Discover how to tap into the present moment, shift out of anxiety and gain a sense of deep inner peace by understanding the brain's two hemispheres.

At age 37, Harvard neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive left-hemisphere stroke that took away her ability to speak, walk, read, write or remember any of her life - and gave her an unprecedented, profound experience of dwelling in the right hemisphere and the sense of oneness and peace to be found there. Her recovery led to her writing the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight, being named one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People in the world and delivering one of the top talks of all time at the world-renowned TED conference.

Dr Jill closed her famous TED talk by stating that we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Since she uttered those words in 2008, she has received hundreds of thousands of emails from people asking for a specific set of directions on how they too can choose a peaceful mind-set.

Whole Brain Living, Dr Jill's answer to that question and her response to those pleas for help, has been eagerly awaited for over a decade. Drawing upon up-to-the-minute brain science as well as a wealth of lived experience, Dr Jill will show you how you can tap into the right here, right now of your right hemisphere to relieve stress and gain the inner peace Jill describes in her TED Talk. Your brain holds the key to choosing who and how you are in each moment.

The New York Times best-selling author of My Stroke of Insight blends neuroanatomy with psychology to show how we can short-circuit emotional reactivity and find our way to peace. 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-author of the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight-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, available in paperback for the first time, Dr. Taylor blends neuroanatomy with psychology to help us: 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 Apply the wisdom of the Four Characters to every area of life-from work to relationships to health Use a powerful practice called the Brain Huddle-a tool for bringing our Four Characters into conversation with one another-to short-circuit emotional reactivity, tap our characters' 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.