My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (24 page)

Lots of people use movement and exercise to shift their minds. Yoga, Feldenkrais, and Tai Chi are awesome tools for personal development, relaxation, and growth. Noncompetitive sports are also a great way to get you back into your body and out of your left brain. Walking in nature, singing, creating, and playing music, or getting lost in the arts can easily shift your perspective back to the present moment.

Another avenue for shifting one's focus away from the churning loops of our left cognitive mind is through purposely using our voice to interrupt those looping patterns of thought that we find distressful or distracting. I find that using repetitious sound patterns such as mantra (which literally means "place to rest the mind") is very helpful. By breathing deeply and repeating the phrase
In this moment I reclaim my JOY
or
In this moment I am perfect, whole and beautiful,
or
I am an innocent and peaceful child of the universe,
I shift back into the consciousness of my right mind.

Listening to a verbal meditation that guides me into a thought pattern with emotion and physiology is another great way to shift my mind away from unwanted loops. Prayer, whereby we use our mind to intentionally replace unwanted thought patterns with a chosen set of thought patterns, is another way to consciously guide one's mind away from the incessant squirrel cage of verbal repetition into a more peaceful place.

I absolutely love vocal tuning with sounding bowls. These are large bowls made of exquisite quartz crystal. When stroked, the bowls resonate so powerfully that I can feel the vibration right down to my bones. My worries don't stand a chance at hanging on to my mind when the sounding bowls are in play.

I also draw Angel Cards
¹
several times a day to help me stay focused on what I believe is important in life. The original Angel Cards come in sets of assorted sizes with each card having a single word written on them. Every morning when I first get up, I ritualistically invite an angel into my life and draw a card. I then focus my attention on that particular angel throughout my day. If I am feeling stressed or have an important phone call to make, I will often draw another angel to help me shift my mind. I am always in quest of being open to what the universe will bring me. I use the Angel Cards to shift me back into a state of being generous of spirit, as I really like what I attract when I am open. Some of the angels include: enthusiasm, abundance, education, clarity, integrity, play, freedom, responsibility, harmony, grace, and birth. Drawing angels is one of the simplest and most effective tools I have found to help me shift my mind out of my left hemisphere's judgment.

If I had to pick one output (action) word for my right mind, I would have to choose
compassion
. I encourage you to ask yourself, what does it mean to you to be compassionate? Under what circumstances are you inclined to be compassionate and what does compassion feel like inside your body?

Generally, most of us are compassionate with those we see as our equals. The less attached we are to our ego's inclination for superiority, the more generous of spirit we can be with others. When we are being compassionate, we consider another's circumstance with love rather than judgment. We see a homeless person or a psychotic person and approach them with an open heart, rather than fear, disgust, or aggression. Think about the last time you reached out to someone or something with genuine compassion. How did it feel inside your body? To be compassionate is to move into the right here, right now with an open heart consciousness and a willingness to be supportive.

If I had to choose one word to describe the feeling I feel at the core of my right mind, I would have to say
joy.
My right mind is thrilled to be alive! I experience a feeling of awe when I consider that I am simultaneously capable of being at
one
with the universe, while having an individual identity whereby I move into the world and manifest positive change.

If you have lost your ability to experience joy, rest assured the circuitry is still there. It is simply being inhibited by more anxious and/or fearful circuitry. How I wish you could lose your emotional baggage, just like I did, and shift back into your natural state of joy! The secret to hooking into any of these peaceful states is the willingness to stop the cognitive loops of thought, worry, and any ideas that distract us from the kinesthetic and sensory experience of being in the here and now. Most important, however, our desire for peace must be stronger than our attachment to our misery, our ego, or our need to be right. I love that old saying, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?"

Personally, I really like the way happy feels inside my body and therefore choose to hook into that circuitry on a regular basis. I've often wondered,
If it's a choice, then why would anyone choose anything other than happiness?
I can only speculate, but my guess is that many of us simply do not realize that we have a choice and therefore don't exercise our ability to choose. Before my stroke, I thought I was a product of my brain and had no idea that I had some say about how I responded to the emotions surging through me. On an intellectual level, I realized that I could monitor and shift my cognitive thoughts, but it never dawned on me that I had some say in how I perceived my emotions. No one told me that it only took 90 seconds for my biochemistry to capture, and then release me. What an enormous difference this awareness has made in how I live my life.

Another reason many of us may not choose happiness is because when we feel intense negative emotions like anger, jealousy, or frustration, we are actively running complex circuitry in our brain that feels so familiar that we feel strong and powerful. I have known people who consciously choose to exercise their anger circuitry on a regular basis simply because it helps them remember what it feels like to be themselves.

It is just as easy for me to habitually run the happiness circuit as it is for me to run the anger circuit. In fact, from a biological perspective, happiness is the natural state of being for my right mind. As such, this circuitry is constantly running and is always available for me to tap into. My anger circuit, on the other hand, does not always run, but can be triggered when I experience some sort of threat. As soon as the physiological response has passed out of my blood stream, I can resume my joy.

Ultimately, everything we experience is a product of our cells and their circuitry. Once you have tuned in to how different circuits feel inside your body, then you can pick and choose how you want to be in the world. I, personally, feel allergic to how fear and/or anxiety feel in my body. When these emotions surge through me, I feel so uncomfortable that I want to crawl out of my skin. Because I don't like the way these emotions feel physiologically, I'm not inclined to hook into that circuitry on a regular basis.

My favorite definition of fear is "False Expectations Appearing Real," and when I allow myself to remember that all of my thoughts are merely fleeting physiology, I feel less moved when my story-teller goes haywire and my circuitry is triggered. At the same time, when I remember that I am at
one
with the universe, then the concept of fear loses its power. To help protect myself from having a trigger-happy anger or fear response, I take responsibility for what circuitry I purposely exercise and stimulate. In an attempt to diminish the power of my fear/anger response, I intentionally choose not to watch scary movies or hang out with people whose anger circuitry is easily set off. I consciously make choices that directly impact my circuitry. Since I like being joyful, I hang out with people who value my joy.

As I mentioned earlier, physical pain is a physiological phenomenon that is specifically designed to alert our brain that tissue damage has occurred somewhere in our body. It's important we realize that we are capable of feeling physical pain without hooking into the emotional loop of suffering. I am reminded of how courageous little children can be when they become extremely ill. Their parents may hook into the emotional circuitry of suffering and fear, while the child seems to be adapting to his illness without the same negative emotional drama. To experience pain may not be a choice, but to suffer is a cognitive decision. When children are ill, it is often more difficult for the child to handle parental grief than it is for the child to endure the illness.

The same can be true for anyone who is ill. Please be very careful what circuits you stimulate when you visit someone who is not well. Death is a natural process we all must experience. Just realize that deep inside your right mind (deep within your heart's consciousness) rests eternal peace. The easiest way I have found to humble myself back into a state of peaceful grace is through the act of gratitude. When I am simply grateful, life is simply great!

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I have learned so much from this experience with stroke, that I actually feel fortunate to have taken this journey. Thanks to this trauma, I have had the chance to witness firsthand a few things about my brain that otherwise I would never have imagined to be true. For these simple insights, I will always be grateful - not just for myself but for the hope these possibilities may bring to how we, as a people, choose to view and nurture our brains and consequently behave on this planet.

I am grateful for your willingness to join me on this intense journey. I sincerely hope that whatever circumstances brought you to this book, you move forward having gleaned some insight into your brain or the brain of another. I trust with my right hemisphere's heart consciousness that this book will now flow from your hands into the hands of someone who may benefit from it.

I always end my e-mails with a tag-line quote from Einstein. I believe he got it right when he said, "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be." I learned the hard way that my ability to be in the world is completely dependent on the integrity of my neurocircuitry. Cell by beautiful cell, circuit by neurocircuit, the consciousness I experience within my brain is the

collective awareness established by those marvelous little entities as they weave together the web I call my mind. Thanks to their neural plasticity, their ability to shift and change their connections with other cells, you and I walk the earth with the ability to be flexible in our thinking, adaptable to our environment, and capable of choosing who and how we want to be in the world. Fortunately, how we choose to be today is not predetermined by how we were yesterday.

I view the garden in my mind as a sacred patch of cosmic real estate that the universe has entrusted me to tend over the years of my lifetime. As an independent agent, I and I alone, in conjunction with the molecular genius of my DNA and the environmental factors I am exposed to, will decorate this space within my cranium. In the early years, I may have minimal input into what circuits grow inside my brain because I am the product of the dirt and seeds I have inherited. But to our good fortune, the genius of our DNA is not a dictator, and thanks to our neurons' plasticity, the power of thought, and the wonders of modern medicine, very few outcomes are absolute.

Regardless of the garden I have inherited, once I consciously take over the responsibility of tending my mind, I choose to nurture those circuits that I want to grow, and consciously prune back those circuits I prefer to live without. Although it is easier for me to nip a weed when it is just a sprouting bud, with determination and perseverance, even the gnarliest of vines, when deprived of fuel, will eventually lose its strength and fall to the side.

The mental health of our society is established by the mental health of the brains making up our society, and I must admit that western civilization is a pretty challenging environment for my loving and peaceful right hemisphere character to live in. Obviously, I'm not alone in feeling this way, as I look at the millions of beautiful people in our society who have chosen to escape our common reality by self-medicating themselves with illicit drugs and alcohol.

I think Ghandi was right when he said, "We must be the change we want to see in the world." I find that my right hemisphere consciousness is eager for us to take that next giant leap for mankind and
step to the right
so we can evolve this planet into the peaceful and loving place we yearn for it to be.

Your body is the life force power of some fifty trillion molecular geniuses. You and you alone choose moment by moment who and how you want to be in the world. I encourage you to pay attention to what is going on in your brain. Own your power and show up for your life. Beam bright!

And when your life force wanes, I hope you will give the gift of hope and donate your beautiful brain to Harvard.