- Just imagine these poor little cells, if right here, right now is blissful euphoria. 'cause I'm connected to all that is, and I'm big as the universe. Imagine the sacrifice that those little cells made to say, okay, I'm willing to step out of the blissful euphoria, the present moment in order to protect us from anything that we may need to push away from, because we have now recorded it as a negative thing.
How beautiful. I mean, what a gorgeous gift this tiny little group of cells has done it knows how to be miserable to save our lives. - Welcome everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius. It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute and its stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life posts process and how it lives in the world. Radiating love. Welcome to the Hoffman Podcast, Dr. Jill Bolty Taylor, welcome.
- Thank you. I'm happy to be with you. - We are happy to have you. Lots of grads who listen to this podcast and people heading into the process. This is gonna be a journey about the brain. I'm so excited to talk with you about your understanding of the brain. And can you just share a little bit about who you are and how you came to this work? - Yes, yes. I had a, uh, brother who would eventually be diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. And he was only 18 months older than I was.
So as children, everywhere we went, we went together. And I became very aware early on that this boy was very different in how he interpreted our experiences than I was interpreting. So I just became fascinated with facial language, body language, intonation of voice, you know, and then this, you know, what's the difference? I mean, this boy is the closest thing to me that exists in the universe, but we are not having the same experience in life.
So, uh, eventually, I, I grew up to study the brain. Uh, I'm a neuroanatomist so I study the anatomy of the brain. I'm a cellular anatomist. So I think about the brain as a collection of cells communicating with other cells. And every ability we have, we have, because we have brain cells that perform that function. So I was teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School, and my area of focus was how does our brain create our perception of reality?
And then at the age of 37, I woke up and was experiencing a major hemorrhage in the left half of my own brain. So through the eyes of a scientist, I got to watch my entire left brain shut down in its ability to process all information.
As this hemorrhage grew bigger and bigger, and by the afternoon I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life, and I essentially became an infant in a woman's body following brain surgery, uh, craniotomy to remove a blood clot about the size of a golf ball pushing on my left hemisphere.
It took eight years for me to use the skillsets of my right hemisphere, which I still had to rebuild the circuits of my left brain so that I could become a relatively normally functioning human being again. And so that's what I did. , uh, yeah, it was, it's a fascinating, you know, it's been a fascinating journey. I mean, how many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their brain from the inside out? So, uh, it's been a profound experience.
And, and in the meantime, in the absence of the left hemisphere, which is our rational organized, how organizes me to interact with the social norm of the external world, when all of that went offline, which science considers to be the conscious brain, all I had was the right hemisphere, which was what they consider part of the unconscious brain. So I got to know what's actually in those groups of cells, how do they function? What are the skill sets?
What do they feel like, and how can we really get to know then these parts of our unconscious brain? How do we bring those into consciousness and then use that part of my brain to rebuild my conscious brain and then become technically what you would consider a normal human being. So, so that's been the journey. - And in your experience of just having your right brain, your right brain available to you, right? What was that experience like, just to be in
that part of your brain? So - The right hemisphere is right here, right now. It's all, it has the group of cells that define me. I am Joe Bolty Taylor. I have this education. I live at this address. I have these data details about my life and me, the individual that's all over in the left hemisphere, and I lost that, those groups of cells. And so in the absence of me, the individual, there's also another group of cells that defines the boundaries of where I begin and where I end.
So if I don't have an ego center that says I am this, and this is where I begin and end, then in the absence of that I have, I'm simply a ball of energy, literally as big as the universe with my energy blended in with all the energy around me. And in that space is a, an experience of openhearted elation, of simply being alive and experiential in the present moment.
So the two hemispheres provide very different constructs for how we process information and what it feels like and what it, what that tissue actually what those cells are doing. - Yeah. And so, Dr. Taylor, in your journey, you went on Ted talk, uh, upwards of 10 million views. People really embraced your story, but it was bittersweet for you, wasn't it? Because something was missing. Can you share a little bit about that?
- I, yeah. I was invited to speak at Ted, and it was before Ted was famous. We, you know, I'd never heard of Ted. There were only five or six, uh, talks online, and my year in 2 0 8 was the first year that they were gonna post on the internet, and you had a 50 50 chance about being posted. So if you messed it up, don't worry. You know, they're not gonna post you, which was great.
So, uh, so I went and I gave this TED talk, and it literally blew the minds of these Ted stirs, and then it went viral. And at this point we're, we're almost at 30 million views on the, on just the TED site, but when it happened, everybody, lots of people took that a link into, so over 150 podcasts and other websites posted it so that the numbers really are astronomical and it's shown in schools all around the world.
So it's a pretty famous TED Talk, but I became instantly world famous, as did Ted. So we, you know, we rode the ride together. But what happened from my perspective was by any measure that Ted Talk was a success because, oh my God, it flew around the world. People found it fascinating and interesting, and they learned about their brains and, and they ended up with a, a real reverence, literally a reverence toward me. And for me, that was a miss.
I don't need other people to have a reverence for me. I was hoping they would gain a reverence for themselves and for their own life, and for the lives and existence of their family and friends and colleagues, and just life in general. So from that perspective, it, it was a mess.
- And so if you had a chance to share the important, in other words, I just shared the TED talk and here's what I want you to get out of it, it would be about that, even though I had the stroke, which gave me the insight you have available to you, in a way, what I experienced in your own brains, all of you.
- Well, yeah, that was what I tried to communicate, and I think that that people got that, but what they missed was the reflection upon an internalization of the information, because I'm just like everyone else, I'm just a human with a brain. But the focus was more on the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, because as our society, that's how we think about our brain. And it literally was not until 2016 that I re realized.
So that's eight years later, realized how to communicate this in a way that people understood. And that realization came to me when I realized, you know, I love teaching about the brain. I think it's this most amazing thing. I love cells, I love sharing the excitement about our capacity. And I was, I was talking to an audience and I said, you know, it's very different presenting now than it was in the nineties when we talked about the brain.
In the nineties. People would look down and look around like, oh my God, she wants my brain. And I did, you know, I was singing for brains. I was a brain scientist. Uh, the singing, the singing scientist singing for brains, it was hilarious. But when I realized, I said, you know, I love presenting about the brain now because people actually, they know parts about the brain.
They know about the amygdala and the hippo campi, and they know about the anterior cingulate gyre, and they know all this stuff. But the fact of the matter is we actually have two amygdala. And there was a audible gasp in the room. And I realized in that instant, that's it. People think we have one emotional system. Well, if we have one emotional system, emotional conflict doesn't make any sense at all.
But if they realize we have two emotional systems that process information in different ways, then all of a sudden it makes sense that we can have a conflict based on the value structure of the different groups of cells. So if one of 'em is valuing me, me, me, I, i, i, me in my left brain ecosystem, but then I also have another value structure in the right hemisphere that is for all of humanity, then I'm gonna have some conflict in some of the decisions that I'm gonna be making.
Because, you know, it's usually a me or a we, not a me and a we - At Hoffman, we, we have a saying which is not proprietary to Hoffman, because I've heard you say it a kind of, I am, we are or we are. I am. Can you go there a little more? Because it, it feels simple and yet actually deeply complex and important. - Yeah. Well, you know, all you have to do is take a look at a human brain, and you can see it has two very distinctive parts. And there the two hemispheres do not share any cell bodies.
They communicate with one another through some 300 million axonal fibers, but they don't, shell share any cell bodies. So the, oh, the entire nervous system is a bilateral, there's two halves to the whole and one half. If you're looking at, at both the emotion and the thinking of the left brain, that that group of cells in the emotional system of the left hemisphere, they step out of the current moment of time. Now, just think about that.
I mean, how is it that there is a group of cells inside of our brain that steps out of the temporality of the present moment? I mean, it's an absurd concept, right? Because life is right here, right now. Life is a present experience, and that's what that right hemisphere is doing. It's right here, right now, and all I have is right here, right now. But then the left hemisphere, those cells step out of the present and they step into the past experiences and say, is there any reason?
Does anything feel familiar? And that I should push this away because this is gonna, this is unhealthy, it's a danger or a threat based on my past experience. So, wow, first of all, let that soak in that there are actually cells capable of doing that. So then we end up with these two machines that are completely different temporality, and then the new thinking tissue gets added on top of the emotional tissue.
So the thinking tissue of the right here, right now is going to be right here, right now, big picture without the feeling or experiential, it's just gonna be in the pureness of being connected to all that is. So that's what's going on in the right thinking tissue. And then in the left thinking tissue, that tissue is going to streamline and modulate and regulate the emotional tissue below it, which is of another time. So it's in the past and it's in the future, and it is of me.
There's a group of cells where Jill Pulte Taylor exists. You wipe out those cells, and I simply don't exist anymore. I'm here, but I don't have an identity. And if I don't have an identity, then I'm not making decisions based on how this serves me. I'm making decisions based on how does this bring more peace to the planet so that we as a collective whole can actually co-exist together in a healthy way That's good for all of us.
- So is is part of what you're saying is to understand the brain and the four aspects of the brain? What do you call that? - I call 'em four modules of cells. They're two emotional modules, two thinking modules. And each of those modules of cells have very specific skill sets, and they package together those skill sets, and they feel like a personality.
So we all have four very distinctive personalities, and most of us can relate to all of them, but sometimes, you know, one part of our brain, like the rational thinking character inside of us doesn't have any value for the playful time. It sees that as a waste of time, I don't have time. I'm too busy over here doing this. And if you're gonna like go play basketball, what a, what a waste of time, right? So there's this ongoing relationship between these four modules of cells.
I encourage people to get to know the skill sets, get to know the personality profiles, give them a name, because they each have very specific identities. And then you can have a conversation between them, which actually can lead you to complete peace, because now everybody's in a negotiation. It's no dictatorship going on inside of our head. - This, this feels really important. First, we understand the four parts, and then having a connection with each of them, a name for each of them.
Then we can have them collaborate or connect or have conversation. - Absolutely, they're all me, and they all have equality. And if I give them all equality, everybody's happy because everybody's heard and everybody's needs then can be met in a collaboration instead of a conflictual relationship.
- At Hoffman, we use the quadri to both understand ways in which that quadri entity can war with each other, but also a kind of new way of being with these four parts of yourselves where they can collaborate, connect, integrate with each other. Why is it that the conflict piece seems to come first? Why is that the default? Because - You don't know what your options are.
If I'm caught in my fight or flight, if I'm caught in my autonomic nervous system of firing that I don't feel safe and I am an alarm, then I'm not open to anything new. I'm in emergency. So you can't teach me how to get outta my emergency when I'm in my emergency. You have to teach me what my options are and before I'm in the emergency, so that I can say, oh, yeah.
And if I know all parts of my brain very well, and I feel my anxiety starting to rev up because I just, you know, saw a snake, and now I'm in alarm, then it's like, well, what are my choices? Well, my choices, first of all, am I safe? Get the heck out of there. If I think it is. Or if my left thinking tissue has already studied snakes, then I can probably tell pretty immediately if that's one of the three venomous ones that live around me.
And if it's not, then I might actually be curious about it and move toward it. But you can't have me do that in the alarm state. That part has to calm. But you know, the way that the nervous system works is that when you hit a trigger and you run into the fight or flight system, it takes less than 90 seconds for that circuit to run itself and then renegotiate itself as to whether it's gonna continue to run. And the negotiation then is either conscious or not conscious.
And if it's not conscious, then it's like, okay, I'm gonna still think those thoughts. I'm gonna think, oh my God, snake, snake, snake. I'm gonna rerun my circuit. I'm gonna stay, you know, an alarm so I can stay an alarm for, you know, ever. And I, I can't do it in a healthy way. It's certainly gonna be wear and tear on my body if I am in constant alarm alarm.
But even if it's like, let's say, let's say you did me wrong, or somebody that looked like you did me wrong 20 years ago, and now I come along and I see you and, and you remind me of that person, and it's like, and I'm really angry at that person. And it's like, hmm, you don't feel safe to me because you're now jumping on the old circuitry of alarm. This isn't a safe dude. So, you know, the brain is this fascinating organism. Neurons have predictable patterns in how they behave.
And when we know what our choices are, then if I see a snake, I can instantly bring all four of my characters online, my character one, what I call my character one left thinking. I call her Helen. Helen's gonna assess the details of that snake and know immediately if I go away or toward, and my little emotion from the past is gonna say, I hate snakes. They're just like, this isn't any good. I'm, yeah, I'm not happy.
And then little character three, which is what I call the emotion of the present moment, right here, right now, emotion of the right hemisphere. It's curious and it wants to go toward, and it wants to like maybe poke it, you know, or do something. And then my character four, which is the right thinking portion of my brain that is connected to all that is in the present moment, thinks, oh my God, what a gorgeous little creature of the universe, whether it kills me or not.
It'd be a great story for somebody to tell, right? It's just not attached to the outcome. - Yeah. So left brain thinking is Helen, and then you have left brain feeling, - I call her Abby, short for abandon. Uh, but when I came flying out of that womb, boy, I am sure that felt like a, a real eruption of abandonment, , you know? Yeah. So I, so we're programmed for that, for that experience. Yeah. - Right. That's the, the left part of the brain. And then the right brain thinking, what's her name?
- Well, my, my right emotion, right? Emotion is experiential. It's not really emotional, it's more experiential. What does it feel like when you dive into the water? You feel the pressure of the water against your body, you feel the temperature of the water. What does it feel like experientially in the present moment without judgment? Just awareness? - Is that sensations? - It is sensations, but it's more than sensations. It's because it's an impetus toward, so it's an active state.
Uh, sensations is simply sensation. But this has an impetus toward this is a, a kind of more of an action experiential, and then the right thinking. There's, there's no impetus toward anything there. It's simply just maybe what someone would describe as, as the sensing awareness. But it's bigger than the senses, because the sense is only what I can process at the level of my circuitry.
And I kind of see this right thinking portion of our brain as the, the, the portal to our ability to be literally as big as the universe, not simply in the body experience. - Dr. Taylor, when, when I hear you describe those four parts, one of the things I think about is the students who come to Hoffman in pain and struggling and deeply in their own psyche, kind of ruminating and in a way centering themselves, certainly in pain, but they're caught in their own world of pain, if you will.
And part of what I hear as a way out is to call in that right brain, which says, you are not alone. - Oh, absolutely. I mean, that is the most beautiful part to me. Well, first of all, let me say, I think that, that anyone who is seeking any form of healing, they're usually trying to find a way to find peace in that left emotional tissue. I mean, when we have deep, deep trauma, this is cellular. We're wired for that deep trauma.
And I always say deep trauma or there's to be lessons learned, it's not supposed to be a lifestyle. And if we turn our pain into a lifestyle, it's a very painful experience, but those cells step out of the present moment in order to compare and say, is there any reason for me to push away from this or to say, no? And, and that's pain. I mean, pain gets our attention, whether it's emotional pain, financial pain, you know, any kind of physical pain, pain is designed to be an alarm problem.
Look at it, reflect upon it, bring in the other parts of the brain that are healthy in order to help heal it. Uh, but a lot of people may get a lifestyle, and then they get caught in that, and then they need various kinds of tools in order to find their way out of the pain. But again, it's, it's harder to get someone out of the pain when they're in the pain, because if I'm in my pain, I need to know these other parts of me that are healthy.
And isn't it lovely to know that three quarters of my brain is healthy? - And so that's why you named your latest book, whole Brain Living, rather than like Quarter Brain Living, I guess. - Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Whole Brain Living is, is about identifying neuro anatomically, I mean, we're wired for this. This is our brain. And each of these groups of cells does very different things. The part of me, when I am sad and unhappy, holds my body differently, holds my shoulders.
I may weep, I may, my voice is different. I behave differently around others compared to my, my left rational tissue, my, my thinking tissue, which is, is running a list. It's just very rational and analytical and organized, and it plans. And, and there's me, the individual. And so, you know, I have a future and I have a past, and, and, and I, that's what it does. And that's very different than what's going on in the right here, right now, right hemisphere where me, the individual doesn't exist.
So just to know, we have these four characters, and then, then the tool I use is called the brain Huddle. Well, what does, what do teams do? They huddle together and come up with a play, right? - You bring your team together in a huddle and you query them about what they need. How does that, what does that look like? - Well, it looks kinda like with the snake, it's like, you know, in the moment something will happen and we could do something like, uh, let's say I get some medical bad news.
And, uh, my little character too, which is what I call that left thinking tissue, the little or left emotional tissue, the little character too, is going, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna die, right? Oh my God, this is no good. Oh my God, I'm sad. I'm, I'm unhappy. I am, I'm gonna die. You know, who do I call? Because I have certain people who I call when I'm like this. And there are certain people I don't call when I'm like this, because, you know, they're just not gonna give me what I want.
They're gonna try to fix the problem. And it's like, I don't need it fixed right now. I just need to be held. Wasn't it lovely to know that I've got my own compassionate, loving part of who I am right here, inside of my own brain? And that part of me is so grateful for life and so grateful that I have had this experience that it's like, you know, we've had a great run, and, and it's okay, whatever happens, we are okay.
But, you know, the little character too, left brain, even the rational thinking part, it's about me, the individual. Oh my God, I'm gonna die. And it's like, you know, we've lived a pretty good life. It'd be okay, you know, let's have some gratitude for what we've had and, and we're okay. Just that. And then, and then the character, one thinking tissue, the left hemisphere comes online and says, okay, well let's do some research about this. Uh, what do we know? Who are the local docs?
Uh, who can I call? Who would know the local docs? How do I get a second opinion? How do I get this? How do I get that plans for the future? Sets the appointments goes into that analytical, which isn't about the emotional freakout. And then it's like, okay, well, how do I distract myself from my little character two worrying about it until those appointments happen? And it's like, well, you know, it's springtime. I'm gonna go do some yard work. I'm gonna get this done. I'm gonna get in my body.
I'm gonna take my dogs into the woods, and things are gonna happen. And, and I actually am having a reasonable conversation inside of myself. Or how do I protect myself from my own fears of my own little left emotional tissue? And, and isn't it lovely that three quarters of my brain got my back and are completely healthy parts of who I am? - Wonderful. And that's what you call the brain huddle. And - That's the brain huddle.
It's, you know, in an instant, I, because I know who they are, I know what their skill sets are, I know their identities, I know how they hold my body. I know who shows up in what ways, I know these four parts of who I am. I can be out paddleboarding, let's say my little emotional character. Uh, three of my right hemisphere is out paddleboarding, and it's just beautiful.
And I'm in the present and I'm watching the Eagles fly by, and I'm just, you know, I got my dog on in the paddleboard with me, and I'm just happy. And it's like, great. And it's like, let's have a huddle, right? Let's have a huddle. Helen, how are you? You know, left thinking, and Helen's going, you know, I'm good, thank you. You know, you let me spend a couple of hours this morning taking care of business, and you'll let me work this afternoon. I'm good, you know, my needs are being met.
And then I'll say to, to little, little character, too little Abby. I'll say, Abby, how are you? And Abby will go Right now, I'm really good. And it's so important to know when that part of me is really good, because she's really good most of the time. Now, she freaks out as soon as I need her to, but most of the time she's really good. And she'll say, I'm really good. And it's like, good. And then it's like Queen Toad. That's what I call my biggest, the universe.
Queen Toad and queen toad's always just, you know, thrilled with gratitude that we're like - Queen toad, that is perfect. I - Know it works for me. And it's like, so I practice letting each of the characters call a huddle when I'm good. Because again, when I'm, when my little character too is triggered, that is not the time to learn. It actually cuts me off from the ability to learn. So it's important to, to, you know, not to practice like anything else.
It's get to know your characters, get to know what they feel like, get to be able to touch base with them in an instant. The only way to do that is to practice them. - And you made a key point there, which is sometimes we think uhoh things aren't going well. I better call a huddle. And and part of what you're saying is like, wait a minute, call the huddle when things are actually wonderful, when things are going well.
- Exactly. Because what you, what you find part of it is, you know, if I, when I call a huddle and everything's good, then I become, I'm strengthening these really healthy parts of me and my ability to connect with them. And so all of a sudden, if something isn't going well, I already have outlined when my little character two gets triggered, well, what are my habits? Who do I call? How do I behave? Do I have an addiction?
I go to, you know, I really map what is the response of this negative part of my character, and how can I really recognize that, you know, that's a whole character and it's there and it's always there, but I have other options. And the other options are actually looking at these healthier parts of my brain. But let me say, it is so delicious to be unhappy. It is so delicious to be miserable.
It is so powerful to have an addiction because in the, I know who I am, I know who I am when I'm angry, I know who I am. All this profile becomes so predictable. It's a part of me, and I know who I am when I'm in that. So I just need to know when I'm not in that.
And if I get to know who these other parts of me are, and the beauty of being the deliciousness of them, then it's like, in this minute, do I really wanna fight with you over dinner and ruin the whole evening because I've, I'm in my little character too. Or do I wanna step into my another character profile and interact with you in a more loving way so that I don't blow the whole evening? We are making decisions constantly. Are we doing them consciously or unconsciously?
- And that kind of deliciousness of hurt, anger, frustration, misery, suffering is the predictability of it, is what the reward is, right? - And the familiar, the - Familiarity. And so part of what you're saying is lean into that unfamiliar creative space of something different, something new. - What I'm saying is know that part of your so well that you choose it. - Mm, - Choose it. Choose it.
- That reminds me of how you ended your TED talk, which is to, what would it be like if we chose more consciously to incorporate this right part of our brain? - Yeah, we'd be more peaceful. We'd be a more peaceful people. We'd spend a whole less lot less time arguing with one another and fighting and feeling any kind of grievance. And woe is me. I mean, life is not fair to a character too. Period. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, raised up in a family where you have every need met.
It's still an inconsolable circuitry inside of us because it is designed, just imagine these poor little cells, if right here, right now is blissful euphoria. 'cause I'm connected to all that is, and I'm big as the universe. Imagine the sacrifice that those little cells made to say, okay, I'm willing to step out of the blissful euphoria, the present moment in order to protect us from anything that we may need to push away from. 'cause we have now recorded it as a negative thing.
How beautiful. I mean, what a gorgeous gift this tiny little group of cells has done. It knows how to be miserable to save our lives. It knows how to say, that's not fair, that's not good, that's not right. I don't want that. So that we can say, we can, we can use the healthy parts of our brain to recognize that we can create a world where we're nurturing that part of ourselves instead of blaming it or wanting to squish it down or saying it's bad. - The proper use of character two .
- Yes, it's a beautiful tool, a beautiful, beautiful part of who we are. How many people have come to you and said, would you please cut this part of me out? It would be so much easier if all I could do is just cut this part of my myself out, and I didn't have that anymore. And it's like, well, but if you did, you'd never know what you needed to learn from and you wouldn't be able to grow. I mean, that's the beauty of that part of who we are.
Again, it's, it's designed to be a tool that we gain information up from. It's not designed to be a lifestyle. - Yeah. How do we normalize something without indulging it? So Dr. Taylor, how's that going? How's the, the research going, the talking to so many people that you do about this whole brain living? What's the journey like today? So, - Uh, it's been researched, it was shown as an evidence-based program to be both short-term and long-term effective, uh, in schools.
And we are on the brink of receiving, uh, there's a, a vote that's just about to happen, uh, at the government level for us to get funding to bring it into the schools. And, but we're not bringing it to the kids. We're bringing it to the village. We're bringing it to the administrators, the teachers, and the parents.
So imagine now if we can help the village within which our children live, if we can help them become more conscious and more aware of the four different characters and how they interplay and social dynamics. I mean, just think about it. If I have four characters inside of me, and you have four characters inside of you, every relationship has eight characters. Oh my gosh, no wonder it's so hard for to have a relationship next week.
We've got, uh, I have two people, a retired judge and a, a colleague of mine for whole brain living. They're gonna take whole brain living into for the first time into a women's prison. Oh my gosh, can you imagine? Oh my gosh. Have conscious people inside the prison system. Wow. I mean, that's just, wow. We've just got, uh, somebody working with firemen. We're building a team to, uh, train police officers higher levels of compassion in, in policing.
We're at this bubble bubble phase, and it's really exciting. I didn't know if this would happen in my lifetime or not. I still don't. But if it does, great. And if it doesn't, you know, I did my duty. I had the stroke , I recovered, I gained an insight. Insight. I wrote a book. And the book, really, I encourage people to read the book. It's a beautiful book. Get it at your library. I don't, I don't need you to buy it.
But it's a beautiful whole brain living the anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive your life. I mean, it, it will come completely shift the way you look at yourself, and you look at those around you. And the way if you practice it, oh my gosh, if you have deep inner peace always there right at your fingertip, then it doesn't matter what's going on outside of yourself. It's like, I'm good. I'm good with whatever I'm good do, do I want this relationship?
Yeah. But I want a healthy relationship so I can create healthy boundaries and, and feel good about that. It's, uh, my little, my need doesn't drive the relationship so I can create healthy boundaries so that I'm healthy. That's, you know, it's my choice. - And I think you're doing something that seems really challenging to do and some people aren't even interested in doing. And that is taking the research and bringing it to the people and making that connection feels so important.
- Yeah. I truly believe whole brain living is the evolution of our brain. We have these four parts, they're designed to work together. And I think the, the evidence to that is we are skewed to the value structure of the left hemisphere, which is me and mine. And, uh, if it's me and mind, it's a win-lose situation. You know, it's zero sum. Somebody wins, somebody doesn't, and we look, and it's, it's the stress circuitry.
Look at the level of violence we're projecting out into the world, which is nothing other than pain. If we could name five top leaders in the world who are dictators, well, what's a dictator? It's me in my way. Right? It's my way or the highway for a whole country. And if you don't do it, you will get punished, right? So there's no win-win going on here. If we could take five leaders in the world and we could have them become whole brain living, and the whole world would shift instantaneously.
So since we can't do that, let's do it from the bottom up, because then at least we understand what a dictator is, what that means. And ultimately, if I have to exist, it increases my awareness of everything. And once we all start working together, we will behave together en mass differently. - But the lose lose of that left brain, we're seeing it more and more in our world. - Oh yeah. Oh, we have people with their fingers on the button and the rest of us.
And I, I just, you know, to me it's amazing that, that seriously, if you've got a leadership, a half a dozen people in the world who have the power to destroy the planet for literally billions of us, what are we doing? Why aren't we voting? And maybe we can't, but, you know, the US is, is sitting on a real powder keg right now. What are we gonna do? It's fascinating. And you know, my character four just sits back and says, isn't it fascinating ?
Now my character too can go in and freak out all about the world, and oh my God, and oh my God, and oh my God, and we have no power, and oh my God, we're gonna die. And oh my God, it's scary. And it's like, well, it's for that part of who we are, but at the same time, we're alive and as living beings, what is our power? And isn't it fascinating that we as human beings, have the evolution of humanity have skewed us so far to the left, that we are in this structure, you know, predicament.
And will we be able to become whole brain enough, soon enough in order to be able to truly thrive as whatever humanity, I believe, at a biological level is meant to evolve into. - When I see you and hear you talk about this, I feel your vitality, your aliveness. This means a lot to you, doesn't it? - Well, I live it. I mean, I'm, it's not that it means a lot to me. It's like, I didn't die that day, you know, when I had that severe hemorrhage, I didn't die that day.
And it's like, well, okay, I didn't die. What did I gain? And I could have been really adequately depressed if anybody had, you know, had a good reason to be depressed. I fell off the Harvard ladder. I, you know, I lost everything that I'd known before I lost me. The individual, I mean, I was now literally a breathing body in the bed. Uh, I was a lump, I was just a lump, uh, of life. And, and I was like, organic waste.
I mean, there was really what was there, there was a right hemisphere, which was blissful and euphoria, but mm, completely non-effective, non-efficient in the human, in the, you know, in the social norm. So, you know, I, I decided, well, you know, I can experience blissful euphoria probably for all eternity after I'm not here anymore in this body.
So I'm here, what can I do day by day to use what I do have and do no to rebuild circuit by circuit what I used to be as far as abilities and skill sets. And so I embarked upon that journey, and, and it took eight years for me to completely recover everything. And then I wrote a book, and then the Ted Talk happened, and then Oprah happened, and then I became one of time magazine's 100 most influential. I mean, you know, weird stuff happens. Who knew? So it's been a wild ride.
And then my stroke of insight is wonderful, a book as it is, if any of your listeners are really interested in the brain and, um, like, enjoy a memoir, my stroke of insight takes you moment by moment through a severe hemorrhage in the recovery through the eyes of a neuroscientist. So if you have somebody you love who has had either a TBI or a stroke, that book will probably help fill in the blanks and you'll feel like you better understand stroke.
But it, it still, it wasn't for the evolution of humanity. It, it missed. And, and so it was whole brain living. Uh, I truly believe whole brain living is my purpose in life. I will sing the praises and sing the message of whole brain living as long as I'm alive to sing it. And where it goes, it goes. And where it doesn't go, it doesn't go. And when I fall off the planet, wow, I had a ride and I'm good . So that's my story. - I'm grateful for your time today, Dr. Taylor. Thank you so much.
- It's been a pleasure. Yeah, no, I appreciate what you guys do because really you help people identify their pain circuitry and how to, how to live beyond that, live with it and live beyond it. And I think whole brain living really under would make your job easier, - And healing more accessible as a result. - Yeah. Oh, completely. Because the three quarters of my brain is healthy.
So how do I use the three quarters of my brain that is healthy to nurture and with compassion and love and planning skills, and the ability to step into the blissful euphoria, the present moment? How, when, when I strengthen that, you know, then there's my power and I have the power to choose moment by moment who and how I wanna be, but I have to know what that means, what are my choices?
- So good. We'll put a lot of what we talked about and some of the work of whole brain living in our show notes so that listeners can access that and learn more. - Beautiful. Thank you, drew. - Thank you. - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. - And I'm Rasi Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
- Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love - In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to Hoffman institute.org.