My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
The astonishing New York Times bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist's own stroke led to enlightenment
On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover.
For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter." Reaching wide audiences through her talk at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference and her appearance on Oprah's online Soul Series, Taylor provides a valuable recovery guide for those touched by brain injury and an inspiring testimony that inner peace is accessible to anyone.
Reviews (185)
An Inspiring and Captivating Read
I heard of My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor after attending a stroke support group meeting as an assignment while I was a student in a Physical Therapist Assistant program. My father also had a stroke in 2008 so I was interested in reading about a medical professional’s account of what was happening to their body as they themselves were experiencing a stroke. This book was much more than I was expecting. As a medical professional myself now I wasn’t sure if Dr. Bolte Taylor would sound very clinical and dive into lecturing, but it was quite the opposite. Dr. Bolte Taylor did explain some neuro anatomy and structures affected during her stroke but she expressed her thoughts in such detail they were so powerful, human and gripping. As I read, I was so moved by her courage and determination to push through and focus on her recovery. I loved how she reflected on relearning everything and appreciated her right hemisphere where creativity lies waiting to be explored and how she embraced her artistic side after her stroke. This is a fantastic book I highly recommend for anyone even if you don’t have a relative who’s had a stroke or even if you don’t work in the medical field Dr. Bolte Taylor explains her story in a way that’s so moving any reader will walk away from it with compassion and so many lessons.
Do our Brains Possess the Power to Heal? You Bet they Do!
What do you get when you have a brain scientist, with a Ph. D., experience a stroke, survive, and then fully recover? You get a pretty amazing book detailing the experience and recounting a remarkable journey back to recovery. On December 10, 1996, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist, suffered a major brain hemorrhage of the left side of her brain. As a result of her training, she had the knowledge, insight, and wherewithal to understand what was taking place and remarkably was able to seek help while her brain and body were failing her. The book begins with a couple of chapters of her background prior to the stroke and then progresses to the day of the stroke. Her recounting of the day of the stroke is filled with incredible detail, especially considering the mental deterioration she was experiencing. We learn how she was able to survive and her incredible journey back where she needed to relearn everything, even the simplest of things like feeding herself, walking, reading, writing, and so many things we take for granted. Dr. Jill says it took her 8 years to fully recover from her stroke. She's put together an incredible book of her journey and she's been a guest on a number of different shows. She even has an 18-minute TedTalk on her idea worth spreading. 1,683 Amazon reviewers have given this an average of 4.6 stars. Goodreads shows a 3.86 rating after 18,345 ratings and 2,887 reviews. I absolutely love the study of our brain's neuroplasticity. This first half of this book was amazing but it slowed a little in the second half. I give it a 5-star for the first half and 3-star for the second for a total 4-star rating.
Truly Phenomenal Book, Highly Recommend for people with Depression
I bought this book after becoming certified as a brain health coach and after having seen the author's TEDTalk by the same name. This book goes WAY beyond the 18 minute TEDTalk in describing her first-hand experience of what it was like to have a stroke. It also goes in depth describing the painstaking 8-year rehabilitation she went through in order to fully recover her brain function. Such powerful story about more than just stroke, healing and recovery. She does a great job of describing the nature of and differences between how right brain & left brain function, and how their integration makes us who we are. I also recommend this book for anyone who's struggled with depression, even if they don't have any family history of stroke. Her story of selectively rehabilitating her left-brain so she'd be less captive to its former negativity is really inspiring, to remind folks who are prone to depression that we actually do have the power to redirect our thoughts and choose which brain pathways we allow to be dominant. I had many important epiphanies reading this book, and have been able to share the benefits of it by discussing key findings with some of my brain health coaching clients who suffer from depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. Can't speak highly enough about it; I think everyone with a brain needs to read this book!
Truly Insightful
I'd read this book a number of years ago and urged our library to purchase it. Living in an area where there are a lot of older people, I felt its wisdom and insight would be most helpful to any who have loved ones with a stroke. This August my own husband suffered a stroke, not nearly as severe as Jill Taylor's but his speech, reading and writing were affected. I just purchased our own copy. I wanted to review the processes of Jill's mother, the caregiver. It was also the first book my husband was able to read. It helped him to understand what was happening. Love and hard work, inspired by Jill and her mother, will get us through.
MOVING AND CRITICALLY IMPORTANT
MY STROKE OF INSIGHT REVIEW We are fortunate that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, author of “My Stroke of Insight,” is a brain scientist with enough fortitude to survive a stroke, intellect to examine the experience, patience to overlook medical ignorance, and a willingness to share her adversity. It is also a delight to have a communicator with writing skills and the ability to dumb down her discussion to my level, a step above a cement mixer. One passage in her book asks the us, the readers, to imagine having our natural facilities, speech, vision, hearing, movement, memory, sensation, suddenly stripped away from our consciousness, leaving us with a peaceful heart and afloat in a sea of euphoria. You simply blend into a world of glorious emptiness until blessed sleep quiets the world around you. You awake to the same euphoria until you sleep again. Sounds peaceful if you reject life. One amazing aspect I saw here was Dr. Taylor’s ability to fight through her loss of mental capacity and realize that she would have to keep struggling if she was going make any sense of what was happening. As a clinician, she was determined to keep a mental awareness of the debilitation that was overtaking her. To have retained the impressions and impulses of an empty mind seems to be a remarkable achievement; her dedication seems relentless. I was moved by her exasperation with the medical community and its inability to evolve into a more caring and understanding world than they normally inhabit. The ability to communicate with a person in Dr. Taylor‘s condition seemed alien to their way of providing care. This is a phenomenon that has frustrated many patients, although most are not as badly injured as Dr. Taylor. I suspect that her criticism may have positive effects. The author starts her book with a simple exploration of the brain and its functions. We relive the morning she had her stroke, a relentless narrative of her injury. I actually tried to shy away from her descriptions of senses leaving the body and mind. I was anxious trying to figure out how she was going to get help. Then we arrive at the hospital and a world where help is expected, but seemed a great agitation to Dr. Taylor because of the hustle and bustle that aggravated her injury because of the noise. Eventually Dr. Taylor leaves the hospital in the company of her mother, a remarkable woman with the same fortitude and determination, who, sadly, passed away in December 2015. We agonize through Dr. Taylor’s slow return to partial functionality with Mom as a patient caretaker, experience a complex surgical procedure to her brain, and eventually work our way back to a nearly normal life. It’s a fantastic journey that will have you clenching your fingers and curling your toes as you physically experience the dismaying world of confusion and hopelessness. Learn from it and don’t miss it. Schuyler T Wallace Author of TIN LIZARD TALES
This explains everything...
What this book explained to me is not at all what is written. She explained what each hemisphere of our brain controls. Through everything she explained and how her left hemisphere was affected versus how my injury is on my right hemisphere, revealed so much about how our brains only control physical things, but our connection/acknowledgment of Spirit will determine the knowledge we posess. What we know is not in our head. What we're able to do is what is in our head. What we know is determined by Spirit. I had to experience loosing my connection to physical to realize this. "Natural man" needs to be used by us, but only for physical things, not thinking. When we use our brains it becomes negative, judgemental, and not substantial. We are here to discover exactly how to use/be Spirit. To be Spirit with bodies...
A valuable medical memoir
This book covers three basic topics from the perspective of a stroke survivor whose career is teaching and studying the anatomy of the brain. It's not a textbook, so don't expect deep details of neuroanatomy. 1. What it felt like during her stroke and immediately after. The stroke occurred on the left side (logical, linear, detail-oriented) of her brain, so the dominant feelings she experienced were from the right side of her brain. As she explains, our right brain is emotional, joyous, peaceful and may be the connection to our feelings of spirituality. 2. What kinds of activities were necessary, helpful, and not helpful during her recovery process. If you know someone who has experienced a stroke, you'll want to review Appendix B. It covers 40 things the author needed the most during her recovery. 3. The author also attempts to connect her experience to advice for the reader to enhance their life. For me, this had a few gems and a lot of "woo woo" ideas. She obviously has found great value and enjoyment in her right-brain self. That might not suit all of us that didn't have the incredibly right-brained stroke experience. All in all, a valuable medical memoir.
About how a stroke damage the brain and with the resulting problems depending of in which side of the brain.
Immediately after discovering the existence of this book I ordered a copy, as the problem with harming part of the left side of the brain also once has happen to me, and I since then have been interesting in hearing, or reading, other person stories about how it for them went on. For me it actually was not a stroke, blood getting out in the brain, but from outside by braking the skull after my helmet fall of at a motorcycle accident 41 years ago. Then during the following 12 days, I in the hospital daily was talking fine with persons, I later have been told. But actual I recall it as I must have lived in a parallel world, because first when I woke the morning on the 13th day, I then was “back” in the real world, and again storing memories, and realized that I was lying in a hospital which I recognized. And I then only remembered the names of 5 persons, 1 country, 1 city, 1 street, and had nearly no languages to use. And since then I have only managed getting back 2 of the 4 previous known languages, and found it impossible the relearn, or learn, other languages, and being extremely bad in remembering names/technical word. But anyway 5 years after the accident I managed in starting and getting through high educations. Personally I owe many big drawing and pictures of brains, but I think that to many persons the book will be helpful with the many small drawings showing the positions in the brain from where the explained activations are made and then send, as for example talking, mathematic, seeing, moving parts of the body and so on. That is how and where the brain is making logical conclusion concerning what shall be done, and then turn it on by sending the messages. In Jill’s description about how her brain was functioning, in the morning just from when the stroke started, I clearly recall how my brain was sensing, feeling, reacting, before an “epileptic” attack which happened to me 1 year after the accident. Then among other “seeing” a strange action in the TV, and wondering why my friends, also looking on the TV, didn’t react on this; and then I blacked out, and was waked up by ambulance persons. And where it now can happen as the result of stress, but only like an extremely mild epileptic attach, by only during few minutes, being without possibility by talking explaining anything. Before I read the book I did not know that some strokes actually are caused by that some persons in the brain are having a failure in the blood vessels as the result of an arteria being directly connected to a vein, instead of as always being connected through extremely thin tubes, from which the energy is delivered to the muscles and so on. But it showed up that some unhealthy persons, like Jill, then suddenly are hit by a stroke as the vein brake as it not is made to the same pressure as the arteries, and it then brake in the age 35 – 45, and were Jill then was 37. It’s especially interesting to read about Jill’s life from the moment when the stroke started and until when she woke up after the surgery, and then again could begin in again also using her left brain half normally. And thereby managing talking, and the other works made in the brains left half, which now was started on the rebuilding, getting back to work, helped by training. And I clearly understand how she was feeling, and first denied, when she was told that a doctor would have to cut in here scalp for making a surgery. Because 15 years after the accident I then by a doctor, just after my brain was scanned, was proposed in having removed the small destroyed part in the brain, for thereby not having a block that sometimes disturbing the wire connection, but the thinking of being cut in the head was awful, so I denied. But it’s also interesting to learn about how she after the accident, actually started thinking and understanding the brain, now by looking on it from another side, and thereby more directly, learning to know the brain, than during the education and the following practice. And thereby learning to understanding, use, and taking care of the brain more directly. All put together it’s an excellent book to read by both the persons being hit by a stroke and by relatives and doctors.
Unpacking the Human Brain
Stroke is a scary topic to learn and come across. It baffles me whenever I learn of someone who is perfectly able on one day and then succumbs to a loss of memory or immobility the next. Although this book does not delve into mental disorders/illnesses such as stroke, encephalitis, schizophrenia or bipolar, it does help me understand how a person can lose his/her normal abilities overnight. The author, Jill Bolte Taylor, may be one of the most qualified people to explain the topic because not only did she study the human brain her entire life, she suffered a stroke which gave her a first person view of what she'd studied. Although this book is not distinctly divided into parts, this book is structured in four parts. The first part is where we learned about Jill's life as a neuroanatomist. This is my favorite part because she provided an introductory course on brain anatomy, limbic system and stroke. From the simple figures she included, readers can identify the approximate locations within our brain that are responsible for our vision, hearing, speech, and more. The second part is where we learned about her stroke at the age of 37. Jill suffered a severe hemorrhagic stroke in her left hemisphere of the brain due to an arteriovenous malfunction (AVM). Jill documented her incident including how she was able to find help. It is important to note that finding help is not as easy as dialing 911 when you suffer a stroke because numbers do not appear as numbers in front of you. Ironically, instead of feeling or registering fear, Jill felt ethereal during her incident. Jill also described her experience as nirvana which I found hard to grasp as a reader. The third part is where Jill shared her journey of recovery. This part is helpful for people who suffered stroke and/or recovering from stroke. For example, Jill explained the efficacy of sleeping and how multiple choice questions enabled her to retrieve the "filing cabinets" within her brain. The last part is the crux of this book where "stroke of insight" was shared. Of note, this part explained the plasticity of our brain and its ability to recover. This is an interesting part because Jill explained the differences between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere through her recovery process. It was fascinating to learn that our left hemisphere thrives on details and it is responsible for judgement, analysis, comparison, creating/understanding speech and more. Our mind also speaks to us via the left hemisphere in a phenomenon Jill referred to as "brain chatter". Meanwhile, the right hemisphere is responsible for the sensation of the present moment and assessing the emotional content of speech. After reading, it does make me wonder how the left and right hemisphere compliments each other during my daily activities/routines - e.g., microwaving food, tying a shoelace, buying groceries. Overall, I enjoy reading this book and I wish I read this book earlier because it provided great insights of the human brain. It is humbling to learn how powerful and intricate the human brain is. Another memoir I recommend reading related to mental disorders/illnesses is Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan but I recommend reading Stroke of Insight prior so that you have a better understanding of the human brain and the repercussions of brain damages.
My mom isn't dumb. She comprehends everything you are saying
At the title suggests, the book provides first-hand insight into strokes and recovery. The one part that struck me was when she spoke about her experiences in the hospital. While I am grateful for the care my mom received, it was frustrating at the same time. My mom isn't dumb. She comprehends everything you are saying. However, it does take her more time to process as her brain is recovering. You would think people who study the brain would get it. This book should be a required read for those in medicine and caregivers...and stroke survivors.
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