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December 12, 2012

Day 18: Stroke of Insight

Continuing the series of people you should know, I’m highlighting one of my favorite brain research scientists, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. If you and I know each other personally, I’ve probably (definitely) already made you watch her TED Talk or lent you her book, “My Stroke of Insight.” (Actually, I’m missing my copy, so if I lent it to you, let me know.)

Jill Bolte Taylor

Inspired by her brother’s schizophrenia, Taylor began her career by researching severe mental illnesses at Harvard. A dedicated and renowned neuroanatomist, she split time between intensive brain study and advocacy work with NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

In 1996, at 37 years old, a blood vessel in her brain’s left hemisphere exploded. She had a stroke.

The morning of her stroke, Taylor became aware that something extraordinary was happening. As she went about her normal routine and wavered between types of consciousness, she recognized she was having a stroke when her right arm went numb. According to her reflection on the experience, she thought, “Wow, this is so cool! How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?”

So, semi-aware but not entirely logical, she researched herself through the process of losing all function in her left hemisphere. As the hemorrhage spread, she could not read, write or identify herself as a being separate from her environment. One of the most intriguing parts of her incredibly intriguing TED talk is when she describes realizing the gravity of her situation and trying to call for help. In order to reach a colleague without being able to recognize numbers, she matched “the shape of the squiggles” on a business card to the “shape of the squiggles on the phone pad.”

(Seriously, watch her TED Talk. It’s poignant, funny, frightening and beautiful.)

When not engaged with the warning bells of her logical and ego-centered left hemisphere, Taylor experienced a euphoric uniting of herself with the entire world; in the midst of trauma, she had a powerful sense of peace and wonder.

The right sides of our brains recognize beauty and connectivity, and when fully engaged, release us from all the mundane concerns of living a life. Taylor’s post-stroke insights into the structure of the brain teach us that we can choose where to exist at any given moment. We can be peaceful, cellular beings in flow with the rest of the universe, or separate individuals with distinct personalities, goals and responsibilities. Her position is that the more time we spend engaged with our right hemispheres, the more peace we project into the world—and the more peaceful the world becomes.

What strikes me about her research is that we rely on our critical, categorizing, judging left hemispheres in order to survive. But without our present-moment, satisfied, universally conscious right hemispheres, there would be nothing to live for.

On this lucky and/or apocalyptic day (12/12/12), it’s something to think about.

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December 9, 2012

Day 15: Snow Spiders

As I stood in our first real snowstorm today and watched the kids across the street laugh, make snow angels and “search for spiders” (snow spiders?), I started reminiscing about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. (Snow > neighbors > kids > Mister Rogers.) Happily, I have “The World According to Mister Rogers,” a collection of his thoughts on everything from love to individuality.

“The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing … and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.” – Fred Rogers

The neighbor kids are pretty successful.

December 7, 2012

Day 13: Good Question

At some point, every artist is asked, “What is good art?”

Sometimes, the question arrives in the form of a supportive next-door neighbor-type, who comes to the show and kindly says it was “…really interesting!” Sometimes, it comes couched in higher education self-exploration, from a professor demanding articulation in addition to intuitiveness.

As a dancer steeped in dance academia, I’ve asked and answered it in many different ways, and at many different times. There is no objective answer, just as there is no objective art (feel free to argue with me; I love discussing this stuff).

Lately, my thought on the question is that good art makes a person want to do something. Participate, learn, read, cry, laugh, vomit, hug someone, punch a wall, eat a pie, smile, move, argue, shake and—for me—make art.

Good art makes me want to do what I love doing.

My “love doing” is dance. And I am lucky to live in a city where I can do it often.

Since I believe watching is a huge part of doing, I try to see a lot of shows. (A friend of mine manages to see nearly 200 dance and theater shows every year. That’s almost a show a day. My day-to-show ratio is nowhere near that high, but I enjoy knowing it’s possible.)

Being a watcher is an inherently judgmental position. Anytime there is a separate doer and watcher, the watcher has to contextualize and compare the doer’s actions alongside all of his/her other experiences. The more experiences the watcher has to draw from, the more inlets s/he has into the current one.

With dance, there are lots of subjective elements to judge—Do the dancers seem engaged? Do I relate to the quality of movement? Do I want to? Is the choreography well structured? How well does the lighting enhance the atmosphere? Do the costumes fit the dance (and the dancers)? Are the aural elements complimentary? Is the intention clear? Is the intention supposed to be clear? Do I like this? Ad infinitum.

Without realizing it, I’ve stopped asking complex questions and opted for two much simpler ones:

Does this make me want to dance? Does this make me want to make a dance?

If the answer is yes to either, it’s good art in my book. And the more art I experience, the richer the experiences get.

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Photo by Bill Hebert. From Tree Brain/Ice Body by Erin Cairns and Ashleigh Penrod.

December 5, 2012

Day 11: Head to Toe

Last week, I started a series of posts about “people you should know.” Technically, it started with one person, but no one called me out on the fact that there is no such thing as a series of one. Now that there are two people, it’s official! (Related: There is no such thing as a “first annual” event. Don’t even try it. I won’t go.)

Matthew Sanford

Sanford is a yoga instructor. He teaches all types of students from all walks of life, all over the country. He is often quoted as saying, “Your body is the best home your mind will ever have, and it’s the only one you get.”

Sanford’s home/body is that of a paraplegic. He became paralyzed from the chest down during a car accident at age 13. In “Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence,” (a phenomenal book) Sanford describes his spinal cord injury as fundamentally a mind-body injury—one that is experienced internally as a separation between self and body. His journey to reconnect to his paralyzed body, rather than overcome his injury, brought him to yoga at age 25.

If all you know about yoga is that it can be a little mushy (love all beings, live in the present, breathe, etc.), think about this: yoga is hard. It’s strenuous and frustrating. Focusing on pressing through the heel, engaging the inner thighs, breathing smoothly, not thinking about grocery shopping, not thinking about not thinking about grocery shopping, etc. is hard enough with all limbs intact. What does a person do when he’s asked to press though a heel he can’t even feel?

Through years of continued practice and a few harrowing setbacks (he once broke his femur while trying an advanced yoga posture), Sanford learned how to live in his body and engage his mind in the experience. As he healed, he began teaching adapted yoga classes to students with a wide range of abilities and impairments. In “Waking,” Sanford writes, “I teach them the subtleties of sensing energetic sensation, about moving inward and connecting through their bodies on a level that includes the silence, and it works! They experience gains in strength, balance and flexibility. They too gain a measure of calm and a feeling of wholeness. The practical benefits of energetic realization are not just flukes of my particular experience.”

In 2001, Sanford founded Mind Body Solutions, a nonprofit dedicated to “transforming trauma, loss and disability into hope and potential by awakening the connection between mind and body.” Currently, he teaches a form of yoga developed by B.K.S. Iyengar, who said, “When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.”

For more from Sanford in his own words, check out The Body’s Grace, Krista Tippett’s On Being interview with him from May 2012.

December 3, 2012

Day 9: We Are(n’t) Young

A friend and I went to a concert last night night (on a weekday night… wild!). The band was fantastic, the audience was happy and fun, and the bartender was equal parts grouchy and endearing.

Blog-as-diary in three… two…

We were the oldest people there.

But we blended in well. Skinny jeans, messy buns, strategically placed “Oh, this old thing?” scarves. And it didn’t bother me that we were respectively old; it just occurred to me.

I don’t actually feel any different than I did ten years ago. Sure, a few things have changed. Now, I spend an extra minute poking and prodding at my messy bun until most of my grey hair is covered. And if I felt stressed out in 2002, I’d snowball myself into tears. In 2012, I just get sort of crabby and the left side of my face goes numb. A sign of maturity, I believe.

If I were my mother, I would currently be the proud parent of a four-year-old and a two-year old, and have another bundle of joy on the way. I’d live in a house with a yard and would carpool to preschool with my favorite next-door neighbor.

As not-my-mother, I have a fish and three complicated plants that miraculously come back to life every few weeks. I live in an apartment, grow herbs in the parking lot (also miraculous) and really only talk to my neighbors when my underwear escapes from my laundry pile and sits in the hallway for a couple of days (“Whose is that?! So weird.).

The not-doing-what-your-parents-did mentality is not new. I’m just surprised at how quickly and accidentally it manifested itself.

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Category: Philosophy