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back away from them, tone them down inside my body. I had no idea I had any ability to do that before. Before, I would have thought, I’m triggered, I’m gone.
SOM: This process you just described, is that what you call in your book “step to the right,” or consciously acting from the right brain?
JBT: It’s a little bit different. When I “step to the right,” mostly in my own mind, something has happened in the environment. Let’s say someone comes into the room who’s very upset about something. It is natural for us to hook into the emotion of that person and to mirror that. We are actually biologically designed to do that. It’s great as long as you want to promote whatever is going on. But if somebody comes in with anger or they’re perturbed or very negative, that’s when I consciously step to the right. I step to the right into my own compassion. It’s like visualizing a big protective field going up around me so that I don’t absorb your stuff. At the same time, I just stay present and validate you as a human being so that you can let your own stuff dissipate. I’m going to be compassionate with you, and realize that your stuff is your stuff and my stuff’s my stuff. You have every right to your stuff, but I don’t have to absorb it.
SOM: You also believe that the first step to finding inner peace is “making that internal decision that internal verbal abuse is not acceptable behavior.” That sounds like an excellent idea.
JBT: We’ve got this incessant brain chatter, and very few of us actually pay attention to what it is saying. We let these little personalities inside our brain say whatever they want. For me, it’s that little voice critical of myself or of others. That little, mean person in there—I don’t see any healthy, worthwhile, productive role for her to play in my life as a healthy adult. I have silenced that little voice inside of me, and I believe we all should. We’re just not trained as a society that we have the right or the ability to censor our own brain and to take some responsibility for our thoughts and what thoughts grow and what thoughts don’t. I’m very excited we’re at a time when people are actually willing to talk about thinking about their own thoughts and realize that their thoughts are these tiny groups of cells, which are the products of neurons, and that we have some say in which circuits run and which ones don’t.
SOM: This process you just described, is that what you call in your book “step to the right,” or consciously acting from the right brain?
JBT: It’s a little bit different. When I “step to the right,” mostly in my own mind, something has happened in the environment. Let’s say someone comes into the room who’s very upset about something. It is natural for us to hook into the emotion of that person and to mirror that. We are actually biologically designed to do that. It’s great as long as you want to promote whatever is going on. But if somebody comes in with anger or they’re perturbed or very negative, that’s when I consciously step to the right. I step to the right into my own compassion. It’s like visualizing a big protective field going up around me so that I don’t absorb your stuff. At the same time, I just stay present and validate you as a human being so that you can let your own stuff dissipate. I’m going to be compassionate with you, and realize that your stuff is your stuff and my stuff’s my stuff. You have every right to your stuff, but I don’t have to absorb it.
SOM: You also believe that the first step to finding inner peace is “making that internal decision that internal verbal abuse is not acceptable behavior.” That sounds like an excellent idea.
JBT: We’ve got this incessant brain chatter, and very few of us actually pay attention to what it is saying. We let these little personalities inside our brain say whatever they want. For me, it’s that little voice critical of myself or of others. That little, mean person in there—I don’t see any healthy, worthwhile, productive role for her to play in my life as a healthy adult. I have silenced that little voice inside of me, and I believe we all should. We’re just not trained as a society that we have the right or the ability to censor our own brain and to take some responsibility for our thoughts and what thoughts grow and what thoughts don’t. I’m very excited we’re at a time when people are actually willing to talk about thinking about their own thoughts and realize that their thoughts are these tiny groups of cells, which are the products of neurons, and that we have some say in which circuits run and which ones don’t.
For me, the stroke silenced the chatter. When the blood clot happened, it flooded out that part of my brain, and so they went quiet involuntarily.
SOM: When you recovered, did you have to work on silencing those thoughts consciously?
JBT: I did. When that specific circuitry became healed and calm enough, and the blood was cleared away so that those cells could function again, then they were naïve because I had lost all memory of my life. I was an infant, and my language center couldn’t really talk a lot to me because I didn’t have any language. But that little attitude came back online, and I didn’t like the way it felt. So it was not an option for where I was going to put my energy. But I really had to do a lot of personal work with that circuitry. I had to be persistent. It was like a little child, nyah, nyah, nyah, and if I was not a good disciplinarian, it was going to win. So I had to re-parent my brain and my circuitry. But I took responsibility for it this time. I just didn’t let the children run rampant.
SOM: You’re a neuroanatomist, so you know a lot about the brain and the science of the brain. Since your stroke, has your idea of the brain’s true purpose changed?
JBT: I think science has done a great job of looking at who we are as a left-hemisphered entity. But to study the brain, we use the filter of our left hemispheres, which are capable of all these wonderful skills of detail and organization. With science, you have to be able to repeat it, measure it—it’s just a very left-hemisphered experience. You have your methods, everything that works linearly the way the left hemisphere does. At the same time, there’s an enormous volume of human behavior we do not understand, and science has not yet figured out how to measure or view it. So we look at it as soft science or pseudo-science. For example, channeling. How many people on this planet profess that they channel voices? Instead of just looking at channelers and saying, “You people are on another planet, you’re mentally ill,” wouldn’t it be nice if our scientists looked at these individuals and said, “What is going on inside of your brain, and is there any way for us to understand what circuitry is involved in order for you to have this ability?” I think we’re moving into a time when scientists are going to have to be more open-minded to these other behaviors that are a product of the brain. That excites me a lot. Then, we will really progress in our understanding of what is going on in the right hemisphere and how can we equally capitalize on its gifts, so that it can balance what’s going on in the left hemisphere. Then we can have the choice of being a more peaceful people on the planet.
SOM: In one of your presentations (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229) and also in your book, you said that when the stroke was happening and after, you felt you were in Nirvana because your left brain had shut down. You felt much more a part of the universe instead of a separate entity. How have other neuroscientists reacted to your message?
SOM: When you recovered, did you have to work on silencing those thoughts consciously?
JBT: I did. When that specific circuitry became healed and calm enough, and the blood was cleared away so that those cells could function again, then they were naïve because I had lost all memory of my life. I was an infant, and my language center couldn’t really talk a lot to me because I didn’t have any language. But that little attitude came back online, and I didn’t like the way it felt. So it was not an option for where I was going to put my energy. But I really had to do a lot of personal work with that circuitry. I had to be persistent. It was like a little child, nyah, nyah, nyah, and if I was not a good disciplinarian, it was going to win. So I had to re-parent my brain and my circuitry. But I took responsibility for it this time. I just didn’t let the children run rampant.
SOM: You’re a neuroanatomist, so you know a lot about the brain and the science of the brain. Since your stroke, has your idea of the brain’s true purpose changed?
JBT: I think science has done a great job of looking at who we are as a left-hemisphered entity. But to study the brain, we use the filter of our left hemispheres, which are capable of all these wonderful skills of detail and organization. With science, you have to be able to repeat it, measure it—it’s just a very left-hemisphered experience. You have your methods, everything that works linearly the way the left hemisphere does. At the same time, there’s an enormous volume of human behavior we do not understand, and science has not yet figured out how to measure or view it. So we look at it as soft science or pseudo-science. For example, channeling. How many people on this planet profess that they channel voices? Instead of just looking at channelers and saying, “You people are on another planet, you’re mentally ill,” wouldn’t it be nice if our scientists looked at these individuals and said, “What is going on inside of your brain, and is there any way for us to understand what circuitry is involved in order for you to have this ability?” I think we’re moving into a time when scientists are going to have to be more open-minded to these other behaviors that are a product of the brain. That excites me a lot. Then, we will really progress in our understanding of what is going on in the right hemisphere and how can we equally capitalize on its gifts, so that it can balance what’s going on in the left hemisphere. Then we can have the choice of being a more peaceful people on the planet.
SOM: In one of your presentations (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229) and also in your book, you said that when the stroke was happening and after, you felt you were in Nirvana because your left brain had shut down. You felt much more a part of the universe instead of a separate entity. How have other neuroscientists reacted to your message?
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