Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

I certainly studied stroke at a cellular level.

I certainly studied all dementia, all kinds of neurological trauma.

But I was a girl, I was a lab rat.

So I'm not, my point here is I was not an MD.

I was not a neurologist.

So when I woke up on the morning of December 10, 1996, I woke up, as soon as I sat up, I had a major pounding behind my left eye.

And it was very unusual for me to experience any kind of pain.

I was generally very happy, healthy, knock on wood.

But I had this pounding pain, and so I thought, okay, I'm going to exercise and get my blood flowing, and hopefully I would feel better.

So I got up, but as soon as I got up, I realized that the light coming in through the windows was really burning.

It was uncomfortable.

And so I closed the windows, closed the blinds.

I got on my cardio glider.

It's a full body, full exercise machine back in the 90s.

And I was jamming away on this thing, and I looked at my hands, and my hands looked like, literally looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar.

And I thought, wow, that's unusual.

And the pounding kept going, and I just looked at myself, and it was as though I was observing myself having this experience instead of being in the body having the experience.

And the pounding in the head just wasn't getting any better.

And I thought, OK, enough of exercise.

So I thought, OK, I'm going to take a shower because at this point I'm still heading to work.