- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks.
- I'm honored to serve as your president this year. Please silence your electronic devices. On this day
- in history, April 21st, 1865, President Lincoln's funeral train left Washington, D.C. We didn't have
- anyone sign up to deliver reflection. There are other open dates this quarter.
- Please sign up if you think you have something interesting that other members would like to hear. And
- if you can deliver a three-minute talk that doesn't cross political or religious lines. Katie Cerniak
- will introduce our guests today. And we have a lot of guests. This is wonderful. I really enjoy the
- energy in the room today.
- All right. Hello, everyone. We have, as Steve mentioned, we have a lot of guests today. So first we
- have Joy. Oh, sorry. After I say your name, if you can please stand so that we can welcome you and recognize
- you. So guests of Jim Bright, we have Joy Dixon. We also have Susan Rinne, guest of Steve Engel.
- And Jesse Urie, also a guest of Jim Bright. We have Bev Baker, guest of Mike Baker. As well as Bill
- Oliver, guest of Mike Baker. Next we have Mayor Kerry Thompson, guest of Michael Shermas.
- And Jennifer Myers, also guest of Michael Shermas. And Leon Gordon, guest of Jim Bright. That's it for
- our in-person guest. Joy, do we have any guests on Zoom today? We do not have any guests on Zoom today.
- All right. Well, thanks, everyone.
- Thank you all. Certainly, if you have any questions about Rotary, don't hesitate to ask someone at your
- table. I do want to note that Joy Harder is our Zoom host today. She's been sick for about two months.
- We've really scrambled without her. So I'm really happy that she's back for personal reasons and for
- Rotary reasons. Rotary birthdays. Three birthdays to observe today. It's Peggy Frisbee's birthday.
- And then on the 23rd, Connie Chakalas, and then our past president, Mike Baker, birthdays on the 23rd.
- And one rotary anniversary, Claire Kest on the 26th, four years with the club. Announcements, not too
- late to register for the district conference, May 8th and 9th at the Galt House in Louisville. Lots
- of fun sessions Friday evening, lots of educational sessions and good networking opportunities on Saturday.
- We need a volunteer to coordinate a gift basket for the district conference. I had a person in mind
- to handle the role. That individual is not able to do it for good reasons. Something we do every year,
- I'd hate to see the streak broken this year, so please see me if you can help. I am not the person you
- want coordinating a gift basket. Also, district conference, and this is something new.
- Contest to see which club can donate the most new or gently used shoes. If someone is interested in
- stepping up to do this, I can get the shoes to Louisville. So if you have a closet full of shoes and
- you're looking for a good home, this might be your opportunity. Plenty of volunteer meeting rolls that
- need to be filled for this quarter. I already mentioned the reflection.
- I think I hear Steve saying he has extra shoes. You should have received an email from Mandy with the
- sign up link. You can also find the link to sign up for different roles in Roundabout. Today is Ivy
- Tech Day across the state of Indiana. Ivy Tech Day is a 24 hour giving event dedicated to advancing
- student success, scholarships in our communities. 11,000 students attend Ivy Tech in Bloomington.
- Ivy Tech is an active organizational member of our club. Have a few save the dates. Save the date, Wonder
- Lab Summer Blast Off on May 21st, which our club is sponsoring. Save the date for the fifth annual Refugees
- Summer Pitch In on May 24th. Save the date for our next Meals on Wheels volunteer project on May 29th.
- And save the date for Beacon Solidary Sleep Out the night of June 5th.
- Tyler, if you wanna go ahead and put up the PowerPoint. Okay, we'll start by help wanted. Need a additional club.
- members join the membership committee. We need help conducting an induction ceremony, reviewing membership
- applications and helping with orientation. See me or contact our membership chair Laurie Garrity if
- you're interested. And I mentioned the gift basket for the district conference. Reminder happy dollar
- proceeds in March and April be given to the Bloomington Rotary Foundation. If we're on schedule we'll
- do happy dollars today.
- Now a celebration of service. We'll start with last Tuesday. We were, thanks to the generosity of one
- of our members, we were a co-sponsor of the Heading Home Housing Summit. You can see a picture of one
- of the panels there. It was a very well attended event and hopefully just one of the many things that
- helped the city tackle affordable housing and access to the unhoused.
- And then moving on to our community service committee, native tree planting. We did it in conjunction
- with the DNR and Lake Monroe Water Fund last Saturday, spearheaded by Michelle Cohen. And there were
- five of us members who helped, Dakir, Amy, Michael, Mike Wade, and I helped as well. Here are some pictures.
- You can see the group. It rained the whole time. You can see the pickup truck. The trees are in the
- pickup truck.
- And the rain was actually a good thing because the DNR naturalist, ahead of time, he briefed us on which
- trees we had and why these trees were good for bats and these trees were good for woodpeckers. And then
- he talked about where the trees needed to be planted. And then he said, OK, and this is what you do
- if you see a timber rattlesnake. And this is what you do if you see a copperhead. And then we talked
- about ticks. And anyway.
- finished, I didn't see any snakes. I didn't find any ticks. I think it might have been a good thing
- that was pouring down rain. So on the right, you can see the field where we planted the trees. It's
- a very marshy area. So the trees we planted were ideal for this type of soil. Some trees that have been
- planted in the past had been uprooted by beavers. And so I think this year they have a plan to make
- sure that doesn't happen again. I see Michelle crossing her fingers away at a table on the back.
- Here I am resting between shovels on the right, Dakir and Michael doing the same thing. And then we
- have Mike, Ray and Amy who are shoveling more in a more industrious fashion. They were more productive
- employees. Picture on the left is just to get an idea of where we were. It was a really beautiful area.
- After we got done, Dakir actually went for a walk just to kind of enjoy the area. And then on the right,
- this is a billboard. You can see plant native trees. This is on Indiana 46. It's as you go east coming
- into Bloomington. It's down in the low areas before you start to head up the hill. So if you're out
- that way, if you go to Nashville and come home, look for the building or look for the billboard, excuse me.
- Rotary, seven areas of focus. I show this slide often. And April is environment month. And so what we
- did with the tree planning fits very well into environment month. Now we're ready for a Paul Harris
- presentation. I'll say a little bit. We have lots of guests today and some new members. Paul Harris
- Awards in Rotary is how we award people.
- who have achieved significant milestones in their financial giving to the Rotary Foundation. And Rotary
- Foundation then uses the money for projects all over the world, including here in Monroe County, and
- also to help eradicate polio. So Mike, if you want to come in and come up and lead our Paul Harris ceremony.
- Joy, did I see that Raj joined on? Yes.
- Okay. Yes, he's here. Raj, can you come on screen? Okay. Good afternoon, Rotarians and guests. Mayor,
- I'm going to scratch my political jokes here. So anyway, no, I've been busy. I just got back from a
- trip to Disney World where I spent most of our retirement money. It was a fun trip. At 75, my
- Grandson who's five talked me into two roller coasters some water slides and of course It's a small
- world if you've ever been there. That's fun and who could resist $13 beers so the good news is the lines
- were shorter than they were at TSA, so anyway Several club members are being recognized today. I'm gonna
- do something a little bit different because one of them is gonna be on zoom As you know
- Rotary International is our main goal of club giving. And we had a goal this year of $15,000 for our
- club. We're over $20,000. So congratulations. Today, Glynda Murray, are you here? Yes, I thought you
- would be. Join me up here, please. Dr. Haddawi, are you on the screen yet, or can you hear me? Oh,
- I see him. Hi, Raj.
- And Alon Barker, can you join me up here? I don't think I've ever done a Paul Harris on Zoom, but we're
- going to try to make this work. So this is going to be Glenda's Paul Harris plus seven, Dr. Hodawie's
- Paul Harris plus two, and Alon Barker, Paul Harris fellow plus six today. All terrific people, members
- of our club,
- who have been continuing to give. Raj, the man behind, the volunteers in medicine. Glenda, everything
- from president of Bloomington Chamber, Monroe County history, past president of our club. And I think
- Dr. Harawi is our longest term Zoom member. I think he's been in three different rotary clubs. He is
- no longer doing orthopedic surgery, but I think he still likes either being called a bone doctor or orthopod.
- I was not sure you're going to be here today, but I am happy to see that you're no longer handling the
- AV. Everything seems to be working well. As you retire from that job, you will be taking on district
- governor for rotary in our district. So congratulations to that. So what we're going to do here is I'm
- going to do Raj. I don't know where the camera is, I guess right here. So Raj, we will get this in the
- mail to you.
- Congratulations. Thank you. Yes. Oh, right there. Do you see that, Raj? Oh, it's just very hard to miss.
- I'm going to hand this to you. Congratulations, Alon. Rotarians, would you please join me and rise and
- celebrate these three people?
- Thank you very much. And make sure you check out the curse hat. Are you you finally converted?
- That's good. Thank you, Mike. We have a few minutes for happy dollars. Is anyone happy today? Okay, here's
- One unhappy dollar and 10 happy dollars. I get both. Unhappy because my wife and I were sitting in traffic
- on the overpass on 3rd Street, on West 3rd Street that goes over I-69. Sitting there minding our own
- business and all of a sudden I hear a tremendous crash behind me. And within fraction of a second, there
- was a second crash and that was us.
- and jammed us in the back of the seat. Then I looked ahead, and there's a truck with a car in front
- of me, and it's coming at me. And so we got Goldfin being slammed in the back of the car to the front
- of the car. The only thing that kept me hitting the windshield was the seatbelt. Thank God I always
- use that. What I'm happy about, oh yeah, the young lady that did this was driving a big GMC pickup truck
- with a huge chrome bumper.
- and was driving a truck where the brakes didn't work. She was using the emergency brake, and she had
- to put the brake pedal to the floor just to get the stop. Well, this time it didn't stop at all. So
- she hit everybody full blast. And the Honda Civic behind me was accordioned. It just looked horrible.
- My car is cosmetic. Who knows? They may total it. I don't know. The guy in front of me, it just kind
- of messed up the back. But I'm really happy that nobody was hurt. There was a young girl.
- in the Honda Civic and her grandmother said that when they hit, she yelled, ouch. And they couldn't
- figure out if anything was wrong or not because she was, I forget what the turn anyway. It said, does
- your neck hurt? You said, yes. So does your toe hurt? You said, yes. Um, so they tried, they kept in
- the ambulance, took her to the hospital just to see if anything was, if she was hurt. I think everything
- is okay. But I'm very thankful that nobody was hurt out of that because it could have been a lot worse.
- So anyway, I am happy.
- On a happier note, I want to say that we had our discussions about our Rotary Scholarship folks. We
- went from 2.30 to 7.30 on Friday. We had nine applicants. They were all outstanding, without exception.
- And I guess the little sad part is that we couldn't give scholarships to all nine of them. But we picked
- four of them.
- And we're so excited to share them with you on May 12th. So mark your calendar to be here, to hear from
- them. Always one of the most inspiring luncheons we have each year, hearing from these amazing kids.
- So I want to give $10 each to all nine of them. So $90 of happy dollars. And thank you again to the
- committee and all the hard work they did in putting this program together. Thank you.
- Hi, I'm Bill Oates. I'm happy to be back in Bloomington after six months in Florida. So it was interesting
- to see what appeared to be a bitter winter here that I missed on Florida television, but Bloomington
- is still the best place. I am $10 happy that this week is the
- On Thursday at 5.30 p.m. at Heartwork Brewing is the quarterly meeting of the 50 men that care. And
- you might recall that a few weeks ago we heard from both 100 women that care and 50 men that care on
- giving circles and the impact that they have in the community.
- through charitable donation. And so I would certainly like to invite the men in this room and online
- to come to that meeting at 5.30 on Thursday at Hard Work Brewing. Last thing is there is a competition,
- a healthy competition going between 100 women that care and 50 men that care. You may notice the difference
- in the name that hints at that. So if you could help,
- With that competition, that would be really great. Thank you. I'm happy. $22, please, on my tab. My
- son has taken all my cash out of my wallet. That's not why I'm happy. I'm happy because tomorrow is
- Earth Day, so that's why the $22, the 22nd, and I'm happy for
- All of you who helped with the Rotary Grant that enabled the tree planting, and for the folks who braved
- the rain with me, I think that was a wonderful celebration of service. Thank you. Hi, I'm happy for
- two things. One is to be back after having to miss many meetings because I wasn't feeling so great.
- The other is that my daughter Hannah is giving our family a second granddaughter
- sometime in September, we think. So here you go, 20 bucks. Thank you all. Now, Michael, you need to
- change hats and come up and introduce our speaker.
- Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor's book, My Stroke of Insight, is a profound personal story of a person seeing
- the beauty of interconnectedness and how gracious, how glorious our brains are. It affected me enough
- that I thought, now, that's a person I want to know. I sort of wormed my way into her life, and she
- gave me the privilege of working with her by helping co-manage the big brain project that we did in
- Bloomington almost
- 15 years ago now. Look it up on the interweb if you want to know more about that. Suffice to say, there
- are a lot of amazing individuals in Bloomington, but Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor is truly exceptional. I could
- gush about all the insightful things I've heard her say and read in her latest book, but I'd rather
- just give this brief personal introduction than list all of her accomplishments so we can spend more
- time listening to her words of wisdom.
- If you don't know of her work, I hope after listening to today, you will be more inspired to read her
- books, watch her Ted Talk, and learn more as you win for a treat. Give Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor a warm
- Rotary welcome, please. Thank you, everybody. Can you hear me? You can, perfect. Okay. I am Jill. I
- have a long history in Bloomington.
- Thank you. I grew up in Terre Haute, came to IU in 77. I was on the five-year plan, so I was here from 77 to 85.
- And then I went back to Terre Haute and got my PhD in neuroanatomy. And from there, I went to Harvard
- Medical School, where I was teaching and performing research. So that was my scholastics. And I study
- the brain because I have a brother diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. So that was what
- made me first think about this organ. And I wanted to know more about it. And then at the age of 37,
- when I was at Harvard,
- I experienced a major hemorrhage in the left half of my own brain and over the course of
- Four hours, I lost all ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. I became an infant
- in a woman's body. So it was a major hemorrhage. I experienced major craniotomy. They removed a blood
- clot the size of a golf ball. And then I used what I still had in the right hemisphere of my brain to
- rebuild the circuits in the left half of my brain. And what I gained was an insight into
- as the traditional medicine talks about the brain, the left thinking portion of our brain is the portion
- of our brain that is conscious and that the left emotion, right emotion and right thinking portions
- of our brain are unconscious. And so what I gained through the eyes of a neuroanatomist is what's going
- on actually, what are the skill sets? What are the performance? What's going on in our unconscious brain?
- And as we look at society and we look at the condition of our left thinking dominant society, the world's
- kind of skewed to the values of that left dominance, which is very different than the value structure
- of the whole brain. So I'm gonna introduce you to this beautiful organ. This brain is looking at you.
- It's divided into two hemispheres. We have the brainstem.
- which is going to be the reptilian brain. New tissue gets added on top of that as the limbic tissue.
- So if you've heard about the amygdala or the hippocampi, they're going to be in here for the emotion
- in both hemispheres. And then we're going to have the higher cerebral cortex and the bumps in the grooves
- of the cerebral cortex. Yours is organized virtually identical to mine. So it does have strong anatomy. Okay.
- Now, let me see if the brain scientists can figure out how to push buttons. Okay, so some of you might
- recognize this brain. This was one of the big brains that we had when we had 22 brains around campus
- and downtown. So I love brains, brains. This was a project through my not-for-profit, Jill Bulti Taylor Brains.
- This is this anatomically correct stained glass brain. Brains are my whole life. It's in my play. It
- is my work. And now I am limestone carving brains. So it just thrills my soul. So this is the central
- nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord.
- And as we look at the hemisphere, we can see it's divided into two hemispheres, the right hemisphere
- and the left hemisphere. And these two
- organize these two hemispheres organize information completely opposite from one another and because
- of that we end up with the big picture of the right here right now present moment right hemisphere and
- then the left hemisphere is a serial processor which gives information then more information then more
- information than in more information so we have linearity
- across time. So we end up with a past, a present, and a future in our left hemisphere. And then we end
- up in the present moment, right here, right now, big picture experience of the present moment, right
- hemisphere. In the right hemisphere, right here, right now, are you paying attention? You look like
- you're paying attention. So in this collection, you're not thinking about what you had for breakfast,
- but you can do that. So go do that.
- What did you picture your food if you had breakfast this morning? How does that even happen? Have you
- ever stopped to consider how can my brain step out of the consciousness of the present moment and step
- into a time that has already come and gone? To me, this is a phenomenal biological feat that this human
- brain does. But in the right here, right now, let's say all of a sudden, the building should start to shake.
- We're not thinking about our politics anymore. We're not thinking about gender differences. We're not
- thinking about age differences. We're thinking about we as a collective whole gotta save Rotary, right?
- We gotta get out as a pack and we're gonna help each other do that. That's what the right hemisphere
- does. It is the collective whole. We are one human family. We are we. And then the left hemisphere comes
- online and it says,
- But I have an identity, because I have a group of cells that tells me I am Jill Bolte Taylor. It tells
- me my age. It tells me my likes and my dislikes. It tells me the details of where I live, what is my
- phone number. So I, me, the individual, I live in my left hemisphere.
- So, on the morning of my stroke, when I experienced the wipeout of the left hemisphere, all I had was
- the collective whole of the present moment.
- And I was just this big energy ball. I didn't know where I began and ended because that's what goes
- on in the left hemisphere. And in the absence of knowing where I begin and where I end, energetically,
- I take the whole room. I become a part of you, and then we become the consciousness.
- of the collective. So we have these two very different ways of looking at the world. And one of the
- things about neurons is that the more they run a circuit, the more you run a circuit, the more you do
- something, the more you learn something, the more automatic that circuitry becomes, and then it runs
- on automatic and it just becomes a part of your normal way of being. So we end up
- based on the values of these two very different hemispheres. So again, this is the right hemisphere,
- the left hemisphere. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain. Each of these bumps, those
- are called the gyri. The lines in between are the soul shy. You never know when you need that kind of
- information. Tonight at dinner, we will be talking gyri and soul shy.
- The two hemispheres do not share any cell bodies, but they are communicating with one another so that
- each hemisphere knows what's going on. And they communicate with one another through the corpus
- colosum of some 300 million axonal fibers. So this group of cells and this group of cells that both
- do comparable things, one is reaching over to the other and inhibiting it so that only one perspective
- happens at a time. The brain does one thing at a time when it comes to these groups of cells.
- But each of these gyri are going to be labeled, very specific names. And if I experience a problem with
- cells here and you experience problems with those cells, we will experience similar symptoms. So it
- is structurally and functionally organized. So here we have the brain stem, spinal cord was down here,
- brain stem here, and then we have the limbic tissue on top here, and then the thinking tissue above in each
- So the rock star of the nervous system is the neuron. We have some 800 billion neurons inside of our
- brain. Each one of those cells is capable of communicating with 10 to 15,000 other cells all at the
- same time. So there is this massive social organization going on between the different neurons. And
- every ability we have
- is because we have brain cells somewhere in our brain that is performing that function. So I can wiggle
- my finger. You can wiggle your same finger because of a group of cells in a comparable place in our
- brains. I can speak language. You can understand language because of brain cells that perform those
- functions. So these are precious.
- And they communicate with one another through the chemicals. And this was actually my work at Harvard
- right before I had that hemorrhage. And this is a GABA neuron. This is a GABA cell, which uses
- the neurotransmitter GABA. This is a serotonin cell in red. And this is a dopamine fiber in yellow.
- So which cells are communicating with which other cells, with which chemicals, and in what quantities
- of those chemicals was my research when I was at Harvard, because I would take normal control brains,
- compare those two brains with schizophrenia, brains diagnosed with schizoaffective, OCD, and bipolar
- disorder. So this was the, I'm a cellular neuroanatomist, this is what I care about. Okay, quickly,
- a few myths about the brain. Number one,
- We only use 10% of our brain. That's not true. That was said back in 1910, long before we understood
- anything really about the brain. If it's alive and it's in your head, you're using it. Trust me on that.
- And if you're not using it, it means other cells are not communicating with it, and then neurons are
- like humans. They tend to, no stimulation, curl up into a little ball and die. So if it's alive and
- it's in your head, you're using it.
- Myth number two, the brain cells you are born with are the only cells you get. We also know that this
- is not true. We are capable of converting some stem cells into new neurons and they tend to migrate
- towards area of trauma, which is the only reason I'm speaking to you today because the cells that were
- destroyed in my brain were mathematics and language. Number three, our brain is not capable of recovery
- from trauma.
- Of course, no, this is not true. Not just do we have neurogenesis, but we have neuroplasticity, which
- is which cells are communicating with which other cells. And if I'm not getting any feedback from you,
- then I may withdraw from you and reach out to you instead. And that's how neurons are coordinating with
- one another. Our left brain is thinking and our right brain is emotional.
- No, absolutely. Anatomically, we have emotion here in yellow and then here in green is thinking. We
- have thinking and emotion in both hemispheres. They simply do it.
- differently based on their time frame. So the right hemisphere will take fewer cells, send that information
- to more cells, to more cells, to more cells, and biologically program to go from information to a bigger
- picture. And then the exact opposite is true for the left hemisphere. Lots of different cells will converge,
- converge, converge, converge, and this is how we can study details, details, and more details about
- those details by that left
- So thank goodness we have these two very different ways of perceiving and we perceive information into
- the brain stem and then from there it goes first to the emotional tissue and then from the emotional
- tissue up to the thinking tissue. So what this means is we humans are feeling creatures who think.
- We are feeling creatures who think. So as we consider, so many of us intellectually like to think about
- ourselves as thinking creatures who feel, we need to experience things, we need to feel things, and
- then we can organize them in our higher thinking brain. And the thing about these emotional cells is
- they never mature, and they are not meant
- to mature because emotions gives us a filter through which information comes in so that we can protect
- ourselves because this is going to be our fight, flight, free, fight, fight, danger, danger, threat
- at the level of our emotions. So this is our emotional reactivity and our emotional reactivity is designed
- to take information that already happened in some previous time, compare the consciousness flow of the
- right brain as it brings in new information, and if it sees something that looks like danger or threat,
- to push it away. So we actually want this system to be immature, but we don't want this group of cells
- to always have the microphone. And we don't want this group of cells to lead a committee meeting. And
- we don't want this in our politics, because this
- is chaos. And chaos serves its function to save our lives, but it does not serve us as humanity because
- we have higher thinking and we want to be able to get to our higher thinking. So the 92nd rule is that
- from the moment I think a thought, I think a thought, it stimulates an emotion. Let's say I think a
- thought of someone from 20 years ago who did me wrong, and it stimulates my anger.
- and my anger stimulates a physiological response and I get furrow in my brow, my shoulders go up, I
- move into more attack or fight or flight or whatever. From the moment I think the thought until it's
- completely out of my bloodstream is less than 90 seconds.
- I know you're thinking, oh, I can stay mad for a whole lot longer than 90 seconds, right? Every single
- one of you, you're thinking that. But what you're doing is you're rethinking the thought that re-stimulates
- and you're rerunning the circuits over and over and over again. So the next time you feel yourself getting
- angry or getting really sad or getting even happy, your joy, it is only biologically going to last for
- 90 seconds. So look at your watch.
- and see. And when we master the 90 second rule and an understanding about our circuitry, then it's like
- we can let things flush through us and flush out of us and we can go back to feeling peace. So this
- was my hemorrhage. This is where it began on the morning of the stroke and then it ended up wiping out
- the whole left hemisphere and the emotional system
- in the right hemisphere. And so in the process of rebuilding this circuitry, what I realized was that
- when certain groups of cells came back online, those cells resulted in skill sets and those skill sets
- packaged together as personalities. And it was like, wow, isn't that interesting? And then it becomes
- a whole part of my identity. So there are four of us. There is left thinking, left emotion, right emotion,
- and right thinking groups of cells. And each one of them, we're gonna talk about what they give us and
- the personality that comes out of it. And I call this whole brain living. And the power of whole brain
- living is that I have the power to choose in any moment which of these four characters I wanna be in.
- Which one is it appropriate for me to be in? Which one do I want to step into based on a scenario of
- a relationship now in my external world? Because if there's four of me in here and there's four in you,
- every relationship has eight character profiles. Some of us get along really well.
- One and character one might go together, but a character two, left emotion, pain from the past, and
- left emotion, pain from the past, will never find a resolution. So someone has to be willing to step
- out of the pain from the past and step into and embody one of the other three that are healthier parts
- of who we are. So as you navigate your world, I want you to consider these four parts of who you are.
- And ultimately, I want you to consider, do you recognize this character inside of you? What does it
- feel like to be in your body? Under what circumstances does this character come out? Give the character
- a name. Name your four identities. They're you. Who around you appreciates and identifies with this
- part of you? And who runs from this part of you?
- because you will be able to create a network of who's who inside of you and your external world so that
- the world makes so much more sense. So, character one, left thinking. This is what our medical traditional
- medicine says is the conscious part of our brain. This is the part of us that is the boss.
- It's our ego. The focus is on me.
- It likes structure in the external world. It's judgmental, detail-based, organizes and categorizes
- everything. It loves order. It thinks linearly across time, critically analyzes everything, defines
- the social norm of what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. It's language-based. It's
- pretty much my way or the highway. I be the boss, dictates what is right, what is wrong. It is neat.
- It believes in what is proper and what is
- the perfectionist inside of me. This is the part of us that plans well. It respects authority and expects
- your its authority to be respected as well. And it needs to be right. When was the last time you were
- in a verbal conversation with somebody that really was, I really don't care about this fight anymore,
- but I need to be right. And I need the last word.
- It fixes things, and it likes to control people, places, and things. We all have to have this part of
- ourselves. This is how we survive in society. And thank goodness for this character one, because it
- is the hierarchy of our government. It is the hierarchy of our school system. It is the hierarchy inside
- of our family units. So somebody needs to be the boss, and it would be your left thinking. I call mine
- Helen. Helen wheels. She gets it done.
- She's busy. People know. They call me up. Friends call. They say, oh, hi, Helen. And then it's like,
- oh, well, do you think maybe somebody else might call me later today? Because Helen's busy. Helen's
- got a to-do list. And she doesn't want to be interrupted. And she shows up in the office. And she's
- the only part of me that puts in earrings. And none of my other characters wear earrings. So you can
- always tell just by looking at me if I'm being a character one. Character two.
- is the left emotion. So these cells are miraculous. These are the cells that have stepped out of the
- present moment. First of all, let's talk about the present moment. Present moment, pretty good, huh?
- What's the temperature feel like? Feel it. What does it feel like to have your clothes on your body?
- Think about that. Feel the weight now? So you weren't thinking about that before. Are you comfortable?
- We don't have a reason to not be happy in the present moment, because all our reasons for not being
- happy are in our past. Right here, right now, it's a perfect moment. So emotionally, these cells in
- the left hemisphere step out of the present moment perfectly.
- perfect, feels great into the pain from the past. So this is all of our pain from the past. Our emotional
- pain, our physical pain, any physical trauma that we're experiencing is going to be in this Character
- 2 tissue. Character 2.
- It's the alarm alarm alert alert based on past experience. Oh, I had a bad experience with a guy like
- you before, so I'll never date another dude that looks like you because I'm remembering that and bringing
- past information to inform my present. It's my self-focus. This is my survival. We have to have this
- group of cells to knee-jerk, kick stuff away that feels unsafe. It can.
- look angry or aggressive it may worry or complain this is the part of us that holds a grudge this can
- be a victim mentality it likes to blame others for our stuff it's all of our past emotional pain and
- it is the craving circuitry for our addictions well isn't that interesting if i get rid of the craving
- do i still have the addiction that's another story we'll talk about that some other time
- This part of the brain loves conditionally. Oh, sweetheart, I love you so much. Yes, I'll marry you
- as long as you stay in the box of ABCD. But as soon as you do EFG, we are so done, right? So this part
- is conditional love. Present moment anxiety, fear of the future, because it's not here. It's past trauma,
- self-loathing and deprecating. It may be our feelings of guilt or shame.
- This is our most vulnerable self. This is the part of us, when we move into this part of ourselves,
- we're potentially suicidal, situationally happy or unhappy. The thing about this information is we have
- this character two information for in formation. And as soon as we turn it into a lifestyle,
- we're in trouble. So we can't let our pain from the past dominate what's happening in our
- moment, and it is necessary for healing. But because of this, we can reflect upon our pain, we can heal
- our pain, we can transform our lives back into a present moment experience that is healthy. Okay, character two.
- Character three is going to be the right brain emotional system. Right here, right now, information
- streaming in through our emotional cells. This is a very excited part of who we are. You can feel it.
- You can see it in my body. I call mine Pig Pen. She's just going to make a mess, and then she's going
- to play, and it's going to be with you because we're the collective whole.
- So this is present moment alarm, alarm alert, alert, fight, flight, or freeze. It's right here,
- right now, collective whole, we rather than me. It's experiential. What does it feel like to be in your
- body when you dive into the water and you feel the pressure of the water against your body
- and the temperature of the water in the present moment and we can feel the sensation of what,
- oh my gosh, it's so exciting.
- And it's compassionate and forgiving and playful because why would I not be compassionate with you when
- you are a part of me? It's adventurous and curious and intuitive and it's possibilities based because,
- oh my gosh, we're not in the box of the left hemisphere. So it's innovative and entrepreneurial and
- it accepts what is as it is non-judgmental. It's friendly.
- It's team-based, enthusiastic, and it can be explosive. And if it's explosive in the present moment
- and it makes a bad decision, it may well end up in jail, right? Oh, the neighbors aren't home and they
- have a pool in their backyard and it's 3 o'clock in the morning. Come on, Michael, let's go skinny-dip
- in the pool at the neighbor's house. And then we end up in jail because, of course, they have an alarm system.
- This is literally, our prisons are filled with people who had a bad moment in their character three.
- And if you're an adrenaline junkie, you know this part of you well. And then character four is going
- to be the right thinking. And in the right thinking, it's in the present moment. And in the present
- moment, there is this precious gift that we call life. And oh my gosh, we have life and then we don't
- have life. But the gift of the universe
- is life and as life I have awe that I exist at all and I live in a state of grace and gratitude because
- in an instant boom it can be gone and then it's all over so there's this there's this beauty about simply
- being alive and where we're open and we feel that we're as big as the universe and we are aware
- of the fragile nature of what we are with celebration in our heart. And it's the big picture, collective
- whole, the we rather than the we. It is empathic, not judgmental. It's generous of spirit and supportive
- and nurturing and connected because we are and we are wired to be this. It's our authentic or self, our
- honesty it's we can be humble and humane intentional and this part of who we are feels like love because
- on you know when we move into our deathbed and character ones two and three are all offline because
- we lived the life that we lived and now all we have is presence this is the consciousness of what we
- have that separates us from
- from life and no life. So this is a beautiful, beautiful, magical part of who we are that is blissful
- and ever-present. So we have all four. Each one of us has all four. And I encourage you to consider
- that because
- You have the power to choose moment by moment who and how you want to be. And in this world of consternation
- where character twos are coming in and poking us, whether that's with our political conversations or
- just in the family unit and it's your little brother, poke, poke, poke.
- I don't have to respond, I don't have to react. I can simply look at you with love in my heart as a
- character four, recognizing, okay, we are humans, we are humanity here together, and we're all functioning
- with different circuitry running inside of our brain, and the conversations of the pain and the fear
- of little character two, I can observe your character two, I can wrap my love around your character
- two, but I don't have to tit for tat with your character two,
- because I had the capacity to step into my character one. And when it ultimately comes back to what
- happened to our politics, let's go back to being the character ones in the world. And I can guarantee
- you that as you look at the world and you look at who you are in relationship to it and the news that
- you're listening to and which part of you are you influencing, you have the power to choose, not today,
- I'm not gonna listen to that,
- I'm going to listen to this instead. And this is the part of who I am that I'm going to bring out with
- my neighbors because I live in Bloomington. And Bloomington is a neighborly place to be. It's a beautiful
- place to be.
- We're a special unit of people. And when we really come together and we recognize that part of ourselves
- and we own that part of ourselves, then Bloomington is what we want Bloomington to be. So I'm going
- to end with the brain huddle. This is bringing all four of parts of who you are into conversation with
- one another. Breath. Why focus on breath? It brings us into the present moment.
- And the present moment is a perfect moment. And then recognize which one of my characters was I who
- called this brain huddle. It could be any of my four characters calling a huddle in order to have a
- communication. Always appreciate there are always four inside of me. And this is so beautiful because
- if my little
- character two feels any pain or any isolation or any loneliness or any grief because someone I love
- is dying or has died, my own character four can come in and hold me. We have the power to self-soothe
- ourselves and be whole humans because we're wired for this at the level of our brain. And then moment
- by moment, inquire, which other four do I want to be in this moment? Well, in this moment, you're getting
- my character one. In an hour,
- I'm going to be playing with my puppy dogs as a character three. I have the power to choose who and
- how I want to be. And then we navigate life moment by moment, character by character. You have the power
- to choose who and how you want to be in the world. And the evolution of humanity is waking
- up your unconscious brain and becoming a fully conscious person. And that's the power of what we are
- and where we are in time. Thank you.
- I'm mainly just a fan of yours, Jill. My daughter studied under you in medical school, and I knew your
- father was an outstanding Episcopal clergy who served. So I'm going to ask you a really hard question,
- theological one. How do our human brain brains are different from those of the animals? What is the
- difference between a typical mammal and a human is that that outer layer of cerebral cortex
- Ours is six layers thick. In some places, only four. But in a typical mammal, it's only three layers
- thick. So we have twice the amount of intellectual tissue to work with at the level of our character
- one and character four thinking brains. I'm friendly.
- If one of those character areas is damaged through a stroke or some other traumatic brain injury, and
- we use more than 10% of our brain to use the quote, how does the brain make up for the damaged part?
- You know what I mean? So the damaged area is going to be cells that have been traumatized. They're either
- now dormant or they're dead.
- or they're rearranged a little in there. So because of the neuroplasticity and the neurogenesis, the
- brain tends to grow new neurons, turn stem cells into neurons. They will migrate naturally to areas
- of trauma.
- and network themselves into the tissue that is now damaged and then because of neuroplasticity, they
- can actually fill in local problem areas. It's much easier for the brain to do that than now I have
- a developmental problem and so an entire system is offline and because we can't tell neurons where to
- go, they instinctively will follow trauma
- And then they will reconnect a local zone. But getting this area to communicate with that area, we haven't
- figured out how to prime the knowing of the neurons to do something like that. But we are growing some
- new neurons. Did you have a question? No? OK. I'm just amazed that you fully recovered in the way you
- have. And I'm just curious about the journey. Did you do this?
- because you just willed it so, or did you have a whole team of friends and family around you? How did
- you do this, and how did you keep your spirits up and be where you are today? Well, let's start with
- how I kept my spirits up. The part of my spirits that would not keep up was my left brain, and it was
- all fine. So I was just thrilled to be alive. And my mother came to Bloomington, came to Boston,
- and moved in with me, and then was with me for three weeks before I had surgery, and then three weeks
- after that, and then she took me to Terre Haute. So she was my primary hands-on, but I used, but what
- my mother did, which was the greatest gift, was she watched me, and if I was tired, she put me to bed,
- and if I was hungry, she fed me, and then she taught me, and we went back to children's books, and so
- she exposed me, but respected the healing
- power of sleep and the healing power of what she was actually feeding me. And like I was a newborn,
- she took me through the different stages of development. But I was using what I still had in my knowledge
- of how neurons are, because they had been my whole life and for study and my whole research and my whole
- education, what I was teaching. So I think in terms of circuits and tracks. And so I could tell on the
- morning of the stroke, oh, that's offline.
- that's offline, that's offline until it was all offline. So I used what I understood about neurons to
- recover and re-heal new circuits one at a time. And my world started very, very small, and then eventually
- it grew a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger. But I wrote a book, My Stroke of Insight. And that
- takes you moment by moment through the process of recovery. First, it takes you through who I was before,
- the morning of the stroke.
- And I thought the morning of the stroke was the gift, because if people would read that and watch my
- own brain deteriorate through the eyes of a scientist, then it would give other people a real appreciation
- for how their brain is organized. And then everybody wanted, well, why did you recover? And so I wrote
- about that recovery, and then I threw in a few chapters at the back about what I thought I had gained
- from this experience. So it's a beautiful book. It spent 63 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list back
- And it's still usually in the top 10 of strokes of books on stroke on Amazon. I mean, it's a beautiful
- story. And then, but it was it, but then it was, I wrote Whole Brain Living in 2021, because I
- I better understood how to communicate with other people about how can you identify these parts of who
- you are so you can live a more peaceful life. My ultimate goal, I spend very little time in Bloomington,
- which is why I'm here because I just finished six months of traveling and now I'm here and it's like,
- well, why wouldn't I come and talk to my people in Bloomington, right? But I'm out in the world teaching
- systems about whole brain living so that people can find more peace. I believe the more of us
- who can look at a very hostile and angry or sad person and love that person in spite of themselves in
- a gracious way and still be the best part of who I am in the presence of them and help them out of their
- pain into the more peaceful parts of their brain and the more peaceful the planet will become. And that's
- kind of my whole mission in life. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you everybody.
- You might stick around for some questions afterwards. You might stick around for some questions afterwards.
- OK, I will. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. This quarter to Wheeler Mission, I'd like to
- thank today's volunteers, Diana Hoffman, Katie Cerniak, Michael Shermis, Joy Harder, Marilyn Wood,
- Mike Baker, Jeff Richardson. Next meeting will be here next week in the Georgia Room, April 28.
- Efrat Rosser, Bloomington Township Trustee, will bring us up to date with developments in Indiana regarding
- townships. Lots of things have happened in the state legislature regarding townships. So please join
- us. Tyler, if you'd put up the graphic for the four-way test, and please stand if you are able. Of the
- things we think, say, or do, first, is it the truth?
- Second, is it fair to all concern? Third, will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will
- it be beneficial to all concern? And fifth, is it fun?