Today is my 1,800th post and I believe if you read all of it you will gain insight into how your brain works in my compilation of a talk by a neuroscientist.
I watch a lot of TED Talks on YouTube. Last night I saw one that really impressed me. The woman giving the talk was a neuroscience researcher. She studies brain scans for minute details to understand how our brains work and how they can deteriorate.
One morning she woke up and had a pain behind her left eye. It concerned her because she rarely ever had any pain. She got out of bed and headed for the bathroom to get ready for work. She made it to the bathroom and suddenly felt something was dreadfully wrong. She was lost in a different world. She had no physical coordination, she could not think of what she wanted to do. She could barely move at all and yet she felt great elation, happiness, joy. Everything was wonderful, beautiful, peaceful. After a time she was back thinking she was in big trouble, but could not ambulate without full concentration to move a single leg. Next she was back in La La land and it was the most fantastic time in her life. There was no fear, no pain, no worry, no negative thoughts, but rather she was in absolute bliss. Then the worry came back when she realized she could no longer move her right arm. She realized she was having a massive stroke. She panicked and drug herself to her home office to call work, but it took her nearly 45 minutes to remember how to make the call. When she got through, her coworker sounded like a big dog woofing into the phone. She tried to speak but her voice sounded the same, so he hung up the phone. The coworker knew something was wrong and called an ambulance for her.
There at the hospital, a scan showed that she had a blood vessel burst into the left hemisphere of her brain. Surgeons cut an enormous chunk of flesh on the left side of her skull and cut the skull open to operate inside the brain. It took the woman eight years to recover. Now she is fine, but those eight years are gone from her life. She had to have constant care for those years.
The woman’s TED talk was not yet over. She had an actual brain to show, which she did and she then began to explain how the brain works. The right hemisphere is separate from the left hemisphere and they have totally different functions. The right side is our conscious brain and it deals with the present time, all the things we see, what we are thinking at the moment and how we feel, happy, sad, whatever is going on at the present. The left hemisphere works in the past, holding all of our memories and catalogs them so we know not to do something that we did before and had a bad experience. The left hemisphere makes the decisions and tells the right side what it should do. (You know that little voice in your head that tells you that you shouldn’t do what you are planning to do. That voice is the left hemisphere.) The left side of your brain is where all the worry, fear, anger and unconscious ambulating control is located. That was the crux of her talk.
Yesterday’s post was about self help and my words about how meditation can improve one’s outlook and life. That talk last night cemented my belief about meditation. Meditation done properly shifts your mind toward the right hemisphere and away from the left hemisphere and as a result, you begin to live a happier, more productive life. Remove worry and fear and anger and what you have left is happiness.
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