In mainstream media, the idea of a stroke as something possible to learn from begins with Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey (2008) about her 1996 personal experience. A famous TED talk exists as well s a famous NPR audio interview. Jill’s account and insights are our starting place here, not our ending-place. Going further we can say, she stayed awake in the right brain. She said goodbye to at least some of her accumulated, arbitrary left-brain biographical identifications
Since everything inside out head is primarily invisible and not perceivable, let’s establish baselines for this discussion.
Basic hemisphere laterality pattern
The neuro-typical right~left hemisphere laterality patten in our head is:
– Left hemisphere thinks in man-made language and symbols. “d-o-g” on the left,
– Right hemisphere thinks thinks in feelings and pictures (Imagination, Intuition and Inspiration). “Man’s best friend” on the right.
Basic crossing-over pattern
dg-crossing-over
Left brain hemisphere is limited to language and symbols heavily focussed on only our five animal senses. Right brain hemisphere accesses all of Rudolf Steiner’s 12 Senses – https://thesteinerconnection.com/2022/07/21/the-12-senses/
Rudolf Steiner also emphasized blood and neurons are in a polarity relationship. Blood is our most alive, vital substance. Nerves are among our most dead and inert organic substance. This is what the blood-brain barrier is for, to keep a healthy balance of blood~nerves in the head.
In Left Hem, man-made words and symbols direct our awareness to five-sensory precepts gleaned from the external world. In Right Hem, pictures and feelings direct our awareness into the potential feeling intensity of the present moment, without judgement or evaluation.
Inner-cooperation as “using both hands”
Nature’s Plan was for humans to gradually learn and master using “both hands,” Right and Left Hems alternately, gut-brain and head-brain alternately, as useful-workable, in each moment, win-win teamwork, collaboration.
Briefly, several overlapping intelligences are available, standard equipment, in our less-conscious (sub- and unconscious) psyche:
– Left Hem is more YANG. In neuro-typical persons, it dominates the right side of our body, head to toes,
– The right side of our body and the cerebral NS ally with our capacity for active, masculine behavior (making good choices, being of service),
– Right Hem is more yin. In neuro-typical persons, it dominates the left side of our body, head to toes,
– The left side of our body and our ENS ally with our capacity for self-connection, internal self-awareness, cooperation and collaboration, receptivity and feminine behavior.
– In neuro-typical persons, from our head down to our diaphragm muscle, is allied more with our cerebral nervous system (CNS, head-brain),
– In neuro-typical persons, from our diaphragm muscle down to our toes, is allied more with our enteric nervous system (ENS, gut-brain),
When each paired intelligences can work cooperatively and collaboratively, there is contentment and easy function.
However, when even one of these pairs goes out of balance; and, one pole wants to dominate the other pole, inner cooperation lessens. The relations between the two poles of a pair, becomes a power game, a control game. Who’s on top? Who’s top dog? Only one can win. One must win and one must lose. This is win~lose thinking. In the last 250 years, Western male Patriarchy culture is highly characterized by an excess of this dis-connected, uncooperative, competitive mindset.
We can liken the conflict between any two poles to two lumberjacks standing on a big log floating down a river. Each lumberjack tries to roll the log to throw the other lumberjack off balance and into the water. The winner believes he will get the log all to himself. In strokes, the winner is the one side of the body left standing. The impaired side is the loser and gives up, beaten, defeated.
In a classic stroke, either Right Hem or Left Hem dominates the other hemisphere in a win~lose paradigm. A physical stroke makes the repeated choice of conflict and imagined dominance over inner cooperation physically manifest.
Any of the paired intelligences listed above can fall OUT of healthy inner-cooperation, fall into the errors of:
– being out-of-step with each other,
– inner cooperation and collaboration no longer a high priority,
– can’t work as a collaborative partners.
The classic stroke, where one side of the body “wins” and opposite side “loses,” physically manifests these fights, between one or more opposed intelligences, for dominance of the physical body.
The classical stroke is the culmination of conflict between head-brain and gut-brain, one or more of these processes:
– lack of inner self-connection and self-communication,
– lack of internal cooperation between head-brain and gut brain,
– lack of agreement between head-brain and gut brain,
– head-brain pushing, forcing your gut-brain past its mental-emotional limits,
– inner againstness towards your self, other people, the world or God.
In fewer words: The event of a stroke evidences a person has been at war inside, with themselves, for years. Is inner cooperation between the right and left sides of the body so important? Yes it is.
Not a one-time event, a process over time
As with heart attacks, strokes present as a physical-material event in a fixed-limited period of time. We understand such events better when we examine the process leading up to the event.
Topdog and underdog
Fritz Perls used to talk about such dynamics as conflicts between an internal topdog and an internal underdog. Your topdog is the internal half of you, you ascribe more strength, power and intelligence to.
Your underdog is your ability to relax and rest. Underdog provides an essential check for topdog’s tendency towards workaholic perfectionism. If topdog and underdog are in harmony, cooperation and collaboration, a good working relationship exists.
Dysfunctional topdog
dg-punch and judy
…is righteous, authoritarian, and bullying. The topdog uses statements such as “You should” or “You should not”, and manipulates with demands and threats of catastrophes. Sound like any political leaders in Washington DC you know of?
Dysfunctional underdog
…may look like the under-achieving cartoons of stoner, slacker, Cheech & Chong behavior. Underdog manipulates by being defensive, apologetic, and wheedling, also cunning. The underdog uses statements such as “I try my best” and “I can’t help it. See, I really am incompetent.”
It is possible to give voices to each of these two combatants using hand puppets.
Continual or unresolved disputes between topdog and underdog can be distressing and paralyzing. Topdog dominance looks like over-achieving, isolation and can’t relax. Underdog dominance looks like lack of forward motion in your life, your words and actions don’t match up, constant inner resistance.
Topdog can be either ENS or CNS
Complicating matters, either gut-brain (ENS) or head-brain (CNS) can claim the topdog position and bully the non-dominant internal self.
More common in women, the ENS claims the topdog position. It wants to be in charge of the the body, be in charge of what other people around them do with their feelings, emotions and emotional allegiances. It uses emotional demands to get other people to do things for them. In this case, underdog CNS mostly works for its agenda thru manipulation, seduction, “forgetting” giving up, distraction and resistance.
More common in men, the CNS claims the topdog position. It wants to be in charge of the the body and what other people think and do around them. It wants people near them to think as they do. It uses threats, anger and withholding to get others to line up with their agenda. In this case, underdog ENS mostly works for its agenda thru manipulation, blaming, “forgetting” giving up, procrastination, distraction and resistance.
Can you imagine how these two internal, polarized positions can progress to a show-down; where, one must win and one must lose? This is the event we call stroke.
Advanced topics in stroke
Perhaps you are reading this as you want to know how a stroke could be healing metaphor for you or a loved one. What is stoke a metaphor for? “If I get to the issues, will I experience a reduction of symptoms?” What an effective Health Intuitive does is assist people to connect the dots between their issues and their illnesses, to find the mental-emotional-unconscious unresolved issues, behind physical causes and symptoms. Then, if you have high willingness to heal said issues, many methods are available and can be effective.
The best way to avoid a stroke is to identify, locate and clear up as many unresolved sub- and unconscious conflicts as you can. Mimi Castellanos likes to talk about this as clearing up the top-bottom integration of CNS and ENS. I find it equally meaningful to identify, locate and clear up as many unresolved sub- and unconscious conflicts between right and left up and down the body.
More from Mimi Castellanos on strokes
We want adrenals to be open, not shutting down and not pounding, like a fist. It may be ovaries, close to adrenals, take on the dead, open or pounding character of the adrenals nearby. Check if ovaries are mirroring the adrenals.
Stroke pattern per Mimi is trying to move the heart, push the heart from the adrenals, I gotta, push-push, drive-drive, straining, forcing, not gentle. So we want to check if a person is running their heart by their adrenals vs. running their heart by having it open; and, resonating with the loving heart center.
A stroke can feel like pressure at the back of the head. This comes from the adrenals in some way Bruce is unclear on. The solution seems to be the above re-calibration with the heart center in center of chest, not the heart muscle so much. Get out of pushing and adrenal motivating.
The healthy heart pattern is heart center in middle of chest open, heart muscle aligned with this frequency, all organs aligned with the frequency of heart center.
References
At War Within: The Double-Edged Sword of Immunity (2008) by William Clark
“AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE: THE WAR WITHIN US” (2020) – https://www.vitasoul.co.za/blog/autoimmune-disease-the-war-within-us/
“The War Within” (2012) https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-war-within-41419
“Ending the War Within (immune disorders)” – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ending-war-within-immune-disorders-bruce-dickson/
You Have Three Selves; Simply the clearest model of the whole-person; Orientation, 2nd edition
Best psychosomatic/medical intuitive literature is Your Body Speaks Your Mind by Deb Shapiro. It’s better than Messages from the Body on Strokes
Holistic Brain Balance 