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?