After being away from the forum so long, I do not know whether anyone posted the following link to a remarkable video about a brain researcher who had a stroke which impaired her left brain functions. I hope I am not redundant. The video is quite remarkable--and important, I daresay.

Mike

https://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/203

I read about this Mike on another board and found it quite fascinating.

HJ

This is fascinating.. absolutely fascinating. here is the video on youtube:



but... there has to be more to this... how can you just go from left brain to right brain? I don't particularly want to have a stroke to accomplish this..

How do you go from left brain activity to right brain without having a stroke? I think the most traditional way is through extensive meditative practices. I have the sense that when I meditate, all I am doing is slowing the activity of the left brain. Good things then result from the right brain becoming more dominant.

Those few folks labeled "idiot savants" who have such amazing special skills seem to be operating almost entirely through the right brain. Sometimes they acquire this "skill" by accidental injury to the left brain, and sometimes they are born without the corpus callosum which is the structure which connects the two sides of the brain.

Here is what writer Peter Clothier has to say about brain hemispheres and meditation:

"One other thing I'd add: as a meditation practitioner, I have noticed that I can actually watch the mind switch from activity in one lobe to activity in the other. In this circumstance, I believe there is a choice. The "monkey mind" with its distracting thought processes is clearly the activity of the verbal, thinking left brain; as the mind moves more deeply into the meditative state, it can abandon left-brain activity in favor of a sense of total right-brain oneness with the ambient, sensate world, and relax into that state of bliss that Jill Bolte Taylor describes in her video. It's one of the great benefits one can reap in following the path the Buddha laid out. It's worth a try..."

hmmm... well, my few experiences with meditation were not good.. so, i think I will pass.

but, there seem to be a lot of people that get a lot out of meditation on this board, so I'm sure this would be of interest to them.

interesting video, none the less.