I recently discovered a remarkable interview of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained brain scientist and author of a fascinating book My Stroke of Insight.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor was featured as Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2008. When she was a young girl, she became fascinated with the functions of the human brain, because her brother has schizophrenia. His brain disorder led Jill to dedicate her career to studying severe mental illnesses as a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist.

On December 10, 1996, at age 37, Jill awoke with intense pain behind her left eye — a blood vessel had exploded in the left hemisphere of her brain, and within hours, Jill could no longer walk, talk, read or write. She was suffering from an arteriovenous malformation— a rare type of stroke. While Jill struggled to phone for help, she was aware that the left hemisphere of her brain was shutting down, taking with it her language, organizing and other analytical skills. As her speech and motor functions failed her, she melted into what she called a euphoric stupor and lost all sense of where "Dr. Jill" ended and the rest of the universe began. In her speech on Ted.com, she said that she could "no longer define the boundary of my body because the atoms and molecules of my body blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall, and I could detect was this energy". Without the dominant left side of her brain controlling her thoughts, Jill says her mind chatter went silent, leaving only the right side of the brain functioning. Through the right side of her brain, Jill says her consciousness shifted away from reality and into a place of inner peace and Nirvana. She felt this enormous, expansive energy, and she felt "as one" with the Universe.

In her own words, Jill says, "When the cells in my left brain became nonfunctional because they were swimming in a pool of blood, they lost their ability to inhibit the cells in my right hemisphere. In my right brain, I shifted into the consciousness of the present moment. I was in the right here, right now awareness, with no memories of my past and no perception of the future. The beauty of La-la land (my right hemisphere experience of the present moment) was that everything was an explosion of magnificent stimulation and I dwelled in a space of euphoria."

This is what I've been teaching my coaching clients and workshop attendees: Most people either live in the past (with regrets and/or resentment) or in the future (with fears and/or worries). To have inner peace and balance, you need to make a conscious choice to live in the present moment. When you are completely "in the moment", there is no stress.

It took Jill major brain surgery and years of recovery after her stroke. The experience was life-changing. The remarkable thing is, through this ordeal, she discovered a better quality of life through increased use of the right hemisphere of her brain. She sees her stroke as a gift of unparalleled awareness: the shattering of the self-created box we live in that we call "life." She's now an artist as well as a scientist, creating anatomically correct stained-glass replicas of brains that are sold as fine art. She's also published My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. The book explains in scientific detail exactly what happened during Jill's stroke and how she recovered. It also takes a closer look at how the right hemisphere of the brain works and how Jill says people with normal brains can access it to find their own inner peace and improve their quality of life and the lives of others.

Oprah recently interviewed Jill on her Soul Series webcast on Oprah.com. You can watch & download this amazing 4 episodes of webcast here.

You can read Jill's interview on Amazon.com here. There is also a video of her speech on the same page.

Labels: awareness, being mindful, conscious choice, healing, health, inner peace, inspiration, perspective, present moment, Resources, spirituality, stress management, transformation