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Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor shared her “stroke of insight” at this year’s TED Conference in Monterey, California. If you’re interested in hemispheric brain function, mystical experiences, the concept of humans as energy beings, or consciousness, this is a must-see video.

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One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness …

Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the “Singin’ Scientist.”

What she said about the right hemisphere and perception:

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like.

I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

I have never experienced right-hemisphere perception like this. It’s hard for me to even imagine it. My left hemisphere is running the show in my head. However, my “body” easily connects to the energy of my environment. Actually, everyone does this. But I think we have varying abilities for receiving and perceiving information. Fascinating stuff.

That you’ll like this article about intuition.

Go with your gut — intuition is more than just a hunch, says Leeds research

Most of us experience “gut feelings” we can’t explain, such as instantly loving or hating a new property when we’re househunting or the snap judgements we make on meeting new people. Now researchers at Leeds say these feelings or “intuitions” are real and we should take our hunches seriously.

According to a team led by Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the Centre for Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School, intuition is the result of the way our brains store, process and retrieve information on a subconscious level and so is a real psychological phenomenon which needs further study to help us harness its potential.

There are many recorded incidences where intuition prevented catastrophes and cases of remarkable recoveries when doctors followed their gut feelings. Yet science has historically ridiculed the concept of intuition, putting it in the same box as parapsychology, phrenology and other pseudoscientific practices.

Through analysis of a wide range of research papers examining the phenomenon, the researchers conclude that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision — but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we’re aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong.

Read the entire article

I’m highly intuitive and highly sensitive, which is a blessing and a curse. So I’m very interested in exploring all the ways we’re able to take in and process information. For example, I want to know if the heart’s powerful electromagnetic field contains information that others can sense and understand. I want to know if the earth’s electromagnetic field can carry information from one brain to another. More on this later!