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Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor gave a vivid account of the morning she suffered a massive stroke—while fully conscious—during her conversation with Oprah Winfrey on her podcast, Oprah’s Super Soul. The throwback episode, reuploaded on April 9, 2025, on spotify, revisited the moment Dr. Taylor realized she was in the midst of a medical emergency
During the interview, Winfrey asked Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about the exact moment she realized that there was a stroke coming. In response, Dr. Taylor gave a detailed account of her usual morning routine, describing how, while preparing to drive to work, her body began to shut down.
"Then the next thing my brain said to me was, you know it’s a stroke", Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor recalled.
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Doctor Jill Bolte Taylor is the author of the bestselling book My Stroke of Insight, where she detailed her experience as a stroke survivor. The 65-year-old is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist teaching at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the national spokesperson for the mentally ill via the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center.
During her candid interview with Winfrey, Dr. Taylor explained the startling moment the stroke began.
"I had just got out of the shower, and I had dressed for work and I was walking around my apartment and I was visualizing the road to McLean Hospital – when the stroke happened", she explained
She then described the feeling of losing control over her own body as her "right arm went totally paralyzed". This was the first major indication of her stroke
"It was—it was amazing. I’ve never had anything like that happen before", Dr. Taylor remarked.
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor discusses the events of the morning before the stroke happened with Oprah Winfrey
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor shared her unique perspective as both a researcher and stroke survivor in her conversation with Winfrey during Oprah’s Super Soul.
The “stroke triumphant,” Dr. Taylor also recounted the vivid and unsettling series of events on the morning of her stroke—moments that, in hindsight, offered clear warning signs that something was deeply wrong.
As a neuroscientist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor had spent her career studying the human brain. That morning, before she had a stroke, she found herself turning her expertise inward as she experienced her brain shutting down slowly.
Dr. Taylor told Winfrey how that morning, she woke up with a "pounding pain behind my left eye".
"It pulsed at my head, it burned my brain, it was very uncomfortable, and it was very unusual for me to have any kind of pain. I am not a person who gets headaches. I exercise regularly. I had zero warning signs for stroke", she explained.
Assuming it to be a passing headache, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor decided to proceed with her usual morning workout, hoping that exercise would help increase blood flow and ease the discomfort.
But instead of feeling better, she became increasingly aware that something was off. There was a shift—not just physically, but in her entire consciousness.
"Well, that morning I wasn’t very healthy… there was the shift in perception, a shift in consciousness where I essentially became a witness to myself being on this machine having this experience", Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor recalled.
When Winfrey asked her what was going through her mind at the time, Dr. Taylor admitted she couldn’t immediately comprehend what was happening.
"Well, I knew something was going on but I didn’t know… I’ve never had a hemorrhage, I’ve never had a stroke, so I couldn’t know that that was what I was having", Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor remarked.
She then recalled stepping off her exercise machine as she started noticing more strange symptoms—"slowed thoughts", a "rigid body", and "a narrowing of perception". In the shower, the sound of water crashing into the tub overwhelmed her senses.
Although she admitted that at this point she still didn't know it was a stroke, she was aware of her body, signaling to her that something was wrong.
"When I turned on the shower, the volume of the sound of the water… it just knocked me back. I realized at that point that I’m having a major problem, and it's involving my auditory system", she shared.
At present, the neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor continues to share her insights and experiences with the world through lectures, teaching, and writing, detailing her brain surgery recovery, neuroplasticity, and the potential of the human brain.
