Tending the garden of our minds

I often write here about brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight. The reason I like it so much is  because of what she says about the need to balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain. She lost the functioning of her left hemisphere, after a stroke. The right hemisphere was all she had, until after eight years she fully regained the functioning of her left hemisphere. However, during that eight year struggle, she came to appreciate the right hemisphere, and she became determined to have a balance between the two hemisphere as she recovered.

Taylor recommends that we learn to tend carefully the garden of our minds. By that she means we need to "carefully manage what goes on inside our brains." In fact she consciously chose not to recover certain functions that had previously been performed by her left brain. "The portion of my left mind that I chose not to recover was the part of my left hemisphere character that had the potential to be mean, worry incessantly, or be verbally abusive to either myself or others."

More from Dr. Taylor: "My right hemisphere is all about right here, right now. It bounces around with unbridled enthusiasm and does not have a care in the world. It smiles a lot and is extremely friendly. In contrast, my left hemisphere is preoccupied with details and runs my life on a tight schedule. It is my more serious side. It clenches my jaw and makes decisions based upon what it learned in the past. It defines boundaries and defines everything as right/wrong or good/bad. My right mind is all about the richness of the present moment. It is filled with gratitude for my life, and everyone and everything in it. It is content, compassionate, nurturing, and eternally optimistic. Many of us make judgments with our left hemisphere, and then are not willing to step to the right (that is, into the consciousness of our right hemisphere) for a file update. My right mind is open to new possibilities and thinks out of the box. It is not limited by the rules and regulations of the left mind that created that box."

But, she goes on to say, "as much as I obviously adore the attitude, openness, and enthusiasm with which my right brain embraces life, my left mind is equally amazing." She then gives a detailed account of the many remarkable functions provided by the left brain.