10 Things Brain Injury Survivors Wish You Understood About Their Recovery

A friend of mine tells me that she is sure I could recover my left hand if I tried.  I deflect the question when I really should have said there are only three people in the world I would listen to if they said it was possible. Two were former therapists that had strokes. Notice, not a single doctor makes the list.

Amy Elder of mycerebellarstrokerecovery

and Rebecca Dutton of Home After a Stroke 

and Peter Levine, a PTA and researcher of The Stroke Recovery Blog

Yes, I’ve tried that too: When well-intentioned advice hurts

The latest here:

10 Things Brain Injury Survivors Wish You Understood About Their Recovery

Medically reviewed by Elizabeth Denslow, OTR/L — written by Flint Rehab.

Last updated on December 5, 2025

Recovering from a brain injury can feel like entering a different world. Survivors often say the hardest part is not only healing physically and mentally, but also helping others understand what life looks like now. Friends and family usually want to be supportive, but many are unsure how to help or what their loved one is experiencing on a daily basis. If you’re trying to understand what someone is going through, this guide can help. Here are ten important things that brain injury survivors wish more people truly understood, along with insights and examples that reflect real challenges, emotions, and victories. 

1. “I’m Still Me, Even If I Seem Different”

A brain injury can affect personality, mood, memory, and communication. These changes can be confusing for both the survivor and the people around them. Still, survivors often want you to know that their identity has not disappeared. They may feel different, but they still carry the same values, interests, and sense of self.

Healing takes time, and certain abilities return at different stages. Instead of focusing on what seems “different,” try seeing the person you’ve always known. Support, patience, and familiar routines can help them feel grounded.

2. “Fatigue Isn’t Just Being Tired”

Post-brain injury fatigue is one of the most common and misunderstood symptoms. This type of exhaustion is not the same as staying up too late or skipping a cup of coffee. It can come on suddenly, without warning, and make even simple tasks feel overwhelming.

Because the brain is working harder to complete basic functions, energy drains quickly. Survivors often describe feeling wiped out after conversations, errands, or problem-solving. Rest is not optional during recovery. It is part of healing.

Understanding this helps reduce frustration for everyone involved. Offering breaks, limiting long activities, and respecting boundaries make a big difference.

3. “Cognitive Challenges Are Invisible but Very Real”

Many survivors look “fine” on the outside, which can make invisible symptoms harder for others to understand. Cognitive challenges can include:

• Trouble concentrating
• Memory lapses
• Difficulty following conversations
• Slower processing
• Trouble staying organized

These symptoms can affect jobs, relationships, and daily routines. Someone may forget something you said five minutes ago or lose track of time without meaning to. It is not intentional.

Instead of assuming someone is careless or not paying attention, try using clear communication, writing things down, and giving extra time. These small changes create a more supportive environment.

4. “Sensory Overload Happens Quickly”

Busy places with bright lights, loud sounds, or lots of movement can be extremely overwhelming. Even familiar environments can cause discomfort when the brain has trouble filtering information.

Survivors may avoid restaurants, malls, or social events because those settings drain their energy or cause headaches. They may appear anxious or withdrawn, but often it is simply their brain trying to keep up.

Understanding sensory overload helps you support your loved one during outings. Offering quieter spaces, shorter visits, or flexible plans can prevent stress and help them feel more in control.

5. “Emotional Changes Are Not Personal”

A brain injury affects neural pathways responsible for controlling emotions. This can lead to mood swings, irritability, anxiety, sadness, or trouble expressing feelings appropriately.

These emotional changes often catch survivors off guard. They may feel frustrated with themselves and worry about how others see them. Loved ones sometimes take these reactions personally, but survivors want you to know that these shifts are part of the injury, not a reflection of how they feel about you.

Responding with compassion instead of judgment helps reduce shame and supports long-term recovery. Encouraging open communication can also help everyone navigate emotional changes together.

6. “Recovery Is Not Linear”

One day may be full of progress, while the next day feels like a setback. This can be discouraging and confusing. Survivors often wish more people understood that good days and tough days are both normal.

Healing takes time, and the brain rebuilds connections gradually. Progress might look slow, but each small step matters. Celebrating consistent effort, not just big milestones, helps survivors stay motivated and hopeful.

When setbacks happen, supportive language such as “You’re doing your best” or “Progress takes time” can help shift the focus back to long-term healing.

7. “I Need Patience More Than Anything”

Brain injury survivors often feel pressure to “get back to normal,” but recovery takes place at its own pace. They may struggle with things that used to be simple, such as following instructions, remembering appointments, or completing tasks.

Loved ones may unintentionally rush or push the survivor, especially when they look physically healthy. Survivors want to feel understood and supported, not hurried or judged.

Offering patience, giving extra time to complete tasks, and avoiding comments like “You used to do this easily” can help them feel respected and valued.

8. “Social Interactions Can Be Exhausting”

Conversations require memory, attention, processing, and emotional awareness. All of these skills may be affected after a brain injury. Survivors often feel worn out after social events, even when they enjoy spending time with friends and family.

They may:

• Lose their train of thought
• Struggle to follow group conversations
• Need time to think before responding
• Feel overwhelmed in crowds

This does not mean they want to be isolated. It simply means their brain is working harder behind the scenes.

Allowing breaks, choosing calm environments, and speaking at a steady pace can help survivors feel more comfortable and included.

9. “Independence Matters, Even When I Need Help”

Most brain injury survivors value independence, and needing help can feel frustrating or discouraging. They may want to do things on their own, even if it takes longer or requires adaptive tools. This helps them rebuild confidence and develop new skills.

Friends and family often step in quickly, hoping to speed things up or prevent mistakes. While this comes from a place of care, it can unintentionally reduce confidence.

Many survivors appreciate support, but they also want the chance to try. Asking questions like “Would you like help or do you want to try it first?” respects their independence while still offering assistance.

10. “My Recovery Doesn’t Have an Expiration Date”

A common misconception is that recovery stops after a certain point. Many survivors hear comments like “By now you should be back to normal” or “Isn’t this the best it will get?” These statements can be hurtful and untrue.

The brain continues to change, adapt, and strengthen far beyond the early stages. Progress can happen months, years, or even decades after an injury. Consistent practice, therapy, and daily activity can all spark improvement.

Survivors want loved ones to know that healing is ongoing. Encouragement, belief, and support can fuel their motivation and remind them that long-term growth is possible.

Why Understanding Matters

A brain injury affects every part of a survivor’s life, including physical function, emotions, relationships, and daily routines. When loved ones understand these challenges, it strengthens trust and reduces frustration on both sides. It also helps survivors feel supported during a life transition that can feel isolating at times.

Families and friends rarely intend to misunderstand. They simply may not know what the survivor is experiencing under the surface. Learning, listening, and staying open to new information helps create a more supportive environment.

Ways Brain Injury Survivors Can Advocate for Themselves

Survivors may also benefit from communicating their needs clearly. A few helpful strategies include:

• Sharing a list of symptoms to help loved ones understand what daily life looks like
• Using planners, apps, or memory tools to stay organized
• Creating quiet spaces at home to recharge
• Setting boundaries without guilt
• Asking healthcare providers for clear explanations and written instructions
• Exploring therapy, such as occupational therapy, cognitive therapy, or speech therapy

Self-advocacy helps survivors gain confidence while giving others concrete ways to help.

A Message to Brain Injury Survivors

If you are recovering from a brain injury, know that your feelings are valid. Healing can feel slow and complicated, but your progress is real, even on days when you cannot see it. You deserve support, understanding, and patience from the people around you.

You are not alone. Many survivors share the same frustrations, hopes, and challenges. Recovery is not a straight line, but every effort matters.

A Message to Loved Ones of Brain Injury Survivors

If you are supporting a survivor, your presence matters more than you realize. Compassionate understanding helps create a space where healing feels possible. Even small gestures, like offering extra time or listening without judgment, can change the entire tone of recovery.

Your encouragement, patience, and willingness to learn can make an enormous difference in their journey. If you begin feeling overwhelmed, consider joining a brain injury family support group to learn and be encouraged by others in similar situations.

Final Thoughts

Brain injury recovery can be complex, emotional, and full of unexpected twists. Survivors want the people in their lives to understand what they are experiencing, not out of pity, but out of respect and support. When friends and family recognize invisible challenges and respond with compassion, survivors feel more secure and less alone.

If you take only one thing from this article, let it be this: survivors are working hard every day. Your patience and understanding help them keep moving forward.We hope you enjoyed this article and subscribe to our newsletter for weekly articles just like this delivered straight to your inbox — subscribe here.

Flint Rehab is leading the way in neuro-rehabilitation with products that are backed by research and clinically proven to help you recover more effectively from stroke, TBI, and SCI.

Trusted by over 300+ rehab facilities and 10,000+ home customers.

How Meditation Works & Science-Based Effective Meditations

 If your doctor didn't start you meditating immediately you don't have a functioning stroke doctor or hospital. Run away to someplace better.

Amy as been trying to get this into stroke survivor rehab for years. If your doctor and stroke hospital has none they are totally fucking incompetent and irresponsible.  I have never been able to mediate, I do use forest bathing in the woods for that purpose.

Meditation and Physical Therapy by Amy Elder

• meditation (52 posts to January 2012)

 

 The latest here:

How Meditation Works & Science-Based Effective Meditations

Listen: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

In this episode, I discuss the biological mechanisms of the state changes that occur during different types of meditation and describe how to develop the meditation practice optimal for you. I explain key meditation principles, such as using specific breathwork patterns and adjusting your perception to specific locations along the continuum between interoception, exteroception and dissociation. I discuss how meditation practices lead to long-term trait changes and neuroplasticity, including changing your default mood, reducing baseline anxiety/depression, increasing your ability to focus, enhancing relaxation, improving sleep, and increasing your overall happiness level.  I also explain the concept behind the “third-eye center,” what mindfulness is from a biological standpoint, the power of ultra-brief meditations and how to select the best meditation and time and duration to meditate to meet your need. I also explain a novel open-eyed perception-based meditation that may enhance focus, relaxation and task-switching ability. Whether you are a novice or an experienced meditator or simply interested in how our brain controls different aspects of conscious awareness and self-regulation, this episode should interest you.

Prevalence of acute dizziness and vertigo in cortical stroke

 The more important question to answer is: How do you train emergency room staff to not dismiss theses cases in young adults as drunkenness?

Amy on her 36 hour wait for a diagnosis.

The latest here:

Prevalence of acute dizziness and vertigo in cortical stroke

Yuk Man Chan, Yean Wong, Noorulain Khalid, Stephen Wastling, Andreas Flores-Martin, Lucy-Anne Frank, Nehzat Koohi N, Qadeer Arshad, Indran Davagnanam, Diego Kaski

First published: 11 June 2021

https://doi.org/10.1111/ene.14964

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi:10.1111/ene.14964

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ABSTRACT

Background

In posterior circulation stroke, vertigo can be a presenting feature. However, whether isolated hemispheric strokes present with vertigo is less clear, despite a few single case-reports in the literature. Here we, a) explored the prevalence of vertigo/dizziness in acute stroke and, b) considered the cortical distribution of these lesions in relation to both the known vestibular cortex and evolution of these symptoms.

Methods

We conducted structured interviews in 173 consecutive unselected patients admitted to the hyperacute stroke unit at the University College London Hospitals. The interview was used to evaluate whether the patient was suffering from dizziness and/or vertigo before the onset of the stroke and at the time of the stroke (acute dizziness/vertigo), and the nature of these symptoms.

Results

112 patients had subcortical lesions and 53 patients had cortical infarcts, of which 21 patients reported acute dizziness. Out of these 21, five patients reported rotational vertigo. 17 of the total 53 patients had lesions in known vestibular cortical areas distributed within the insular and parietal opercular cortices.

Conclusions

The prevalence of vertigo in acute cortical strokes was 9%, with no single locus of lesion overlap. There is growing evidence supporting a lateralised vestibular cortex, with speculation that cortical strokes affecting the right hemisphere, are more likely to cause vestibular symptoms than left-hemispheric strokes. We observed a trend for this association, with the right hemisphere affected in four of five patients who reported spinning vertigo at the onset of the stroke.

 

Neuroscience Reveals 50-Year-Olds Can Have the Brains of 25-Year-Olds If They Do This 1 Thing - Mediation

Amy as been trying to get this into stroke survivor rehab for years. If your doctor and stroke hospital has none they are totally fucking incompetent and irresponsible.  I have never been able to mediate, I do use forest bathing in the woods for that purpose.

Meditation and Physical Therapy by Amy Elder

The latest here:

Neuroscience Reveals 50-Year-Olds Can Have the Brains of 25-Year-Olds If They Do This 1 Thing - Meditation

Neuroscientist Sara Lazar, of Mass General and Harvard Medical School, started studying meditation by accident. She sustained running injuries training for the Boston Marathon, and her physical therapist told her to stretch. So Lazar took up yoga.

"The yoga teacher made all sorts of claims, that yoga would increase your compassion and open your heart," said Lazar. "And I'd think, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here to stretch.' But I started noticing that I was calmer. I was better able to handle more difficult situations. I was more compassionate and open hearted, and able to see things from others' points of view."

Eventually, she looked up the scientific literature on mindfulness meditation (a category into which yoga can fall). She found the ever-increasing body of evidence that shows that meditation decreases stress, depression, and anxiety, reduces pain and insomnia, and increases quality of life.

So she started doing some neuroscience research of her own.

In her first study, she looked at long-term meditators (those with seven to nine years of experience) versus a control group. The results showed that those with a strong meditation background had increased gray matter in several areas of the brain, including the auditory and sensory cortex, as well as insula and sensory regions.

This makes sense, since mindfulness meditation has you slow down and become aware of the present moment, including physical sensations such as your breathing and the sounds around you.

However, the neuroscientists also found that the meditators had more gray matter in another brain region, this time linked to decision-making and working memory: the frontal cortex. In fact, while most people see their cortexes shrink as they age, 50-year-old meditators in the study had the same amount of gray matter as those half their age.

That's remarkable.

Lazar and her team wanted to make sure this wasn't because the long-term meditators had more gray matter to begin with, so they conducted a second study. In it, they put people with no experience with meditation into an eight-week mindfulness program.

The results? Even just eight weeks of meditation changed people's brains for the better. There was thickening in several regions of the brain, including the left hippocampus (involved in learning, memory, and emotional regulation); the TPJ (involved in empathy and the ability to take multiple perspectives); and a part of the brainstem called the pons (where regulatory neurotransmitters are generated).

Plus, the brains of the new meditators saw shrinkage of the amygdala, a region of the brain associated with fear, anxiety, and aggression. This reduction in size of the amygdala correlated to reduced stress levels in those participants.

How long do you have to meditate to see such results? Well, in the study, participants were told to meditate for 40 minutes a day, but the average ended up being 27 minutes a day. Several other studies suggest that you can see significant positive changes in just 15 to 20 minutes a day. 

As for Lazar's own meditation practice, she says it's "highly variable. Some days 40 minutes. Some days five minutes. Some days, not at all. It's a lot like exercise. Exercising three times a week is great. But if all you can do is just a little bit every day, that's a good thing, too."

Turns out meditating can give you the brain of a 25-year-old. Too bad it can't also give you the body of one.

Yes, I’ve tried that too: When well-intentioned advice hurts

A friend of mine tells me that she is sure I could recover my left hand if I tried.  I deflect the question when I really should have said there are only three people in the world I would listen to if they said it was possible. Two were former therapists that had strokes. Notice, not a single doctor makes the list.

Amy Elder of mycerebellarstrokerecovery

and Rebecca Dutton of Home After a Stroke 

and Peter Levine, a PTA and researcher of The Stroke Recovery Blog

Yes, I’ve tried that too: When well-intentioned advice hurts

A Harvard neuroscientist told us the major ways meditation changes your brain

Amy has been beating on this for years, maybe this might be the tipping point.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/harvard-neuroscientist-sara-lazar-meditation-interview-2015-8
Mindfulness meditation is incredibly popular right now.

According to the National Institute of Health, 18 million people in the US have meditated, or 8% of the population.

Studies suggests that the practice lessens stresses, increases memory, and may even help prevent genetic damage related to cancer.

While there is an ever-increasing amount of academic research around the practice and its effects, scientists are still figuring out what precisely is happening when people meditate, and what effects that behaviour has on the brain.

Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar, a leading researcher in the field, is one of the first to show that meditation practice produces structural changes in the brain.

In 2005, her team was the first to show how long-term meditation practice correlates with cortical thickening in brain areas associated with attention, sensory processing, and interoception (the awareness someone has about the physiological state of their body).

In a 2011 paper, she found that people who learned meditation for the first time in an eight-week course had increases in grey matter concentration in areas of the brain associated with “learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.”

The research suggests that “changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing,” Lazar says.

Those changes to brain structure come with big changes in mental activity.

Lazar revealed a few of them to Tech Insider:

• Understanding yourself (and other people too). Meditation increases your awareness of “minimally conscious thoughts and emotions,” or quieter emotions that otherwise go unnoticed. “You have probably experienced many emotions that you’re not even aware of,” Lazar says. “If you understand them in yourself, you’ll understand them better in other people.”
• Emotional strength. When you have a higher resolution image of your emotional landscape, then you’re less to be swayed by each individual feeling. “If you have a better handle of all the different emotions, you realise, ‘OK, this emotion isn’t useful,'” Lazar says. “It gives you more information, and information is power.”
• Getting less freaked out by stress. “You’re less likely to make a rash decision,” Lazar says. “You’re less stressed, you’re less caught up in the hullabaloo around you. I think that’s important regardless of what you do. it plays into quality of life. I still get stressed, but it takes more to make me stressed out.”

Lazar is careful to note that your brain changes when you learn anything, be it a second language or juggling. Same with meditation: though it can be an intimidatingly abstract activity when you first encounter it, mindfulness meditation is an exercise that you can learn to get better at, just like swinging at a baseball.

It works like this.

“You pick one object,” Lazar says. “For many people, it’s breathing sensations. It doesn’t have to be that, but it’s the most common thing to start with. You notice that, and your mind is going to get bored, and it’s going to start wandering, and then you realise, oh, my mind is starting to wander, and bring it back to breath.”

Instead of manipulating a bat to hit a ball, Lazar says that you’re using two of the mind’s go-to instruments: attention and metacognition, or your awareness of your own thoughts.

“Attention helps you stay focused, and metacognition helps you to see all the minimally conscious content,” Lazar says. “You think, this is boring, but what else is happening? You start to notice little thoughts and feeling happening in the back. They’re happening all the time, and we miss them 80% or 90% of the time. You notice there’s a lot more going on that you never saw before.”

Lazar has had a personal practice for nearly two decades, but she fell into meditation unexpectedly. When she and a friend over-trained for the Boston Marathon and ended up hurting themselves, Lazar started going to yoga to help recover.

Then she got into mindfulness meditation. “It was really clear that something in my brain had changed,” she tells Tech Insider. “I was noticing things I hadn’t noticed before, and I was less reactive to things that would piss me off.”

Lazar is careful to note that meditation is not a cure-all, in the same way that while exercise is a terrifically excellent thing to do for yourself, it’s not the only thing you should be doing for your overall well-being.

“It’s not you start meditation and you become a Buddhist monk,” Lazar says. “It will help promote attention and metacognition. The benefits are real and beneficial, but it’s not like you become a super person because of this.”

Watch Lazar’s 2011 TedX talk on meditation’s effects on the brain below.

According To Psychologists, Coloring Is The Best Alternative To Meditation

Amy? thoughts?

According To Psychologists, Coloring Is The Best Alternative To Meditation

As of the time of this publication, six of the top 20 selling books on Amazon are adult coloring books. Coloring is a hobby that we typically think only little toddlers and kindergartners would enjoy, but it turns out that even adults can benefit from it.

Coloring is a low-stress activity that allows an individual to unlock their creative potential. More importantly, it helps relieve tension and pent-up anxiety because it unlocks memories of childhood and simpler times. As psychologist Antoni Martínez explains to The Huffington Post, “I recommend it as a relaxation technique. We can use it to enter a more creative, freer state. I recommend it in a quiet environment, even with chill music. Let the color and the lines flow.”
Ben Michaelis, psychologist and author of one of the bestselling adult coloring books, Outside the Lines, says, “There is a long history of people coloring for mental health reasons. Carl Jung [founder of psychology] used to try to get his patients to color in mandalas at the turn of the last century, as a way of getting people to focus and allow the subconscious to let go. Now we know it has a lot of other stress-busting qualities as well.”
Basically, if you are having a rough day at work or just a bad day in general, then feel free to take out some crayons or colored pencils and start coloring. As a parent with children, I’m sure that you will have some coloring books lying around the house. Pick one up and relax!

A Man's Incomplete Brain Reveals Cerebellum's Role In Thought And Emotion

More proof those of us with dead areas can function pretty well.

Earlier here:

Woman in her twenties discovers that she was born without a cerebellum

A Man's Incomplete Brain Reveals Cerebellum's Role In Thought And Emotion

Amy writing about her problems with a cerebellum stroke here:

Cerebellum

Meditation Benefits: 10 Ways It Helps Your Mind

With all these benefits and the cheapness of it, why hasn't your doctor set up a stroke protocol on meditation? More ammunition for you Amy.

The latest here:

Meditation Benefits: 10 Ways It Helps Your Mind

Full information at the link.

1. Lasting emotional control

2. Cultivate compassion

3. Change brain structures

4. Reduce pain

5. Accelerate cognition

6. Meditate to create

7. Sharpen concentration

8. Improve multitasking at work

9. Reduce anxiety

10 Fight depression

Reciprocal Inhibition

Thanks to Amy for finding this for me . This was me trying to understand how muscles are told to relax. My OT used to command me to relax my spastic muscles, it never worked. Somebody out there has to be brilliant enough that they can write up a stroke protocol to fix the fucking spasticity. And since that won't occur for 50 years you had better start figuring out how to treat spasticity on your own. You're screwed until then.

Reciprocal Inhibition

Coffee napping

This is just great, thanks Barb. More proof for you Amy. I could have used this for the few minutes I had between therapy sessions while in the hospital. But I bet you are going to have to scream this into your doctors ear before anything as simple as this gets used in your hospital.

Coffee napping

If you're feeling sleepy and want to wake yourself up — and have 20 minutes or so to spare before you need to be fully alert — there's something you should try. It's more effective than drinking a cup of coffee or taking a quick nap.
It's drinking a cup of coffee and then taking a quick nap. This is called a coffee nap.
Explanation at the link.

Regularly practicing hatha yoga may improve brain function for older adults

Amy, you could contact  the editor with your ideas on meditation.

How to contact the editor

Please send tips or questions toMichelle Brandt. - See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/about-scope/#sthash.9wh7436M.dpuf

 Please send tips or questions to Michelle Brandt - mbrandt@stanford.edu

She didn't followup my idea of the state of stroke research.

Regularly practicing hatha yoga may improve brain function for older adults

How to contact the editor
Please send tips or questions toMichelle Brandt. - See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/about-scope/#sthash.9wh7436M.dpuf

Why aren't we doing eStim to relax spastic muscles?

I'm obviously stupid because electrical signals are needed to contract and relax muscles. Why can't we use eStim to relax spastic muscles? I'm sure all the therapists out there know the answer and are laughing at me. Amy, stop laughing.

This is your brain on meditation

Which way does your doctor recommend in helping your recovery? Does your doctor have any clue about meditation benefits?
Or as Amy puts it. Maybe these 3000 articles might give your doctor a clue about benefits. Here ya go.  What you have there is over 3000 published research articles about the benefits of meditation. 

This is your brain on meditation

Meditation is more than just a way to calm our thoughts and lower stress levels: our brain processes more thoughts and feelings during meditation than when you are simply relaxing, a coalition of researchers from Norway and Australia has found.
Mindfulness. Zen. Acem. Meditation drumming. Chakra. Buddhist and transcendental meditation. There are countless ways of meditating, but the purpose behind them all remains basically the same: more peace, less stress, better concentration, greater self-awareness and better processing of thoughts and feelings.
But which of these techniques should a poor stressed-out wretch choose? What does the research say? Very little – at least until now.
A team of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the University of Oslo and the University of Sydney is now working to determine how the brain works during different kinds of meditation. Their most recent results were published in the journal “Frontiers in Human Neuroscience”.
Different meditation techniques can actually be divided into two main groups. One type is concentrative meditation, where the meditating person focuses attention on his or her breathing or on specific thoughts, and in doing so, suppresses other thoughts.
The other type may be called nondirective meditation, where the person who is meditating effortlessly focuses on his or her breathing or on a meditation sound, but beyond that the mind is allowed to wander as it pleases. Some modern meditation methods are of this nondirective kind.
“No one knows how the brain works when you meditate. That is why I’d like to study it,” says Jian Xu, who is a physician at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway and a researcher at the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging at NTNU.
Fourteen people who had extensive experience with the Norwegian technique Acem meditation were tested in an MRI machine. In addition to simple resting, they undertook two different mental meditation activities, nondirective meditation and a more concentrative meditation task.
The research team wanted to test people who were used to meditation because it meant fewer misunderstandings about what the subjects should actually be doing while they lay in the MRI machine.
Nondirective meditation led to higher activity than during rest in the part of the brain dedicated to processing self-related thoughts and feelings. When test subjects performed concentrative meditation, the activity in this part of the brain was almost the same as when they were just resting.
“I was surprised that the activity of the brain was greatest when the person’s thoughts wandered freely on their own, rather than when the brain worked to be more strongly focused,” said Xu. “When the subjects stopped doing a specific task and were not really doing anything special, there was an increase in activity in the area of the brain where we process thoughts and feelings. It is described as a kind of resting network. And it was this area that was most active during nondirective meditation.”
“The study indicates that nondirective meditation allows for more room to process memories and emotions than during concentrated meditation,” says Svend Davanger, a neuroscientist at the University of Oslo, and co-author of the study.
“This area of the brain has its highest activity when we rest. It represents a kind of basic operating system, a resting network that takes over when external tasks do not require our attention. It is remarkable that a mental task like nondirective meditation results in even higher activity in this network than regular rest,” says Davanger.
Most of the research team behind the study does not practice meditation, although three do: Professors Are Holen and Øyvind Ellingsen from NTNU and Professor Svend Davanger from the University of Oslo.
Acem meditation is a technique that falls under the category of nondirective meditation. Davanger believes that good research depends on having a team that can combine personal experience with meditation with a critical attitude towards results.
“Meditation is an activity that is practiced by millions of people. It is important that we find out how this really works. In recent years there has been a sharp increase in international research on meditation. Several prestigious universities in the US spend a great deal of money to research in the field. So I think it is important that we are also active,” says Davanger.
http://gemini.no/en/2014/05/how-your-brain-works-during-meditation/

Does Spirituality and Religion Guard Against Depression?

I doubt I've been depressed a day in my life. My parents comments during my hospital stay, ' God doesn't give you anything more than you can handle', pretty much completely tipped me into atheism. And I would never consider myself spiritual.

Does Spirituality and Religion Guard Against Depression?

This line will make Amy happy or mad depending on how clinicians listen to her insights on Kundalini yoga mediatation.
A 2005 study suggests that a daily meditation practice can increase cortical thickness, which is in line with Miller’s findings regarding depression.

Creation of nitric oxide via Breath of Fire

Amy's Kundalini yoga is great.  The Breath of Fire breathing creates nitric oxide. No mouth breathing - nostril only. Good for these reasons.

1. The role of nitric oxide in pre-synaptic plasticity and homeostasis

2. Physical activity improves long-term stroke outcome via endothelial nitric oxide synthase-dependent augmentation of neovascularization and cerebral blood flow.

3.  Benefits of Nose Breathing & Nitric Oxide

And I'm sure your doctor knows nothing about this. 

The remarkable impact of yoga breathing for trauma

More proof for you Amy. From the Stanford School of Medicine. You'll have to read and follow the links at the site. See what your doctor is doing about the psychological trauma you have from your stroke.
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2014/01/31/the-remarkable-impact-of-yoga-breathing-for-trauma/

The remarkable impact of yoga breathing for trauma

The remarkable impact of yoga breathing for trauma

Step by step rehab

Since there is no way I can complete functional movements, I have to break them down into small pieces. Then I'll have to hope that my brain has enough brainpower to connect those individual movements together into smooth functional ones. Today I had a several hour drive to meet Amy for lunch. This allows me to practice hours of spasticity reduction. When driving now I can place my left hand at the 7 o'clock position even when moving. I used to try to place it at 11 o'clock but that was only possible when stopped and I couldn't consistently keep the elbow locked straight.  Now I place my elbow on the gel pad glued onto the door rest, it mostly stays there, 6 inches away from my side. The wrist is only cocked at 10 degrees, the fingers have no grasping ability yet. I figure the arm out and wrist may take another 3-5 years before I'll be able to work on having the fingers clasp the wheel. I tried listening to the Egypt great courses on my computer but the speakers weren't loud enough to overcome the noise level when driving at 75 mph.  The straw in the coffee, along with cruise control allows me to consume vast amounts of coffee even while driving.

You will likely need to do the same type of thing for your recovery which goes against all the training your therapists get, which is to practice functional movements.

Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress

Amy, you are getting vindicated. Wave these in front of your stupid insurance execs. Having a stroke is damned stressful.
A couple of paragraphs from a Harvard  publication.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mindfulness-meditation-may-ease-anxiety-mental-stress-201401086967
But, as is true for a number of other alternative therapies, much of the evidence to support meditation’s effectiveness in promoting mental or physical health isn’t quite up to snuff. Why? First, many studies don’t include a good control treatment to compare with meditation. Second, the people most likely to volunteer for a meditation study are often already sold on meditation’s benefits and so are more likely to report positive effects.
But when researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD sifted through nearly 19,000 meditation studies, they found 47 trials that addressed those issues and met their criteria for well-designed studies. Their findings, published in this week’s JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that mindfulness meditation can help ease psychological stresses like anxiety, depression, and pain.

Shortcuts to stroke recovery

Now that I have your attention.

There are none!

By the time  the neuronal cascade of death has passed you have one option for recovery - neuroplasticity, Neurogenesis might help but no one yet knows how to usefully direct it to help recovery. Stem cells are decades in the future, anyone selling them now is a charlatan.

Your neurologist and therapists really don't do much for your recovery, they may suggest/direct some of your exercises but you have to do all the work. No work, no recovery. Sitting on your ass is useless unless it is to meditate. Stroke recovery is damned hard work.

Peter Levine refers to this several times.

Repetitive Practice Stroke

Demanding Repetition

Barb touches this in her survivors guilt post. 

what about recoverers guilt?

But what about finding the best neurologist in the world?

Amy writes on that;

Are Neurologists Respected?

I refer to it here in the fallacy lots of stroke survivors have.

If I just find the right therapist or therapy I'll recover.

What therapy-exercise worked best for your stroke rehab?

And a quote from Dr. Steven Wolf, a rehabilitation stroke expert and professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.  "Stroke patients need to rely more on their own problem solving to regain mobility".

This implicitly states that your neurologist knows nothing about how to get you recovered. Talk to any knowledgeable survivor out there and none will state that their neurologist was the best thing for their recovery.

If there were shortcuts we would have better than 10% full recovery.