How to Connect With Your Core
TEDTalks is hosting a phenomenal video about Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience during her stroke. As a neuroscientist, she was uniquely able to understand what was happening to her, and to make sense of the experience during her eight-year recovery during which she relearned walking, talking, and a whole host of other basic skills. Go watch the video – yes, the whole thing! I’ll wait…
But simply seeing this perspective is not enough. As people, we have to learn something from an experience we will never have – but it can be used to improve our own mindset and communication! In this post I’ll describe what I learned from her experience and how I used it to improve my understanding of and interaction with the world.
So, what exactly is so amazing?
Direct connection to the right brain is not something we get every day – in fact, we don’t get it any day. We mostly communicate through words, constantly engaging our left brain to describe and decode the world. Even when we do use images, we find ourselves naming and explaining them to one another using language (as well as tagging and captioning them with even more words). When we recall right-brain experiences like emotions and sensations, we have to use the left brain, because we just have no way to communicate experiences directly. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to directly communicate the scent of oranges or a breathtaking sunset? Even Jill’s own description of her all-right-brain experience was managed by her left brain – that is, it falls infinitely short of giving you the experience.
- Language can’t completely describe the world.
Getting in touch
As Jill explained, her experience allowed her to connect intimately with the world around her, ignoring the boundaries of her physical body. She was able to feel the fact that she, like the rest of the world, is made up of energy, and she could experience nothing but her direct perception of it.
Can we get that close to the world? Maybe not, but we can try. The “nirvana” that Jill describes is exactly what we can strive for during yoga or meditation. It’s more than just a quiet space to think – at this extreme, it can become a quiet space to not think.
When I first started to do yoga, I couldn’t make space away from my thoughts. As silence surrounded me during a pose, my left brain would kick into overdrive to make up for it. At times cacophonious, at times insightful and orderly, I never found myself experiencing the sort of deep enjoyment and connection that others described after yoga. For me, the poses were distracting and cumbersome, awkward stretches and strength exercises that left me tired rather than rejuvenated.
But after working closely with friends and instructors, I began to improve my experience. While I still could not shut out my thoughts during yoga, I could at times quiet them. What I realized is that I felt a core connection to my body I had not experienced before. I could feel tendons, skin, and muscles working in a way that was completely experiential. The pain of a stretch began to serve only to remind me that a part of my body I had been unaware of was still there. It was a tether between my conciousness and my physical existence. I literally began to feel my mind expand into my body as I used the difficult poses to improve my self-awareness.
After seeing Jill’s talk, I realized that my body was not the limit to expansion of mind. Although I have not been able to expand my consciousness beyond my body yet, I have that goal firmly in mind. I have worked to bring the principles to both my practice and to my everyday life. A simple way to do this is to close your eyes. The sight of your body is a powerful reminder that it ends; when you can’t see yourself, it is much easier to experience your experience at the core level, without the taint of its appearance.
Expressing pure experience
Often I find myself closing my eyes when I type, allowing my fingers to provide all the feedback I need. This helps me connect the images and ideas in my mind to the text on the screen while minimizing the time they spend in my left brain being translated into text and polluted by the shortcomings of language. Because my thoughts do not have to be tediously translated into words or
movements as my hands put them into the keyboard, I am able to type purer words. A large part of this has come only by practice; touch-typing is central to this experience. My sentences better reflect exactly what it is that I wish to express.
But typing does not have to be your mode of expression to benefit from this technique. Close your eyes when you speak; practice routing thoughts directly into words without thinking about them. If you draw or paint, let your hand move without criticizing it in your mind, without planning ahead or looking back. If you need to close your eyes, do. Your first attempts may not produce masterpieces, but as you learn to connect your right brain directly to your expressive action, your outputs will improve dramatically.
Masters of art understood this technique intuitively. How else could a composer like Beethoven continue to work after losing his hearing? If he did needed to hear what he already created to continue work, he could never have composed another symphony. But because he practiced, to the point where his right-brain creative force was tied directly to his music-writing, he could produce beautiful music without hearing it. The written word is the same way; Milton wrote the epic Paradise Lost while blind, by dictation.
This is not to say that you will be a master on your first try, or even in your lifetime – but by reaching to learn and use their technique you can improve your every art, speech, or writing. When your right brain connects to your expressive faculties, you will develop the ability to share experiences more accurately with others. They will better understand your emotions, your opinions, and your arguments. So practice – make writing, typing, speech, or art come naturally. Master the technique; then connect your right brain to it.
That great connection
The sense of oneness that Jill describes as part of her experience is very real. Even though we are separated by our physical forms and our perceptions of them, we are connected intimately. Our senses connect us via the energy that flows all around us. We see each other in light, pure electromagnetic energy. We hear each other through the kinetic vibrations of sound. We smell each other, a chemical connection that involves actually absorbing molecules from another person. We even exert the smallest amount of gravity on each other.
But our metaphysical connections are even greater. Language lets us share ideas and emotions as text and as speech. Art lets us share experiences as videos, images, and symphonies. Body language lets us convey complex emotions with as little as an eyebrow. The Internet helps us share uncountable pieces of information. We understand each other and we reach out to each other. We are connected.
And because your right brain is the source of this information, mastering your body’s connection with it will improve your connection with other people. This is the truest insight of Jill’s talk, and one really worth spreading. So share your experience, share this advice, share your life; talk, Tweet, text. Be human.
(photo credit: audreyjm529 and Quotentials)
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