Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 552: Understand Your Brain, Upgrade Your Life | Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

The better you understand your brain – and the more effectively you can work with it – the happier and healthier you will be. This is the central contention of today’s extraordinary guest, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and she makes this assertion based on two levels of deep expertise. First, Dr. Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. Second, back in the ‘90s, she experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain causing her to lose the ability to walk, talk, read, write or recall any of her life. She later recovered, but that experience, which you will hear her describe in riveting detail, gave her incredible insight into how the brain works. She wrote a massive best-selling book called, My Stroke of Insight, which she has now followed up with a book called, Whole Brain Living, where she lays out exactly how to understand your brain and how to work with it.In this episode we talk about:Dr. Taylor’s personal story and how her life has changed post-strokeThe marvels of the human brainThe differences between the brain’s two hemispheres How our society is skewed towards the left hemisphere and how living too much in the left hemisphere can burn us outThe brain’s “four characters” and how to work with these characters through a practice she calls “The Brain Huddle” The differences and similarities between “The Brain Huddle” and another practice we’ve talked about before on this show called, “RAIN”And she describes a tool for understanding your emotions called, “The 90-Second Rule”Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jill-bolte-taylor-552See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Greetings, my fellow suffering beings. The central contention of today's extraordinary guest, and I mean that she is extraordinary. Her central contention is that the better you understand your brain, the more effectively you can work with it. And as a consequence, they happier and healthier you will be. And she makes this assertion based on two levels of very deep expertise.

First, Dr. Jill Bulti Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. And second, back in the 1990s, she experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain, causing her to lose the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. She later recovered, but that experience, which you will hear her describe in riveting detail, gave her incredible insight into how the brain works. She wrote a massive, best-selling book about that experience called My Stroke of Insight, which she has now followed up with a book called Whole Brain Living, which lays out exactly how

to understand your brain and how to work with it. In this conversation, we talk about Dr. Taylor's personal story and how her life has changed post-stroke. We discuss the marvels of the human brain, the difference between the brains to hemispheres, the left brain and the right brain, the left brain is our ego center where our sense of past and future resides. The right hemisphere is home to our sense of interconnection awe and present moment awareness. We talk about how our society is skewed toward the left hemisphere and how living too much

in that part of the brain can burn us out. Dr. Taylor then breaks down the brain's four characters and describes how to work with those characters through a practice she calls the brain huddle. We explore the differences and similarities between the brain huddle and another practice. We've talked about a ton on this show. It's a meditation technique called brain. And finally she describes a tool for understanding your emotions called the 90-second rule. We'll get started with Dr. Jill Bulti Taylor right after this. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again.

But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist, Kelly McGonical,

and the great meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, to access the course, just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer

on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. I'm so excited to be with you. I'm excited. You're one of the guests. So I'm like, why have you not been on the show before? I don't have a good answer for that, but I'm glad we're making up for it now. Thank you. So let's start with your story. I suspect a lot of people may have heard it, but even for those folks would be a good refresher because it is such an amazing story with what happened to you medically at I believe the age of 37. Yes. So I was teaching in performing research at Harvard Medical School. I was trained in publishing neuroanatomist. So I'm a brain an atomist. And I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who's been diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. And he's only 18 months

older than I am. So everywhere we went, we went together as siblings are. And I noticed as a child that he was very different in his interpretation of our experiences. And for example, we might be playing kickball out in the front street. The ball goes out into the street, mom is screaming, and he's thinking that mom is angry, and I'm thinking mom is terrified. So just little differences in how we were having experiences. So I became fascinated with what am I as a living being, and ultimately he would be diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. So I was fascinated with how does our brain create our perception of reality? And so that's what I was doing at Harvard Medical School. And then at the age

of 37, a blood vessel exploded in the left hemisphere of my brain. And I got to watch through the eyes of a scientist, my left hemisphere deteriorates circuit by circuit ability by ability to the point where I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. So I essentially became an infant in a woman's body. And then it took, I had brain surgery and they removed the blood clot the size of golf ball from that left hemisphere. And then it took eight years for me to use my right brain to rebuild all the abilities of my left hemisphere and then it took eight years for me to use my right brain to rebuild all the abilities of my left hemisphere. I appreciate very much the

consideration of your retelling of that story. Let me jump in back into the time I'll a little bit and ask some questions. So the moment you're sitting there, you say watching your left brain deteriorate, how did you know what you were watching? Well, I knew what I was watching because I was having bizarre experiences. And my whole life has been a fascination with things that my brain does, how my brain organizes information,

all of my abilities, all of my skill sets, and all of a sudden things were what I call neurologically weird. And, you know, whenever something neurologically weird would happen to me, it gains my attention, and I'm curious at a neurological level. I wonder what cells are involved in that processing, because I'm a neuroanatomist, so I think in terms of cells. And every ability we have is because we have a specific circuit of cells that are working in order for us to be able to have that ability.

So for me, on the morning of the stroke, I'm on my exercise machine and I'm looking at my hands and my hands are looking like primitive claws instead of my hands, then I know that that's a perception of reality shift that has happened, and I'm thinking, well, which sells is that? What's actually going on inside of my brain? So I was kind of my own case study for four hours. Were you fascinated, terrified, toggling between the two? I had no terror. I was absolutely 100% fascinated. What was it like to be an infant in a woman's body? It was actually very peaceful.

In the absence of the left hemisphere, which is my identification of me, the individual, as a self, as an individual person, in relationship to the external world. In the absence of that, which was now swimming in a pool of blood, I lost all the stress of my relationship with the external world. So I lost my experience of any stress related to my job or any stress related to any of my relationships or any stress related to any, I'm behind, I'm late. I'm, you know,

none of that was there. So it was really very peaceful and beautiful, but it was clear that even though I perceived myself to be perfect, whole and beautiful, just the way that I was, other people in the external world were freaking out. So this sounds to me and I want to say I am as a meditator, I am making no claims to enlightenment here, but this sounds to me as somebody who interviews, gurus, and the like for a living. This sounds to me like an enlightenment experience, although it's also a medical experience. Well, I think it's really important to remember that, as a neuroanatomist, I'm a firm believer that every ability we have

is because we have brain circuitry that manifests our ability to have that experience. So if we are capable of having an enlightened experience, then which cells inside of our brain are we actually using to have that experience as opposed to which cells might we be using when we're here having a conversation with one another. It's going to be different cells manifesting different abilities. So I want to talk in a moment about the difference between the left and the right brain and how

that might map on to what listeners to this show. Many of them might understand as kind of the movement away from the ego and towards a sense of, and this is the apex predator of spiritual cliches, but oneness with the universe, having said that though, just before I get to that, I'm curious as your ego was dissolving because your left hemisphere of your brain was, as you say, in a pool of blood and therefore going offline. How could it not struggle in a way that would lead to fear? Oh, that was swimming in a pool of blood.

I was very fortunate that the group of cells in my left brain that would be freaking out. Oh my God, I'm incapacitated. I can't speak. My perception of reality has shifted. I can't understand numbers much less dial a phone. There was no fear related to that. And I was very blessed that those were some of the cells that were offline because I had a hemorrhage. And a hemorrhage is when the blood escapes from a blood vessel. And we have the blood-brain barrier, which is a collection of glial cells, we call it glial cells, that separate the neurons,

the conducting nerve cells to the blood. And we have that barrier because when blood cells come in direct contact with the neurons, it either kills them or forces them to go offline. They are no longer functional. Because that happened inside of that portion of my brain, I simply didn't have the automatic fear response that would be natural. On top of that, I'm a scientistantist who studies the brain and thinks in

terms of cells and circuits. So I was fascinated with what's going on and just mapping, trying to create the own mapping inside of my own brain. And I think that that was a disadvantage for me on the morning of the stroke because I was so curious about it. I didn't just immediately go for help until a little bit later, but I do think it was a tremendous advantage in my process of recovery. Yeah, I also think it's been to the benefit of humanity that you studied this and wrote about it and you're talking about it now. Thank you.

As I listen to you talk, I realize that I have spent an insufficient amount of time, especially for somebody in the mental health, wellness, contemplative zone, marveling at the brain. The human brain, as I listen to you talk, and we're just scratching the surface, and I'm telling you, nothing you don't already know, of course, but the human brain to state the blazingly obvious is amazing. Oh, we are so fortunate that we have one, especially when it works well.

I think it's a miracle that any two of us can communicate at all. A true miracle. I'm over here this life force collection of all these cells, and my cells are organized in such a way that you're another blob over there with your own 50 trillion cells, which are all molecular geniuses, and we are similar enough in how our cells are organizing their circuitry that we can actually talk

to one another. I mean, what a phenomenon is that, just the miracle of life. Yes. And is it the most complex collection of cells in the known universe, the human brain? Well, I'm going to guess so. I mean, the thing about the brain is every ability we have is because we have these cells. And when these cells are functioning in circuits correctly, then we have ability. I have the ability to speak or to understand when you speak, but not just to understand the words,

but I have the ability to experience the intonation of your voice, the emotional content. I can make decisions on whether or not you're telling me the truth based on different pieces of the puzzle of what language is, is your affect your emotional content, synonymous going in line with what the actual words are. So it's this magnificent collection of all these neurons interacting with one another

in delicate arrays of neurons that allow us to have this human life. Let me get down to the content of your new book. We touch on this a little bit, but I think it's worth going back to in more specificity. The difference between the left and the right brain. Can you walk us through these two important halves of our brain? Yeah. For me and my experience, I'm going to boil it down to two fundamental differences. I, me, the individual, my identity exists in my left hemisphere. My left hemisphere has my ego center. Why about that

group of cells, which happened after the stroke, and I, Jill Bulti Taylor, I simply did not exist anymore. But I was still alive. But instead of being all focused on me and where I begin and where I end and what I like and what I don't like and my relationship of me to the external and the societal norm, that part of me got wiped out. But what I gained in the absence of that individuation was I was this life force as big as the universe. I no longer had that group of cells in my left orientation area that defined the boundaries of where I begin

and where I end. I mean, how do I know that these lips are my lips, but these glasses, even though they live on my face all day, they're not of me, they're not a part of who I am. And that's because my left hemisphere tells me through a holographic image of myself where I begin and where I end.

Well, in the absence of that, I felt as big as the universe on the morning of the stroke. I was an energy ball. I'm a life. And the life doesn't just begin and end at the matter of what I am. It's the movement of the particulate stuff within me and the energy field around me. That's the first biggest difference.

I exist in my left hemisphere of the individual. But the other big difference is that the right hemisphere, right here right now, processing this big picture perspective, I become a part of all the energy around me because that's what I am. And then the left hemisphere comes in and says, okay, now we're going to differentiate all that stimulation and we're going to start categorizing, organizing, making sense out of it. We're going to create language so we can talk about it. We're going to make me an individual so I become separate from the whole

because I'm completely non-functional if I'm just like you. And that way then we have the capacity to be individuals and have those differences. And it takes all of it. I mean, that's the whole beauty of being human is we have these two magnificent hemispheres and whole brain living is evolutionarily

the ultimate goal. I'm going to read something to you that you wrote and get you to talk about it a little bit. By having both of these hemispheres working together inside one head, we experience a natural duality. As a result, it is normal for us to endure an ongoing internal conflict, based completely on the two uniquely autonomous perspectives of our left and right brains. How does that natural duality, this internal conflict, play out in our day-to-day lives? Oh, well, the value structure really is pretty much what that boils down to. So if I'm in my right hemisphere, and I in the present moment and I'm having this big picture experience where I'm a part of humanity and I care about humanity as brothers and sisters on this planet and relationship with this gorgeous planet and I care about climate change because oh my gosh without a part of my value structure. And so in my spare time,

I'm a volunteer for climate change and I'm doing all these things. But then let's say my kid who's in college in New York and I'm in the Midwest calls me up and says, Mom, why don't you come for the weekend? And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, that sounds great. I'd like to come for the weekend. But then I have to start calculating,

well, what is my carbon print? And do I really want to just jump on an airplane? And for the whim of it, go back and add more pollution to the planet. So just at that most basic level of how do I protect humanity as a whole? How do I focus on the whole rather than on me, the individual?

Because the left hemisphere is about me, the individual. It's about that I have individuation there. So I care about accumulating. I care about doing more. I care about getting more. I care about my house being bigger. I care about my bank account being bigger. I care about all those values wrapped around me, the individual, versus the values of me as a piece of this planet.

It is for many of us, one of is not the core struggles of life balancing these competing imperatives. What is, use this term a lot in the book, the hero's journey? What is that? The hero's journey, well, first of all, I think we all are very familiar with a hero's journey where we are presented with a challenge. And that challenge might be, I have a drug addiction, it might be, I'm not very nice to my spouse, it might be whatever it is, but we're set up with a journey and a challenge. And I either accept that challenge or I don't. And often, at the level of the brain,

as I perceive the journey, is I have something that I would like to create as a change. So if I decide to go upon that hero's journey, then I have to be willing to set me the individual down. It's not about me, it's not about my pain, might be my addiction. We can use addiction as an example. But I'm willing to lay that down and step out of me the individual literally into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where I can find peace. There is peace and joy and love and, and the experience of nourishment,

and the experience of self-southening in our right hemisphere. And our pain that is related to the past, or our fears of the future, that's all in that linear left hemisphere. So from my perspective, the hero's journey is the willingness to accept a challenge that allows me the individual to set down my individual needs in order to actually step into the part of me that is connected to the bigger picture hole. So I am very attracted to what you're describing here as the hero's journey moving in some ways from the left to the right. And yet, we do need to take care of ourselves and we don't want to be doormats.

So how do you reckon we navigate that balance? Well, I think then we go back to what are the skill sets of my whole brain? You know, I am an individual and I need to take care of me. And yet, man is not an island. Man is a part of a community. Okay, so which community is that? Both. It's both. I'm a part of an external community that I need to nurture those relationships. I play a role inside of society. I make my own decisions right wrong, good, bad based on the social norm and how I'm going to fit myself into that.

That's all very left brain structure. But then also, how do I self-sooth myself? How do I give care and compassion and allow myself to shift out of that stress circuitry? Because the stress circuitry is of that left hemisphere. And step out of that stress circuitry into because the stress circuitry is of that left hemisphere. And step out of that stress circuitry into the present moment experience. And the present moment right here right now, this is a beautiful moment.

And in this moment, whatever I am, I'm alive. And I might have illness in my body, I might have sadness in my heart, I might have anger or fear or hostility inside of my left hemisphere experience, but I always have the power to choose to bring my mind to the present moment. And in the present moment, there's peace, because in the present moment, when we approach life with curiosity, instead of all of this judgment of right, wrong, good, bad, where

do I fit on the scale of hierarchy and how do I fit myself into an external structure. When I allow myself to experience the present moment and to explore and to be, this is kind of like the refueling of the battery because I allow myself the restful time of refueling of simply being present with myself, with my body. What do I need?

What am I feeding myself? Am I getting plenty of sleep? Am I getting movement? Am I being playful with people I love? There's all this capacity in the brain. And biologically speaking, our challenge, the evolution of humanity, is this building of the bridge between time spent in that left hemisphere, burning the energy and time in the right hemisphere, refueling the machine so that we have the energy to burn.

In our society, we are so skewed to the values of our left hemisphere that we're just burning all the energy. We're taking pride in it. You know, oh, I function on four hours of sleep a night. You know, and it's like, mm-hmm, but you're burning the system down into lack of possibility. And the right hemisphere opens us up to all possibility. So that's why to me, this book is so important on whole brain living. And it's, how do I look at what I have inside of this magnificent head?

And how do I use all of those different pieces in order to bring balance and communication inside of my own head? So in an instant, I have the power to choose moment by moment who and how I want to be in the world. We're going to get pretty deep into the, how to aspect of whole brain living momentarily. But let me just see if I can summarize the foregoing.

Is part of what you're saying at least that if we can learn increasingly to dwell in the right hemisphere in a way that we're stepping out of the spinning stories of our mind, the me, me, me, stream of consciousness, that not only will we be happier and have more energy, but our actions eventually over time might be skewed more toward the benefit of the whole. I think we will become more balanced, and I think that's exactly what you said. Coming up, Dr. Jail Bulti Taylor breaks down the four characters of the brain and talks about how to work with them through a tool she calls the brain huddle.

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You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So let's get a little bit more granular now on how to put this into action. I think it's important at this point to establish the four characters you lay out in the book. Maybe you could walk us through those and then we'll talk about how to work with them. Sure, so as we think about the evolution of humanity, and we know that we have a reptilian portion of our brain and the reptile portion is a portion that we share with reptiles. And this is pretty much the brainstem region and it's pretty much on off switches. I'm hungry.

I eat. I'm done. I'm thirsty. I drink my brainstem, tells me to stop drinking. Otherwise I would drink myself to death. I think that I'm done. I'm thirsty, I drink, my brainstem tells me to stop drinking. Otherwise, I would drink myself to death. I think that's fascinating point. But anyway, so we have these on-off switches of reptilian. And then the primary difference between a reptile

and a mammal is the addition of new tissue on top. And then the new tissue is emotional limbic tissue. And so this is now the mammal. So the mammals are running around is emotional limbic tissue. So this is now the mammal. The mammals are running around with this limbic tissue. And then kinks are getting worked out between the new tissue added on top and the reptilian tissue below. And new species form based on which groups of cells get brought into the new species. And then the human is when new tissue gets added

on top of the limbic emotional tissue, and that then is neocortex, new cortex. And so that which distinguishes a human from other mammals is the addition of this neocortex. And so let's look at the anatomy of the brain and say, okay, we have four very specific modules of cells. We have emotion in the right hemisphere and on the left hemisphere, and we have this

thinking tissue added on top of the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. So what happened for me as a neuroanatomist, a brain scientist who lost the left hemisphere, which was pretty much dominant. We live in a skewed to the left brain dominant society. When I lost that portion of my brain, I didn't go unconscious. I simply lost the left thinking tissue and the left emotional tissue of my brain. And it was perfect. It was fantastic. I was right here right now. I had

no relationship to Jill Multitailer, other than I looked like her. I would eventually sound like her. Eventually, I would evolve into her identity. But as far as I was concerned, that girl died that day. And in the absence of her, I felt this incredible excitement and peacefulness of the present moment. And so the emotional tissue is the experience of the present moment. And then the thinking tissue is the thinking connectivity of me as this big ball of energy connected to the big ball of energy all that is. So what that really means is that my consciousness, my conscious perspective is no longer filtered through Jill Bulti Taylor and her likes and dislikes of her left brain.

But now it's just like this explosion of, oh my gosh, I'm alive. And it was fantastic there. So let's say, practically, what did that mean? Okay, I'm a brain scientist. I teach cadaver lab. I teach cellular tissue. I teach brain tissue. And so I could have sculpted for you a perfect abdomen because my right hemisphere is experiential and how it learns and how it thinks. And I'd been teaching gross anatomy for what? 13 years or so by the time I had that stroke. So I'm pretty good at an abdomen. But my left brain was completely offline and language is in that hemisphere. So even though I could have sculpted for you perfect abdomen, I had no language to teach you the terminology of the names of all the different pieces.

So in the absence of the language, I still had all this information and now it was untethered. I was as big as the universe. Who doesn't want that experience, right? We meditate, we pray, we mantra to quiet the left hemisphere in order to have this wide open, big, expansive experience of, oh my gosh, wow, I'm alive. I mean, that's really what a boil's down to is this huge awe-inspired, wow, I'm alive. I mean, that's really what a boil is down to is this huge awe-inspired wow. I'm alive. And then over the course of eight years after brain surgery, the left hemisphere comes in line. And as we said before, it brings all those details. So what I gained from this

experience, and hopefully what we have gained is a higher level of differentiation of what is actually going on in the brain cells of these different modules, these four different modules. And they end up not just being four different skill sets, but each of those skill sets ends up with a personality profile that we all exhibit at a biological level. I love your description of all of this. So let's stay with the four characters because as you've established, we've got the left brain and the right brain, and then in the left brain,

we have the emotional part and the thinking part and in the right brain, we have the emotional part and the thinking part. So each of these four modules to use your term has a kind of personality profile. Can you walk us through these four characters? So as we look at each of these four modules of cells, they result in very specific skill sets.

And those skill sets happen to package themselves to what we would look at as typical personality. So character number one, I call the left thinking tissue. And the left thinking tissue is the portion of our brain that is rational. And it defines what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. Character one is the relationship between what's going on

with me, the individual, and the external world. So it's how do I fit myself into the social norm? Its value structure is about me, the individual, because that's where I exist as an ego. So everything, the whole universe revolves around me. And this is character one, it's the part that it knows numbers, it defines the boundaries of where I begin and where I end, and it likes to create order, it likes to sort things, it likes to be in control of people, places, and things. So this is character one. I have named my characters and I encourage people to name their characters so that they

can instantly identify when they are exhibiting each of these four characters. And then they can assess, do I want to be that character in this moment? Blah, blah, blah, but we'll get there. So character one is the part that goes to work. And this part of me, I call her Helen, Helen Wheels, she gets it done. And she's busy. And you know, she holds my body a certain way.

She's got this voice, she's got glasses on, she sticks her earrings in, she shows up, she's punctual on time, she's usually up in the office or she's on a Zoom conversation, but she's the boss. And we all probably know that part of ourselves. And then the question is, do we like this part of ourselves and how much time do we spend being this part of ourselves? And who else likes this part of us and who runs from this part of us

and just really looking at that character profile and saying, here's a network that I call Helen and this is what I know about this part of me and I can relate to that. You know that part of yourself, Dan? Yes, the executive, the CEO of me. Exactly. He goes to work. And people can walk into a room, and if you're on the phone, they can tell if they can approach you or not, because if this guy is happening,

then he's probably busy. So he's different, right? He's different. So that's that group of cells. You wipe out that group of cells and that executor might go offline. So that's again, just to be clear, you call her Helen, but this is the left brain thinking module. Left brain thinking module. And I encourage people to give it your own name. I just call it Helen because she's how on wheels she gets done. That works for me, right? because she's how on wheels she gets done. That works for me, right?

But I know who Helen is. All my friends know they can call me and they know when it's Helen and they'll say, oh, hi, Helen. And it's like, how about you all call us back this evening and it's like what they're really saying is I know you're busy. And I say, okay, I will do that. I usually put it on the to-do list just to remind me

because I'm running through my to-do list. Helen is very busy. And when you stop and think about that tissue then that's left hemisphere, me the individual. So character number two is the emotional tissue of that left hemisphere. And the emotional tissue, this is me the individual, it is my linearity across time. So this is me, Joe Bolte Taylor, and all my history from the past and my projection of my future. So this generally has high stress. It has high anxiety because it's my fears and anxieties based on my past or my fears and anxieties about what will happen in the future.

So it's kind of like it's always on the fighter flight, it's always bringing information in. And it is the fight flight tissue of the amygdala and the hippocampus of that left hemisphere. And the beauty of this tissue is that this tissue brings information in from the present moment and then it immediately steps out of the present moment. And that's how I can remember what I had for breakfast or what shoes I chose to put on today, because this tissue was willing to step out of the present moment. We are not just critters that exist in the present moment, right?

We have the capacity to learn across time. We, life as a human, is a bridge across time. So, wow, how do the cells do that? Because these are cells that have to do this. It's not just that I'm a human and I have a past and I have a future. It's like, no, how does that work? Well, that works because they're the cells that manage to bring information in about the present moment and make a comparison to our past experience to determine does this feel familiar? And if this feels familiar, then I feel content. And then I can be at peace in the present moment. And then I can explore more because I'm not feeling threatened.

But as soon as something in the present moment gets compared to the past, and oh, I got bit by a dog when I was five years old that looked just like this dog 55 years later, it's like now I'm going to make the assessment that this dog is dangerous because a dog that looked like that dog 55 years ago was a threat. Wow, what capacity? These are cells in our brain that do this. So this emotional part of our character too, this is all of our pain from the past. This is all of our trauma from the past. This is all of our fears about the future. This is our ongoing state of anxiety that so many of us are suffering with at epidemic levels right now

because of this magnificent group of cells that allows us to do it. And it's also, if you open the brain up right in there, some of that tissue called the insular cortex, that's where our craving happens. And in addiction, you know, what's addiction without craving? It's that capacity to crave.

So this is a part of ourselves that generally manifests is not very happy because it's always looking for a reason to say no. Push away, push away. Well, somebody used that tone with me, you know, 20 years ago, and it meant they were going to break up with me. So now that I hear you using that voice, you're going to break up with me.

So I'm going to push away. And it's like this is designed to save our lives, but in our society, it tends to be a little overreactive right now. But what that reactivity is, is a dysregulation of the calmness in our nervous system. This is the alarm alarm alert alert is being sounded that I don't feel safe. Fascinating. So let's move over to the right side of the brain and touch the two characters there. So the right hemisphere then, it's right here right now and it doesn't have me the individual in it.

So the right emotional tissue, the limbic tissue is experiential. What does it feel like right now where you're sitting? What does the air feel like? What's the temperature of the air feel like? I have long hair. Can I feel the hair on the back of my neck? So what does it feel like the experience? And so this is the experiential part of us. And there's no right wrong good bad because that's all about that left hemisphere. It is simply what is it? So I want to explore because it's not about right wrong good bad. I want to invent something new because I'm not caught in the box of what color I should

color, what things. So it's entrepreneurial, it's excited, it's adventurous So it's entrepreneurial, it's excited, it's adventurous, it's kind, it's open, it's expansive, it's collective, and it wants to be excited with others because oh my gosh, here we are together. Let's go explore in the woods and look for geodes. Let's go play in the leaves and let's use those leafblowers and let's build those roofs and let's just go do it.

Let's go bungee jumping and it's just all this excitement and the experience of what life is. But this is also the part of us that can really get us into trouble because put a little alcohol or something in us and now it's like, oh yeah, let's go sneak into the neighbor's pool at three o'clock in the morning and get arrested. You know, so it's part of us. You know, it's the whole brain. We need that rational thinking of that left hemisphere to kind of keep this part, you know, out of jail. That's character three, the experience of the present moment.

And then the thinking tissue character for is beyond the doing. It is simply the being alive. And the awareness that I am alive. I am this magnificent collection of cells that offers me incredible differentiation. I have a urinary track. I have a fertility track. I have all of these abilities. I can see. I can hear. I have bladder capacity. Oh my gosh, if we can't celebrate bladder capacity, what is there to celebrate? Right? I am this amazing thing right? I am this amazing thing and I'm alive and it's precious and it's fragile and it's momentary and it's vulnerable and it's oh my gosh, you're alive too. And oh my gosh, I can reach out and I can touch you and I can see you and I can speak with you and communicate with you. And oh my gosh, aren't we the miracle of life with this incredible sense of awe and gratitude that is always in existence.

So that's a piece of who I am that, again, every ability I have is because I have brain cells that offer me that ability, but I have the ability, we all have the ability to consciously choose moment by moment which of these four characters we're going to embody at any moment at any time. Well, let's talk about that. So we've established the four characters and the natural question is how do you work with

them? And I believe your answer is something called a brain huddle, which is actually an acronym. Can you walk us through that? Yes. So brain, B-R-A-I-N-Huddle. So these four characters, we all have all four of them. And as you start looking at yourself, it's like ask yourself, you know when you're in your character too, when you start growling at other people and barking and rarararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararar or three or four, depending on what you're doing. And so the brain huddle, B, breath, B stands for breath.

And I choose breath because breath is in the present moment. We don't breathe in the past, we don't breathe in the future. We breathe in the present. And so the first step is to focus on the breath. And the power of the breath is because it's in the present moment, it's automatically going to say, okay, I'm not just in my left brain, but I'm in the present moment of my right hemisphere. Everybody come online.

Our stands for recognize which of your four characters called the brain huddle. And I encourage people to practice this 20 or 30 times a day, just constantly, every time you think about it, because you want all four characters to become very enabled to do this. Because when Little Character 2 is mad and upset, Little Character 2 doesn't want to do a brainhuttle. Little Character 2 usually wants to just chew on that angry bone or that blaming bone or whatever. And the more we practice working with character two when character two is not triggered,

then the easier it becomes for us to bring all four online. So be breath, bring your mind to the present moment, or recognize which of the four characters called the brain huddle. A, appreciate that no matter who called the huddle, there are four of us here. And we can check in with all four right now. A, I, is inquired in this moment, which one do I want to be?

Okay, well, in this moment, I'm going to go in and I'm going to sit with my mom. And my mom likes to, she likes it when I'm a character three more than when I'm a character one. She wants to be the character one in the relationship. So I don't take Helen to go visit my mother. I take my character three to go visit my mother because then we get along better. You know, I mean, it's just like dynamic. I inquire which ones appropriate and then in stands for navigate, navigate moment by

moment by moment by moment, because life happens and it's constantly changing. But when we really have this differentiation of who we are and what our choices are, then we can make informed choices based on all four parts of our brain. After the break, Dr. Jill Bulti Taylor explains how her life has changed, post-stroke, the

differences in similarities between her brain huddle technique and another practice we've talked about a ton on this show, Rain, and she talks about a tool for understanding our emotions called the 92nd rule. Keep it here. Out of curiosity, going to be in the acronym and the Brain acronym, especially having heard you rapsidize about what it's like to be in the right brain experience. So dramatically, I'm curious, what do you do to kiss that experience now that you've healed? What do you do to get back to that? So my agreement with myself was that I would recover enough to appear to be normal. That

was my agreement. However, the biggest difference between Jill Pre and Jill Poststroke is that Jill Poststroke lives by the values of the right hemisphere. And so I don't go out and pursue and it's all about Jill and I want to do this and I want to do that and I want to do this and I want to earn this and I want to do that and I want to beat that person and I want to climb this ladder. I don't do any of that anymore. So now I just kind of exist in my world and I build a beautiful world that I absolutely love to exist in. And then people come to me and they say, would you like to? And my best world, you know, I know how to say no. And I say no to 99% of what comes on to my plate because I don't really want to do that. And what I learned post-stroke was people want you to put your energy into their projects.

It's like, okay, well, I can do that, but that will use up the battery energy and I'll need to go back and refuel. What if I just stay in the refueling zone and then people come to me and I say, how can I serve you without, you know, you're using all of my energy? And how do I then use my energy and stay focused on what I want to accomplish with my life? Because I have lived on that edge between, you know, the this and the that. I was a threat away from being dead that day. And so I'm grateful for what time I have. And I'm very, very focused on whole brain living and helping people better

understand how they too can help themselves differentiate and through that evolve themselves to a higher degree of peace. I'm curious about when you say that you're not sort of, this is not the phraseology you use, but you're no longer sort of out for yourself controlled by the left brain, thinking Helen, part of your mind or your brain and your mind as you perhaps were pre-stroke. And yet you do have an agenda that I think it's a right brain oriented agenda of teaching people about whole brain living, et cetera, et cetera. But you do have something have an agenda that I think it's a right brain oriented agenda of teaching people about whole brain Living etc etc

But you do have something of an agenda that allows you to set the plan for the day to who you're gonna say no to what you're gonna say Yes, too You do need to pay your bills. You do need to stand up for yourself. You have interpersonal relationships You mentioned your friendships. I can't imagine that you could entirely shut down Helen. No, oh, Helen is fantastic, but Helen's a tool that I use. She's not in control anymore. I think that's the biggest difference.

When Helen came back online, it was like, we were great, you know, it's been eight years, oh my gosh. I'm back, let's some ready to take over, let's go do this, let's go do that. And it was like the rest of us are in here going, we're really glad you're back online, but no, we're not going to let you be the boss anymore. Well, now we vote. We vote now. And you're going to be, yeah, we vote now. And it's different. You know, my time is limited. And my world is pretty isolated, actually, because I spend so much time in the present moment

that I am only pretty much willing to engage with people who are willing to be in the present moment. I don't spend a lot of time in the past. I don't spend a lot of time in the future. I spend time, you're absolutely right. First thing in the morning, when I roll over and I look out the window and I look at these trees that I have out in my backyard, I, you know, this overall peacefulness of, I'm a part of a neural net. And how do I use me throughout the day in order to bring peace to me?

Because if I come from a place of peace, then everything else that I touch, at least I'm bringing my regulation and my peacefulness to that situation. So I'm, you know, I'm true to being alive, enjoying my life, enjoying color, enjoying my art. I do limestone carving, I do stained glass with vivid color, that's always my passion, but I'm in this body, it loves to move. I love to blow my leaves where I live in the woods. I mean, I'm very physical, I'm very committed

to me being true to my bliss. And from that space, I get to bring nourishment and support to all that I love. And if the flow of love is open to the other, then we have a good relationship. But if someone comes at me as a character one or a character two and either wants to control me or emotionally not drive with me.

I don't have any problem saying I'm not there. Now if you can meet me in a more peaceful, beautiful space, I'm game to play with you. But I'm all about paying attention to moment by moment. Who am I? And what am I attracting and what am I giving to the world? Take total responsibility, emotional and cognitive accountability for who I am. And I think that that is where we are evolving to. I only hope we make it there. Right. What I'm hearing you describe sounds to me, not that I've achieved anything close to this, but like a pretty beautiful

equa-poise between self-interest and other interests in a way that nets out to sort of executing the way the right brain thinking module might want us to walk through the world. But just to get back to my question, when you say B, B-R-A-I-N, that's the acronym for the brain huddle that you're exhorting us to train many, many times a day, I'm just starting at B. What do you do to breathe to bring you into this first letter of the acronym for the brain huddle? You personally. Oh, this is what I do. Because once you do this over and over again, you kind of bypass the BRA and you move there. Because the ultimate goal is, how do I get to my four? You know, the whole point of the brain huddle is, as soon as your character four is online,

you're going to make decisions that are going to bring your whole soul piece. Right? Because that is your piece. And that part of yourself, when you're actually listening to it, then you're going to do something that you truly believe is the right thing for you to do. Because it's kind of the authentic self, the true self, whatever, so many things we call this part of ourselves. So, whenever I'm feeling too much tension

from characters one or characters two or character three really wants to go do something because it's a compulsion to I've got to go finish that or piece you know it's like everything else in my life is in my way. If I'm feeling any of the angst of any of these other characters and what I'll do is I tend to look at a window and when I look at a window like right now I'm looking out a window and I have these trees and 98% of the leaves have fallen and some of the leaves are still on the oak trees because those are the last to fall and It's just as I look there right now. They're jiggling. They're doing this little wiggle thing and I look at that and I first of all

I see that as friendly. It's like, hi, Joe, hi, Joe, you know, I see the universes of friendly place, but it's not the leaves that are waving, hi, Joe, hi, Joe, hi, Joe, it's the wind, it's the consciousness of the bigger picture energy that is moving those leaves. And so I literally expand my perception of myself to being the wind, to being the air, to being the movement, not the leaf, not the tree, not the air, but the movement. And as soon as I do that, boom, I'm gone.

And I can do it like that. And that's the beauty of practicing 20 or 30 times a day. It's kind of like you're learning a new language and you learn and you struggle and you learn vocabulary and you learn and you're listening and people are speaking too fast and then there comes this moment when you're fluent. And it is in that fluency, you don't have to do the brain huddle anymore. You have to still be committed to the practice of knowing that you can get there, but it doesn't now take you all those little steps to get there. You know, the beauty of the brain is that these are just cells and circuits.

And the more you run that circuit, the stronger the circuit becomes. And then eventually it gets so strong that it begins to run on automatic. And this is how we create our habitual thinking. And so as we create these new habits of circuitry running, essentially we are doing this, this beautiful, modiolis of energy flow between these four different parts of our body, so that we are becoming automatically whole brain in our thinking processes. I love that.

The more we practice this, the better we get at doing it and that shows up in the brain. Oh, absolutely. That's neuroplasticity. That's the power of our ability to learn and underline that at a cellular level is neuroplasticity, the ability of these brain cells to rearrange who's communicating with whom for what purpose and what ability. So I can imagine people thinking, okay, this all sounds really true, but Dr. Jill, I'm busy and I'm trying to get a meditation practice up, trying to exercise, get some movement every day. How do I get started integrating this brain huddle

into my life 20, 30 times a day? Yeah, well, it takes an instant pause to say, okay, right now I'm being a character one, right? I'm running these things, I'm running the to-do list, I'm busy, that's my character one. When you get familiar with what does that character feel like inside of your body? And then as soon as you become unhappy

or as soon as somebody does something or someone else becomes happy, because we're all biting each other now. It's a bunch of character twos. It's like character two on full display. Well, I'm gonna bite you and then you bite me back. And it's like, well, I don't wanna bite you back. I want you to feel better. So I'm not gonna fuel, I'm going to bite you and then you bite me back. And it's like, well, I don't want to bite you back.

I want you to feel better. So I'm not going to fuel, I'm fight with you. I'm going to come in and say, oh, honey, I got you. What do you need to talk about? What's going on? And this is a choice. So pay attention to the choices that you're making. Pay attention to the time you're spending in each

of your own four characters. Pay attention to who likes your four characters, who's attracted to that. I'll tell you, when I'm in the mood to be a character three, I call a whole different group of people than when I'm in the mood to be a character one. And when I'm being a character four, I'm probably out with God and I don't care if anybody's around. And if they are, I hope they're in their character four, too. Because otherwise their character was just going gonna chatter, chatter, chatter, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no then it's like, oh, I'd rather be a character three right now.

I don't really want to grow up my children. I want to take them out and have some fun. So then start noticing that. And then automatically you're going to say, hmm, brain huddle sounds like a really good idea. Because in this moment, I don't want to miss this moment with my kid. I want to get out of my character one and I want to go into my character three and really

enjoy this meal with them. So let's play and make the meal together kind of thing. So you're going to start noticing it in your life and you're going to realize every moment is an opportunity to call a huddle. I wonder how well you think the brain huddle maps onto what I'm about to describe, which has been described by many guests on this show, probably most prominently, the great meditation teacher, Tara Brock, who talks about she didn't invent it, but she's really popularized. An acronym, it's just the last four letters of yours instead of brain, it's rain, and it is sort of a mindfulness exercise that allows you to start by recognizing

what's happening right now, accepting it, AI investigating, and it can be non-attachment. In other words, you don't believe that whatever emotion or thought you're experiencing right now is you, or N is sometimes spun as nurturing, which is just kind of a self compassionate attitude toward whatever is happening right now. And Tara and many other meditation teachers will talk about this as a muscle you can exercise throughout the day to wake you up out of your what you might call character one state, your Helen state, your compulsive, reflexive habitual mind and into something a little wiser.

How do you think brain and brain interact? I think the difference is that, hers is a practice in order to obtain a goal. Mine is a practice designed to give you choice of that goal. You still have that choice as a goal. But it might be more appropriate for me to actually hold a brain huddle and get out of my procrastination and get into my work. Do you see what I'm saying? So I'm asking everybody to bring all four online so that I can pick and choose. I know who they are. I can pick and choose. I can negotiate between them. And they're constantly are. I can pick and choose. I can negotiate between them.

And they're constantly negotiating. And they like a good negotiation. Because Helen wants to go and get the business done. And character three wants to go and play and do something that's going to refuel. And so character one might say to character three, okay, you go do that. We'll give you two hours to go play basketball

with your friends and do that. And then that will refuel you. And then I want the commitment that tonight before we go to bed, we get two hours of work, right? And it's like, okay, it's a negotiation. But then character three can't decide, okay, after playing ball with my guys for two hours, now I'm gonna go drink some beers for the next two hours, right?

I have to be faithful to my commitment to my other part. Otherwise, I'm not having a real conversation. And I think that the practice of rain is a practice that is essentially the same thing. Awareness, be aware, where am I? Which portion of my brain, but she's not using that language. And then the ultimate goal is to have the choice of being here or being there.

So I think there are a lot of practices that are practical skill sets that we can train ourselves in order to get to the other hemisphere, because usually for meditation practice, the ultimate goal is to quiet the character one, language centers and the character two piece of ourselves that is some other time and space than the present moment, bring our mind back into the present moment, and then once we're in the present moment,

now we can choose better because we're in our refueled mind as opposed to just the run of the mill. So I think there are a lot of practices. For example, what does yoga do? Yoga allows us to actually use the tool of our body to help us manifest our time, our consciousness into the right hemisphere present moment experience. So mantra, same thing. What do we do? We override the language in going on by a repetitive same thing with if we use a prayer, we're preoccupying the language center of the left hemisphere

so that we can actually allow ourselves to shift away. It's multi-billion dollar industry of try, how do I get out of my left brain into my right brain? And I don't just want you in your right brain. I'm not an advocate for the right brain. I'm an advocate for the whole brain because to me, this is the tool. How do we really find that balance? Well said.

Is there something I should have asked you but fail to ask? One thing I do want to add is what I call the 90-second rule. And the 90-second rule is that from the time you think a thought, it stimulates an emotional reactive circuitry. And then we have the physiological response to what we're thinking and feeling. That whole circuit takes less than 90 seconds. From the time we think the thought,

we stimulate, like anger, let's say anger, and then my body has a physiological response that flushes through me and floods out of me. That takes less than 90 seconds. And when we're aware of that, and we feel ourselves becoming triggered or reactive, then I encourage people just look at your watch, and you will see that literally, unless the 90 seconds, you can feel better. I love that because we tend to just compulsively re-up whatever emotion we're feeling through left brain thinking. And in fact, if we let it wash through us,

we can get to a wiser more, as you might say, choice-oriented place. Before I let you go, would you mind, please bringing Helen online and plugging your newest book and anything else you've put out into the universe that you want people to know about? Yeah, my plug is a whole brain living, the anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive our life. And if you let it, it absolutely will change the way you look at the world. Thank you for walking us through this.

It's been a pleasure to meet you if regrettably, belatedly. I'm very grateful to you for making the time. Thank you. No, it's an honor. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, Dan. Thanks again to Dr. Jill Bulti Taylor. Really appreciate her time.

Really appreciate you listening. And of course, very much appreciate the folks who work so hard on this show. 10% Happier is Produced by Lauren Smith, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere and Justine Davy. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman, Kimmy Regler is our managing producer and our executive producer is Jen Poient. Scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you next time for a brand new episode.

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