Reaching joy and love by shifting one's attention

My last post was about how I was inspired to expand joy in my life. In one of the comments, someone mentioned that I should look into the work of Jill Bolte Taylor. Little did I know this would set me down a winding road changing how I think about where and how I focus my attention.

This post has gotten much longer than I expected so here is a summary:

We can only experience joy through the right brain, however, most of our life is spent in the left-brain which is analytical and suppresses joy. Shifting into right-brain mode—through mindfulness and by focusing on sensations—unlocks joy and connection. Focusing on a third dimension, the Heart, unlocks love. By consciously shifting out of the left-brain into the right-brain and the heart, we can live a life full of joy and love.

Okie dokie, let's get to it.

The story of Jill Bolte Taylor

For those of you that haven't seen or don't remember the story of Jill Bolte Taylor, she was a neuroscientist that suffered a stroke that debilitated her left-brain. As a result, right after the stroke Jill felt extreme love and connection with the world, effectively experiencing it directly similar to those that have reached high levels of enlightenment or are on mind-expanding drugs. As a neuroscientist, Jill then spent the rest of her life explaining what she experienced and analyzing it from a neuroscience perspective. She has many videos (including a popular TED talk) and many books on the topic. Her main contention is the following:

We can only experience joy via the right brain. Our left brain is the analytical, thinking part of the brain and it’s where spend most of our time. As long as the left-brain is dominant, the right brain is subdued. However, once you can reduce the left-brain’s dominance, you can then unlock and experience joy.¹

After watching these videos, a few pieces clicked in my head. This concept of "activating the right brain” rung a bell… “I've seen this before!" I realized... This is how I learned to draw!

Drawing on the right side of the brain

Many years ago I learned how to draw. By following the instructions in a book I went from a below average drawer, ashamed of my skills, to an above-average one, comfortable sketching the world around me. I attribute this entirely to the book "Drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards.

The main approach from the book is teaching the student how to move into "right brain mode." Shifting into right brain mode is the main key to being a good drawer. Edwards' main lesson is that we need to learn how to shift into right-brain mode seamlessly to truly see the world around us:

The left hemisphere analyzes, abstracts, counts, marks time, plans step-by-step procedures, verbalizes, makes rational statements based on logic. […] On the other hand, we have a second way of knowing: the right-hemisphere mode. We “see” things in this mode that may be imaginary — existing only in the mind’s eye — or recall things that may be real (can you imagine your front door, for example?). […] Using the right hemisphere, we understand metaphors, we dream, we create new combinations of ideas. When something is too complex to describe, we can make gestures that communicate. Psychologist David Galin has a favorite example: try to describe a spiral staircase without making a spiral gesture. And using the right hemisphere we are able to draw pictures of our perceptions.

To teach this shift, Edwards uses a number of drawing exercises that force the right brain to activate. For example, drawing something upside down forces one to use the right brain since it’s harder to think about the drawing analytically. Over time, by using these practices one can learn how to "feel the shift to right brain mode" and this unlocks one’s latent drawing skills.

In retrospect I now realize that the feeling of shifting to right-brain from drawing is also present through meditation and mindfulness. Similar to how a drawer will really see the world around them – the grain of wood, the shine in someone's eyes, the details on a wall – after going into deep meditation you can also start to really feel and see the world: you feel the sensations in your body that were there and you've never noticed before; you notice the hidden contours in the world around you... This shift into right brain mode is the same shift.

Mindful eating as an attention shifting practice

Seeing Mindfulness through the lens of quieting the left-brain to activate the right- suddenly makes passages I love seem self-evident. Here is Jan Chozen Bays writing in “How to Train an Elephant” (emphasis added):

The Buddha spoke of taming the mind. He said it was like taming a wild forest elephant. Just as an untamed elephant can do damage, trampling crops and injuring people, so the untamed, capricious mind can cause harm to us and those around us… Mindfulness is a potent tool for training the mind, allowing us to access and use the mind’s true potential for insight, kindness, and creativity.

The Buddha pointed out that when a wild elephant is first captured and led out of the jungle, it has to be tethered to a stake. In the case of our mind, that stake takes the form of whatever we attend to in our mindfulness practice - for example, the breath, a mouthful of food, or our posture. We anchored the mind by returning it over and over to one thing. This calms the mind and rids it of distractions.

These activities that lead us towards mindfulness are sometimes called "Dharma gates." Anything can be a gate. There is a famous Buddhist phrase, "Dharma gates are endless" to tell us that mindfulness is right there for the taking, if we can just shift our attention.²

One activity that lends itself extremely well to right-brain shifting is eating. All of your senses are activated when eating which gives you the opportunity to move directly into the right-brain mode multiple times a day.

To practice mindful eating, it’s recommended you explicitly go through all of your senses and fully focus your attention there. Here is a description of the process from Jon Kabat Zinn and one of the things that strikes me most is that for many people shifting out of left brain is a complete and utter revelation:

In the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts, the first formal meditation we usually engage in is to eat one raisin slowly and mindfully. With guidance, it can take up to five minutes or even longer. The clinic participants, for the most part medical patients, don’t expect meditation, or stress reduction for that matter, to be associated with eating, and that alone is a useful and cliché-dispelling message that meditation is not what we usually think it is. Actually, anything can be a form of meditation if we are present for our experience, which means if we are wholeheartedly aware. The impact of this strange and somewhat artificial exercise is driven home immediately, just in the seeing of the object we are about to take in, the smelling of it, the observing of how it actually gets to and then into the mouth, the chewing, the tasting, the changes as the raisin disintegrates, the impulse to swallow, the swallowing, the resting quietly for a moment in the aftermath of it all, all held in an exquisite awareness that seems to come effortlessly. People exclaim: “I don’t think I have ever tasted a raisin before.” “This is amazing.” “I actually feel full.” “I feel warm.” “I feel whole.” “I feel calm.” “I feel peaceful.” “I feel like a nervous wreck.” “I hate raisins.” (There are a lot of different responses, and no right answers—just what people are experiencing.)”

Can't you also experience joy through the left brain?

Not exactly. Thinking and joy can't overlap at the same time. Ultimately, the right brain and left brain modes are distinct. Here is Jan Chozen Bays:

Why can’t I think, walk, and be fully aware of the taste of [eating a] tart at the same time? I can’t do all these things at once because the mind has two distinct functions, thinking and awareness. When the thinking function is turned up, the awareness function is turned down. When the thinking function is going full throttle, we can eat an entire meal, an entire cake, an entire carton of ice cream, and not taste more than a bite or two. When we don’t taste what we eat, we can end up stuffed to the gills but feeling completely unsatisfied. This is because the mind and mouth weren’t present, weren’t tasting or enjoying, as we ate. The stomach became full but the mind and mouth were unfulfilled and continued calling for us to eat. If we don’t feel satisfied, we’ll begin to look around for something more or something different to eat. Everyone has had the experience of roaming the kitchen, opening cupboards and doors, searching in vain for something, anything, to satisfy. The only thing that will cure this, a fundamental kind of hunger, is to sit down and be, even for a few minutes, wholly present.”

That said, I think you can use the right brain to activate the left. In other words, by using the left brain in certain ways you can use it to shift towards the right.

A lot of the ideas in Sasha's post on joy (mentioned in the prior post) are related to using left brain to active right. For example, you can use your left brain to analyze certain parts of a piece of music or food and by naming them with your left brain it helps you then focus on them with your right.

Another example of this with mindful eating could be using the left brain to think about the impermanence or origin of an apple (left brain thinking). This can then lead you to activate your senses more for right-brain joy. By recognizing the apple’s impermanence you then pay even more attention to its color, taste and weight since you’ve told your mind it’s a more precious moment.³

What about love?

While thinking about joy I realized that there is another third set of experiences that this right-left dichotomy doesn’t really cover. These are broadly “Love.”

I think of this third “brain” as Heart.⁴

If the left brain is activated by analytical thinking, and the right brain is activated by mindfulness and the senses, then the Heart is activated by compassion and love.⁵

When I think about this I recognize that we are surrounded by practices that follow this path.

In Christian Churches there is a part of the ceremony called “Passing of the Peace” - in it you shake hands, hug or just say “Peace be with you" to other parishioners. This is one example of explicitly activating the heart through love. I might be alone in this, but this is my favorite part of the church ceremony and I always feel a bolt of energy when we say it to each other.

Similarly, in Buddhism there is a broader practice called Metta where you spend time directly focused on activating loving kindness to activate the heart:

Metta meditation is a beautiful support to other awareness practices. One recites specific words and phrases evoking a "boundless warm-hearted feeling." The strength of this feeling is not limited to or by family, religion, or social class. […]

Metta is first practiced toward oneself, since we often have difficulty loving others without first loving ourselves. Sitting quietly, mentally repeat, slowly and steadily, the following or similar phrases:

"May I be happy. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be peaceful and at ease."

After a period of directing loving-kindness toward yourself, bring to mind a friend or someone in your life who has deeply cared for you. Then slowly repeat phrases of loving-kindness toward them:

"May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease."

As you continue the meditation, you can bring to mind other friends, neighbors, acquaintances, strangers, animals, and finally people with whom you have difficulty. […]

This practice directly focuses one’s attention on love, activates the heart, and can be quite powerful.⁶

OK, but how do I actually quiet my left brain?

Meditation

The first and most important practice to quiet the left brain is meditation. Meditation is absolutely the key. There are lots of forms of meditation but in my experience they all lead to quieting the left-brain albeit in slightly different ways.

One thing that I think doesn't get mentioned often enough, however, is that there are a lot of benefits from longer meditation sessions. Depending on how mindful you are when you start meditating, it takes a while to fully center and enter deep concentration. I find I don’t actually reach deep levels of concentration until at least minute 20-30, especially if I haven’t meditated for a while. Every single time I meditate 45-60 minutes I tell myself I need to do that more often...

Mindfulness

The second important set of practices is mindfulness (aka "meditation in action").

From Jan Chozen Bays:

The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has called mindfulness a miracle. It seems like it. When we learn how to use this simple tool and find for ourselves what it can do, it seems miraculous. It can transform boredom into curiosity, distressed restlessness into ease, and negativity into gratitude. Using mindfulness we will find that anything, anything, we bring our full attention to will begin to open up and reveal worlds we never suspected existed. In all my experience as a physician and a Zen teacher I have never found anything to equal it.

Mindful eating is one of the clearest examples of using mindfulness to activate your right-brain and heart.

Mindful eating is an experience that engages all parts of us, our body, our heart, and our mind, in choosing, preparing, and eating food. Mindful eating involves all the senses. It immerses us in the colors, textures, scents, tastes, and even sounds of drinking and eating. It allows us to be curious and even playful as we investigate our responses to food and our inner cues to hunger and satisfaction.

Loving Kindness

The third key practice is loving kindness or compassion practices. The Metta meditation I mention above is extremely powerful if practiced - even short sessions I’ve found have transformative impact.

Gratitude practices I think also fit this broad umbrella - focusing on being thankful activates your heart and can be done anywhere and everywhere. Walking down the street. In the shower. Driving down the street... You can always be grateful.

Often these three practices get combined. An example is the RAIN practice from Tara Brach or Jonathan Faust's somatic practices where you focus on the sensations of the body while meditating. In one session you can calm the left-brain, activate your senses and feel love.

The question is: Where do I focus my attention?

What I've realized as I've used this taxonomy (left, right, heart) is that I have a huge predisposition towards just focusing my attention in left-brain thinking. In fact, days where I don't meditate in the morning I might spend almost all day in the left brain! Like the entire day - it seems crazy when I type it and yet...

Why does this matter? Well, the paths to joy and love are by moving out of the left brain. So if I spend all of my day in the left brain is it any surprise I can get exhausted and that I might not be as joyful on a given day? If I spend all my day in the left brain, then of course I'm going to be low on joy.

Some of the questions I ask myself:

When you wake up are you thinking or are you experiencing the world around you? Before thinking and solving problems, can you just live in your senses? Can you wake up and feel love?

When you are having a conversation, are you in your left brain? Can you shift out and feel loving kindness? Can you truly see and hear the experience without thinking?

When you are doing chores - are you experiencing the world or are you thinking? Are you monotasking and really tuned into your senses? Can you experience full gratitude and joy even with mundane tasks?

Thinking of my day and my attention as split between these three parts of my body, I realize that the paths for deeper joy and happiness are mine to choose.

Pacifica, California - March 2025

1. Taylor’s book eventually divides the brain into 4 pieces (right thinking, left thinking, right feeling and left feelings). I find the simpler taxonomy more intuitive.

Also, I realize “right brain” might not be exactly right physiologically but I find the term useful (e.g., this might be some part of the limbic system or cerebellum but this isn't a science post - it's a blog on substack :)

2. I think the senses as being the path to joy is also why Analog experiences can be more joyful than Digital experiences. When you look at your phone, or watch TV you can’t use all your senses. As a consequence the experiences are almost exclusively left-brained and it’s hard to maintain / enhance mindfulness through screens. From a joy-inducing perspective, doing the same activity where you can fully engage the most senses has the greatest potential.

3. The concept of "Flow" is also very left-brain leaning. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book primarily focuses on structuring activities to be the right level of difficulty and structure to be enjoyable. Interestingly he only superficially covers yoga and meditation and as far as I can tell doesn’t cover mindfulness at all. That said, the book has interesting ideas for how to structure your your time to maximize feelings of flow especially at work and for achievements.

4. Interesting that in Japanese and Chinese the character for “brain” was originally heart and a there are a lot of expressions that still use “heart thinking”. More from ChatGPT on this.

5. Note also that the heart chakra is activated through compassion. I think it’s not a coincidence that Jesus's love is often displayed by having a big heart.

6. In the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, Metta practice is what Evelyn does as she ascends the ladder in the IRS: first she has loving understanding towards herself, and once that is unblocked she then is able to do “loving kindness kung fu” as she moves up the ladder ascending into her higher levels of self-realization by recognizing her own love for each person. Each step of the IRS’ ladder connects her compassion to another characters (e.g., from the IRS lady, to the raccoon-chef, to the IRS S&M boss). She ascends the levels of the stairs until she reaches the top level and finally is able to feel compassion and through it transcendence for her daughter and father.