The documentary, “Changing my Mind” explores the dimensions of epilepsy and the attempt to cure it with the tools of modern brain surgery. The intent of the project is to explore the experience of epilepsy, physical and psychological. The first part will focus on the subjective experience of an individual (the filmmaker) living with epilepsy — the changes in lifestyle it demands and the actual perceptual experience of the “auras”, the altered states that immediately precede the seizures themselves. In the second half of the documentary, the perspective will shift to that of a team neurologists in San Francisco, who help epileptics manage and sometimes cure the condition.

At the age of 29, filmmaker A. Peter Swearengen began to experience the symptoms of epilepsy. The affliction began subtly, progressing only after five years to his first “grand mal” seizure. He experimented with a wide variety of treatments, including acupuncture, Western and Eastern herbs, traveled as far as the Himalayan plateau, searching for a cure. Finally a team of specialists at the Pacific Epilepsy Center offered him a possible solution...

Seizures are a universal condition, affecting animals as well as humans. Ancient literature describes, often with reverence and fascination, individuals of all sorts with the “falling sickness.” Often, epileptics have been regarded as oracles or shamen. The fact that modern science can explain the etiology and mechanisms of the seizures does not diminish their strange and profound psychological power.