Brain and Consciousness: Jill Bolte Taylor

Posted by JohnD Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:45:00 GMT

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Please note that this post has been revised to reflect commentary on Jill Bolte Taylor’s reliance on the right brain—left brain model. See the note at the end of this post.

If you have any interest at all in the relationship between the brain and your awareness of who you are, please go straight to this site. Read the excerpt from Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Then listen to the podcast of Terry Gross’s interview with the author on Fresh Air. I heard it this morning on the radio, and it’s provided more insight about the human power to heal than all the books and articles I’ve read to date.

Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags analytical thinking, associational thinking, brain, euphoria, healing, intuition, Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroscience, recovery, religion, spirituality | no comments

Creating a Way Out of Depression -1

Posted by JohnD Sun, 01 Jun 2008 01:10:00 GMT

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WARNING: IDEAS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Thanks to a series of compelling posts on creativity by Isabella Mori at changetherapy (part of an exchange with Psyblog), I’ve been trying to understand more clearly what happens when creative work takes place. I haven’t gotten there yet (can’t say I expect to solve this puzzle since more learned and insightful people than I have been trying for a long time). But I would like to throw out a few ideas I’ve picked up in my reading, and then ask you to share your thoughts.

Now why should I get into this in the first place? Simply because I know that when I’m working creatively I’m in a different state where depression doesn’t exist. Just like the spiritual encounters I’ve been trying to describe that stop time and this despairing condition, there is something about creating, even at my modest level, that draws out a force within me that dissolves depression. What is that? Can I package some and pull it off the shelf when I need it? Here are a few of the insights that gifted thinkers have offered. They make sense to me, but this is just a starting point. I hope we can build a dialogue to go further into creativity and its ability to make depression disappear, at least for a short time.

Posted in Explanations, Creativity, Spirituality and Depression | Tags creativity, David Bohm, depression, intuition, Isabella Mori, Jacques Maritain, Mihaly Csikszentmilhalyi, mind, peace, perception, recovery, soul, spirituality, T.S. Eliot | 8 comments