The Different Functions of the Left and Right Brain According to Jill Bolte Taylor

After a brain stroke with severe bleedings in the left side of her brain, Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard trained neuroanatomist, was able to experience what it is like if the right side of the brain is dominant. This has changed her life completely, because she has realized that Nirvana is constantly running in our right brain and therefore constantly available to be entered. After a recovery period of eight years, she is now able to keep a kind of balance between her left and right brain. She is sharing her experience in a book and travels around as a public speaker.

The left side of the brain, which is usually the dominant side, helps making sense of the external world. It is the analytical and judging part of the brain, which is responsible for important functions such as language, memories and sense of time and helps shaping externally given information into something manageable and understandable. It is responsible for seperating the self from the whole, helps seeing details and boundaries and is also organizing and judging. Taylor connects it to negative personality traits such as being stubborn, arrogant, sarcastic and jealous (Taylor 2006: 144).

The right side of the brain, on the other hand, is “completely committed to the expression of peace, love, joy and compassion” (Taylor 2006: 133). It makes people feel a natural state of fluidity and the absence of physical boundaries and is focused on the present time and place. As everything feels connected to each other in an eternal space, there is no need for fear and other negative feelings, making place for a feeling of deep inner peace.

All in all, Taylor describes the two parts of the brain as two fundamentally different parts of a whole. Though the analytical left part of the brain is usually dominant, learning how to make more place for feelings dominated by the right brain can make it possible to find a feeling of inner peace and live a more balanced life.

Works Cited

Taylor, Jill Bolte. My...