Whole Brain Living - by Jill Bolte Taylor (Paperback)

About the Book

"At age 37, Harvard neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive left-hemisphere stroke that took away her ability to speak, walk, read, write, or remember any of her life--and gave her an unprecedented, profound experience of dwelling in the right hemisphere and the sense of oneness and peace to be found there. Her recovery led to her writing the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight, being named one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People in the world, and delivering one of the top talks of all time at the world renowned TED conference. Dr. Jill closed her famous TED talk by stating that we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Since she uttered those words in 2008, she has received hundreds of thousands of emails from people all around the world asking for a specific set of directions on how they too can choose a peaceful mind-set in a world where politics, relationships, and life in general spiral into an uncomfortable state of chaos"--

Book Synopsis

The New York Times best-selling author of My Stroke of Insight blends neuroanatomy with psychology to show how we can short-circuit emotional reactivity and find our way to peace.

For half a century we have been trained to believe that our right brain hemisphere is our emotional brain, while our left brain houses our rational thinking. Now neuroscience shows that it's not that simple: in fact, our emotional limbic tissue is evenly divided between our two hemispheres. Consequently, each hemisphere has both an emotional brain and a thinking brain. In this groundbreaking new book, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor--author of the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight--presents these four distinct modules of cells as four characters that make up who we are: Character 1, Left Thinking; Character 2, Left Emotion; Character 3, Right Emotion; and Character 4, Right Thinking.

Everything we think, feel, or do is dependent upon brain cells to perform that function. Since each of the Four Characters stems from specific groups of cells that feel unique inside of our body, they each display particular skills, feel specific emotions, or think distinctive thoughts. In Whole Brain Living, available in paperback for the first time, Dr. Taylor blends neuroanatomy with psychology to help us:

Get acquainted with our own Four Characters, observe how they show up in our daily life, and learn to identify and relate to them in others as well

Apply the wisdom of the Four Characters to every area of life--from work to relationships to health

Use a powerful practice called the Brain Huddle--a tool for bringing our Four Characters into conversation with one another--to short-circuit emotional reactivity, tap our characters' respective strengths, and choose which one to embody in any situation

The more we become familiar with each of the characters in ourselves and others, the more power we gain over our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, and our lives. Indeed, we discover that we have the power to choose who and how we want to be in every moment. And when our Four Characters work together and balance one another as a whole brain, we gain a radical new road map to deep inner peace.

About the Author

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard trained and published neuroanatomist. In 1996 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. Her memoir, My Stroke of Insight, documenting her experience with stroke and eight-year recovery, spent 63 weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and is still routinely the #1 book about stroke on Amazon.

Dr. Taylor is a dynamic teacher and public speaker who loves educating all age groups, academic levels, as well as corporations about the beauty of our human brain and its ability to recover from trauma. In 2008 she gave the first TED talk that ever went viral on the Internet, which now has well over 26 million views. Also in 2008, Dr. Taylor was chosen as one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" and was the premiere guest on Oprah Winfrey's "Soul Series" web-cast.