Yesterday ended national Brain Awareness Week. I want to jump in on this important subject while it is still fresh.
I read a book about eight years ago entitled My Stroke of Insight. It is a non-fiction book by American author Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained, published neuroanatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. She was 37 years old.
On the morning of this rare form of stroke, she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. It took eight years for Dr. Taylor to completely recover.
“In a period of four hours I watched my brain deteriorate. I watched as my brain functions – motor, speech, self-awareness shut down one by one.”
Dr. Taylor talks about the (temporary) euphoria she experienced. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and the future. It thinks in language. She was slowly being disconnected from the left brain talk that connects us to the external world. Her left brain chatter went silent. That nagging left brain dialogue that is running constantly; second guessing things, beating ourselves up for things, worrying about the future…all of that was gone.
Periodically during that four-hour time period, the left brain jolted her to alertness enough to send her the message to call for help. Then the euphoria would return again. Fascinating.
It is a truly amazing read. I highly recommend it.
A powerful concept that Dr. Taylor provides is that we are feeling creatures who think, not thinking creatures who feel, yet this is what our society believes and values. In turn, this is the heart of many of our issues.
Although our bodies work unconsciously, we can consciously choose to turn on our higher mind and think past fear and anger.
According to Dr. Taylor, your anger should only last for 90 seconds. Here is the science:
To feel an emotion we need to think a thought which then stimulates a message to our brain, which in turn creates a physiological response in our bodies. The time from thought to triggering the brain to a physical response to releasing the response is less than 90 seconds.
If you have anger for more than a minute and a half it is because you are replaying the story in your mind. Every time you replay the story you re-trigger the circuit and the response. Every time you choose to think painful thoughts, you create a physical response in your body. By replaying the story, you not only keep your mind in a negative space, but your body experiences the pain created by the anger again and again (and again and again).
Using mindfulness to calm our minds and knowing that emotions wash over us in 90 seconds, we can stop, breathe, and then choose to think differently, ensuring we don’t make poor, muddled choices or create a lengthy period, or even a lifetime of unhappiness.
Dr. Taylor says that we have the power to choose moment by moment who and what we want to be in the world.
Oh my goodness. Ninety seconds. I have certainly wasted time over ‘valid’ negative emotions. And I have become quite adept at it over a 60 year period.
Let the backpedaling begin.