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Whole Brain Living

The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life

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Whole Brain Living

Written by: Jill Bolte Taylor PhD
Narrated by: Jill Bolte Taylor PhD
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About this listen

 For half a century we have been trained to believe that our right brain hemisphere is our emotional brain, while our left brain houses our rational thinking. Now neuroscience shows that it's not that simple: in fact, our emotional limbic tissue is evenly divided between our two hemispheres. Consequently, each hemisphere has both an emotional brain and a thinking brain. In this groundbreaking new book, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor presents these four distinct modules of cells as four characters that make up who we are: Character 1, Left Thinking; Character 2, Left Emotion; Character 3, Right Emotion; and Character 4, Right Thinking.Everything we think, feel, or do is dependent upon brain cells to perform that function. Since each of the Four Characters stems from specific groups of cells that feel unique inside of our body, they each display particular skills, feel specific emotions, or think distinctive thoughts. In Whole Brain Living, Dr. Taylor shows us how to get acquainted with our own Four Characters, observe how they show up in our daily life, and learn to identify and relate to them in others as well. And she introduces a practice called the Brain Huddle--a tool for bringing our Four Characters into conversation with one another so we can tap their respective strengths and choose which one to embody in any situation.The more we become familiar with each of the characters in ourselves and others, the more power we gain over our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, and our lives. Indeed, we discover that we have the power to choose who and how we want to be in every moment. And when our Four Characters work together and balance one another as a whole brain, we gain a radical new road map to deep inner peace.Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist. In 1996 she experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain causing her to lose the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Her memoir, My Stroke of Insight, documenting her experience with stroke and eight-year recovery, spent 63 weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and is still routinely the #1 book about stroke on Amazon.This audio product contains a PDF with supporting material, and the PDF is available to download Personal Development Physical Illness & Disease Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Stress Management Emotions Human Brain Health Mental Health
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I highly recommend this beautiful book. Jill is a joyful and resilient person. She has had a powerful and dramatic personal experience and is generous and bold enough to share that with the world. This book outlines a useful model and techniques that will help you to understand yourself and others and to build vital and transformative connections both within and without. Do you want to have greater success reaching your goals? Listen to this book.

Jill is a wonderful speaker and writer

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What a gift! Thank you Jill Bolte Taylor for your informative and incredible book!
If everyone had access to read this our relationships and our world would most definitely be a more peaceful, beautiful and healthy place.

Incredible!

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Such a fascinating book and I learnt so much and I am encouraging others to read it as it really is an eye-opener into life and how we operate as humans!
Thank you Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor for your passion and zest for life and for being a role model for many people overcoming challenges and health issues.
I will have to re-read the book as there is so much vita information: thank you again!

Amazing 💛

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Expertly delivered information that is invaluable for peaceful coexistence within oneself and within the world.

Spectacular!

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Oh my… I’m trying to finish this. I really want to give it a chance. But it’s painful. Having not read the author’s previous work, but being familiar with her credentials, I guess I was expecting something considerably less… fluffy. Let’s just say, it’s more geared toward an Oprah’s Book Club pick than a Pulitzer pick.

It started with an ominous feeling when I heard her voice, that she chose to narrate it herself. Nothing wrong with the voice per se, but a professional narrator would have clearly been much more effective. Just weird inflections, and some stilted almost cartoonish emphases.

My hopes climbed a bit when she qualified early on that the science around left/right brain has been overblown into neuro-myth territory over the years. (I had just read Michael Gazzaniga’s latest book right before this one, who pioneered that early science, and it was a dense, rewarding treatment).

Then it all fell apart. She goes full throttle into shtick-y, pop psych couched in neuro-speak, esoteric woo woo. She disregards her own qualification about the mythology that has grown around the split brain. She drags Jung into it for some reason. It all feels like a book that was written for profit more than content, like it’s to book keynotes and workshops around a bunch of repackaged weak tea motivational psychobabble.

It might get better. I’m not sure because it’s so hard to get through. I’m going to keep trying once I’ve cleansed my palette with some science.

Not sure what I was expecting…

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