick Doblin on when he talks about the clinical situation in which you prepare someone to expand consciousness. You prepare someone with an interest, not in having an exciting, fun, trippy experience, but in integrating these parts that you're talking about. And in addition, there's a post-integration process that occurs when you come back

from that journey. And I don't mean to steal everybody's, like, fun and take away your gummy chocolates or whatever you're eating your mushrooms in. It's delicious. But the fact is, what we're talking about here is if we're all trying to navigate these four characters, are there other ways to get there? Are there more facilitative ways to get there so that we're not kind of throwing a grenade and hoping it destroys what we don't want and keep what we do? Beautiful. Yeah, exactly. Jill, does ketamine work differently? I was kind of trying to watch your face,

and I kind of saw a little bit of like a head sort of not so sure that it doesn't also cause damage. What are your thoughts? Well, ketamine's an anesthetic. I mean, I used to do a surgery, and the anesthesia was ketamine. I mean, ketamine is a different animal, if you will. It's going to have a different impact in the brain.

and ketamine is actually very, very differently used and abused, because it does have a different impact. And that's another whole thing. So, yes, they're very different from one another. But again, you know, back to my craving or, you know, I choose to not pollute myself. and I choose to not pollute myself because I know how to find my joy in the absence of pollution. So I do that. And I believe we all have the capacity to train ourselves to do that. And I find myself to be absolutely precious because I know what it's like to not have them functioning.

And my relationship with other people, my relationship with animals, my relationship with life, my relationship with myself, my relationship with nature, my relationship with the bigger picture, call that, whatever you want to call that. It's precious to me. And I feel like I have one human life and I want to live my one human life in its most purest form so I can have this experience as best as I can. And, you know, I'm a believer that we are not near evolution. We are in the process of evolving. And part of that is differentiating the different parts of ourselves. And for some reason, we exist in a society that is addicted to polluting itself. And I'm, you know, I'm just not one of those. And all I can say is there are easier,

healthier ways, I think, of finding what people are looking for. You just have to be open-minded to those possibilities of differentiating your own selves. Jill Boltey-Taylor, it is really, this has been an incredible conversation. We're so grateful. We're so grateful that you had such insight and that you have opened your life up to the tens of millions of people who have seen your TED Talk, who have read your books, and the current book that we talked about today that I highly recommend people get, whole brain living, the anatomy of choice, and the four characters that drive our life.

such a pleasure to talk to you from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. Thank you.