My Beautiful Broken Brain Page #7

for a certain proportion.

So I'm always a little bit wary

about excluding people,

because as soon as you start

excluding a certain type of person,

it then means that whatever you find

cannot be generalized to those people.

Okay. I wouldn't want to be,

you know...

I wouldn't want to contribute

to people missing out

on potentially helpful treatment.

But, um...

But, yeah, at the same time...

-Uh, well, it's not...

-...having a fit isn't fun.

It's not really a decision for you

or a decision for me.

There's a group of us, and, ultimately,

it's down to the ethics committee.

So they decide what is safe

and what isn't.

I mean, if there is a safety issue, then,

surely it's a good thing to exclude those.

[clicks tongue] I think it's something

that we're all discussing.

-Yeah.

-Okay.

[Jan] Okay, so it didn't work.

Is that what you're hearing?

[Lotje] No, it did work, there's a 60--

There's 40% increase of improvement

in the first week.

[Jan] Okay, I can't read this, then.

Can you explain it to me?

[Lotje] Do you see... Do you see...

I mean, to be honest,

I have no f***ing idea.

[Jan] So basically, if the red line--

[Lotje] There's a 40% increase

in the first week,

and then it flatlines out.

[Lotje] It terrifies me that death

can just spring up out of nowhere,

and, um, threaten to take me away.

I mean, that could happen

to anybody at any time.

[upbeat music playing]

[Lotje] My first holiday

since my brain was broken

with the magical Miss Lucy McRae.

This is undoubtedly the cure.

The brain needs to be quiet

to perform its function.

Quiet.

I feel much closer to my consciousness,

a much more raw closeness to the self

that is the essence of me.

If the physical body,

the brain, is damaged,

does this extend to damage to the self?

I need to be comfortable with...

with subtle,

or some may say "unsubtle" differences

between who I was before

and who I am now.

In meditation, I've discovered

the fragility of the mind

and also its limitless resources.

And in that discovery,

I've become empowered.

The silence, solitude.

Salut.

[approaching footsteps]

[man speaking indistinctly]

[both chuckling]

[man speaking indistinctly in French]

No, a film.

[chuckling, speaking French]

Ah, it's me.

-[Lotje speaks French] Is it your garden?

-Yes.

Ah.

It's very peaceful here, there's no noise.

[man chuckles]

I'm here every day and there's no noise.

Apart from when I'm on my tractor.

[Lotje] Yeah?

Yes, I mean, the tractor makes noise.

Or when I use the trimmer...

To cut the grass.

But otherwise there's no noise.

[Lotje] No.

[Lotje speaking English]

Just breathe.

Don't panic. Let go of fear.

[Lotje breathing deeply]

Okay. I hope to be able to share with you

some insights from my own recovery of, um,

my intracerebral brain hemorrhage.

Cognition seems a very complex

and mysterious thing, um,

that I've tried to get my own head around.

So I hope I can share

some of those insights with you,

but I'm not sure if I can. [chuckling]

Um, I think one of the challenges,

probably, for therapists is to...

to just deal with the fact that you...

you know, you have to work with somebody

who is being assessed

and somebody who is being defined

by their limitations,

because that's the only way to figure out

how to make them better.

And I think just the experience of,

sort of, continually being defined by

what you can no longer do,

or how you're sort of limited,

becomes, I think, devastating.

Is there anything that you could

advise us, as therapists, um...

to help you get through that?

Or do you think there was no other way

that we could have done it,

but said it like it was?

To maybe focus on things that

a patient might find along the way.

[stammering] Where they're always, um,

initially defined by what they can't do,

they may discover something

that they weren't expecting at all,

which is certainly

what happened in my case.

Dear Mr. Lynch:

My name is Lotje Sodderland.

Almost exactly a year ago,

I had a brain hemorrhage.

It doesn't feel like a year,

'cause time has taken on

a different dimension.

I was trying to relearn my reading faculty

with a therapist.

And something struck me in those words

that completely changed

my experience of recovery.

I've learnt that I'm strong,

but I've also accepted my vulnerability.

I've learnt to focus only...

on what matters.

It just takes a very long time...

to get used to a new brain.

[recorded male voice] Please find

attached the tenancy agreement.

Please initial each page where prompted.

[Lotje]

I don't need to return to my old life.

This is a new existence, a new dynamic,

where I wasn't defined by my limitations,

but rather about endless possibility.

Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

-[fireworks crackling]

-[people cheering]

A really, really important

part of this story has been this film.

The film was something that was

absolutely born of necessity.

It's created a way for me to understand

something that's extremely complex,

and it's created a structure.

Yeah, a narrative structure

for me to understand my own story.

Happy face.

We don't really know the answers.

But what I can say

in this second of existence,

reality...

is only...

what we believe and perceive to be true.

That makes absolute sense to me.

And very little does these days.

Everybody loves a story.

And this is a really good one.

With a beginning and a very long middle,

and it will have an end.

The story will have an end.

The experience probably won't.

[indistinct conversations]

Hi, David. My name's Lotje Sodderland.

Are you Lotje Sodderland?

-I am.

-[audience laughing]

Lotje, it's so good to hear your voice.

I can't see you, Lotje, but I wanna say,

I loved your video letter to me.

And I'm very happy, as I told you,

that you found meditation

and you're enjoying it

and enjoying the benefits.

So, uh, what was your question

you'd like to ask tonight, Lotje?

I wanted to thank you, first of all,

for inviting me this evening,

but also for transforming my, um...

um, my experience.

Not only of a very sort of

devastating brain injury recovery,

but also of my sort of

perception of existence.

And, um... And my question to you was,

do you think the brain

is the engine of the mind or vice versa?

They say consciousness

is the driver of everything.

The brain is a beautiful thing.

And now with brain research,

they can see on the EEG machine

that when a person truly transcends,

they see a wondrous thing.

Boom! The full brain lights up.

They call it "total brain coherence."

And it's the only experience

in life that does that.

That coherence gets

more and more permanent,

giving rise to

higher states of consciousness,

and ultimately supreme enlightenment,

which is total fulfillment,

total liberation,

a state they describe as

"more than the most,"

living totality.

[slow music playing]

[inaudible]

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes