Musicians' Brains Highly Developed
ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — New research shows that musicians' brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation.
The new study was conducted by Fred Travis, Maharishi University of Management in the US, Harald Harung, Oslo University College in Norway, and Yvonne Lagrosen, University West in Sweden. They relate to high mind brain development, and it appears that this represents a basic potential to become really, really good at something.
The researchers measure mind brain development in several ways. EEGs reveal special patterns in the electrical activity of the brain in people with high mind brain development. They have well‑coordinated frontal lobes. Our frontal lobes are what we use for higher brain functions, such as planning and logical thinking. Another characteristic is that activity at a certain frequency, so‑called alpha waves, dominates. Alpha waves occur when the brain puts together details into wholes. Yet another EEG measure shows that individuals with high mind brain development use their brain resources economically. They are alert and ready for action when it is functional to be so, but they are relaxed and adopt a wait‑and‑see attitude when that is functional.
Two questionnaires are also used to measure mind brain development. One has to do with moral reasoning. Those with high mind brain development score higher here. The other questionnaire targets what are called peak experiences. These are described as a higher level of consciousness. You have an intense feeling of happiness and harmony and of transcending limitations. Individuals with high mind brain development have many peak experiences.
Fred Travis emphasizes that everything we do changes our brain. Transcendental meditation and making music are activities people should devote themselves to if they wish to change their mind in the right direction. But you can make good progress by following common health recommendations: get enough sleep, work out physically, eat healthily, and don't do drugs. How you think also plays a role.
"If you are a very envious, angry, mean person and that's the way you think about people that's what's going to be strengthened in your brain. But if you are very expanded and open and supportive of others, there will be different connections," says Fred Travis.
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Monday, April 9, 2012
Thursday, March 10, 2011
violence does not help god, says the pope
By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY -- Violence committed in the name of God or religion is a "favorite instrument of the Antichrist," Pope Benedict XVI writes in a new book on the life and teachings of Jesus.
"Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity," Benedict writes. "On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be. It serves not humanity, but inhumanity."
The passage appears in Jesus of Nazareth -- Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, which was published in English and seven other languages on Thursday (March 10), with an initial printing of 1.2 million copies.
According to its American publisher, Ignatius Press, 90,000 copies of the English edition had been sold before publication.
The book is a sequel to the pope's 2007 bestseller, Jesus of Nazareth, which explored Jesus' public ministry from his baptism to the Transfiguration. In the trilogy that he began before his 2005 election as pope, Benedict studies the Gospels in light of the work of other scholars, including those who have sought to discover the "historical Jesus."
In pre-publication excerpts that were released March 2, Benedict wrote that the Jewish people were not responsible for Jesus' crucifixion, and their descendants have not inherited blame for his death.
Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY -- Violence committed in the name of God or religion is a "favorite instrument of the Antichrist," Pope Benedict XVI writes in a new book on the life and teachings of Jesus.
"Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity," Benedict writes. "On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be. It serves not humanity, but inhumanity."
The passage appears in Jesus of Nazareth -- Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, which was published in English and seven other languages on Thursday (March 10), with an initial printing of 1.2 million copies.
According to its American publisher, Ignatius Press, 90,000 copies of the English edition had been sold before publication.
The book is a sequel to the pope's 2007 bestseller, Jesus of Nazareth, which explored Jesus' public ministry from his baptism to the Transfiguration. In the trilogy that he began before his 2005 election as pope, Benedict studies the Gospels in light of the work of other scholars, including those who have sought to discover the "historical Jesus."
In pre-publication excerpts that were released March 2, Benedict wrote that the Jewish people were not responsible for Jesus' crucifixion, and their descendants have not inherited blame for his death.
Monday, January 24, 2011
research suggests meditation may improve certain brain regions
Study: Mindful meditation may strengthen certain brain regions
Practice may improve memory, sense of self and ability to handle stress
Source: (AHN) Reporter: David Goodhue
Location: MA, United States Published: January 24, 2011 07:30 am EST
Topics: Health, Medical Research, Health, Physical Fitness, Health, Patient
New research suggests meditation may improve certain brain regions and help them with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.
The Massachusetts General Hospital researchers said in a statement that changes in brain structure in people who practiced eight weeks of mindful meditation suggest the practice goes beyond simply making people feel better because they are spending time relaxing.
Meditation has long been recommended by practitioners as a way to achieve peacefulness, physical relaxation and cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day.
The researchers studied 16 participants two weeks before and after they took part in an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program. In addition to questionnaires, the participants were also analyzed by MRI images to observe changes in certain regions of the brain.
Compared with a control group, images of the brains of participants who reported spending an average of 27 minutes each day meditating showed increased gray matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self awareness, compassion and introspection.
The researchers said their findings show how malleable the brain is and that meditation can go a long way in improving personal well being.
A report on the study will be published in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90031922?Study%3A%20Mindful%20meditation%20may%20strengthen%20certain%20brain%20regions#ixzz1BzFwaqSF
Practice may improve memory, sense of self and ability to handle stress
Source: (AHN) Reporter: David Goodhue
Location: MA, United States Published: January 24, 2011 07:30 am EST
Topics: Health, Medical Research, Health, Physical Fitness, Health, Patient
New research suggests meditation may improve certain brain regions and help them with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.
The Massachusetts General Hospital researchers said in a statement that changes in brain structure in people who practiced eight weeks of mindful meditation suggest the practice goes beyond simply making people feel better because they are spending time relaxing.
Meditation has long been recommended by practitioners as a way to achieve peacefulness, physical relaxation and cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day.
The researchers studied 16 participants two weeks before and after they took part in an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program. In addition to questionnaires, the participants were also analyzed by MRI images to observe changes in certain regions of the brain.
Compared with a control group, images of the brains of participants who reported spending an average of 27 minutes each day meditating showed increased gray matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self awareness, compassion and introspection.
The researchers said their findings show how malleable the brain is and that meditation can go a long way in improving personal well being.
A report on the study will be published in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90031922?Study%3A%20Mindful%20meditation%20may%20strengthen%20certain%20brain%20regions#ixzz1BzFwaqSF
Friday, September 3, 2010
Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?
Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?
LISTEN
Monday, 08/30/10 9:00pm - All Things Considered
Alix Spiegel
Jesse Bering's mother died of cancer on a Sunday, in her own bed, at 9 o'clock at night. Bering and his siblings closed her door and went downstairs, hoping they might somehow get some sleep.
It was a long, hard night, but around 7 a.m., something happened: The wind chimes outside his mother's window started to chime.
Bering remembers waking to the tinkle of these bells, a small but distinct sound in an otherwise silent house. And he remembers thinking that those bells carried a very specific message.
"It seemed to me ... that she was somehow telling us that she had made it to the other side. You know, cleared customs in heaven," Bering says.
The thought surprised him. Bering was a confirmed atheist. He did not believe in any kind of supernatural anything. He prided himself on being a scientist, a psychologist who believed only in the measurable material world. But, he says, he simply couldn't help himself.
"My mind went there. It leapt there," Bering says. "And from a psychological perspective, this was really interesting to me. Because I didn't believe it on the one hand, but on the other hand I experienced it."
Why is it, Bering wondered, that even a determined skeptic could not stop himself from perceiving the supernatural? It really bothered him.
It was a very good question, he decided, to take up in his lab.
God, Through The Lens Of Evolution
For decades, the intellectual descendants of Darwin have pored over ancient bones and bits of fossils, trying to piece together how fish evolved into man, theorizing about the evolutionary advantage conferred by each physical change. And over the past 10 years, a small group of academics have begun to look at religion in the same way: they've started to look at God and the supernatural through the lens of evolution.
In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And when a human behavior is so universal, scientists often argue that it must be an evolutionary adaptation along the lines of standing upright. That is, something so helpful that the people who had it thrived, and the people who didn't slowly died out until we were all left with the trait. But what could be the evolutionary advantage of believing in God?
Bering is one of the academics who are trying to figure that out. In the years since his mother's death, Bering has done experiments in his lab at Queens University, Belfast, in an attempt to understand how belief in the supernatural might have conferred some advantage and made us into the species we are today.
In one experiment, children between the ages of 5 and 9 were shown to a room and told to throw a Velcro ball at a Velcro dartboard. They were told that if they were able to hit the bull's-eye, they'd get a special prize. But this particular game had an unusual set of rules: The children were told that they had to throw from behind, they weren't allowed to throw the ball while facing the dartboard, and they had to use their nondominant hand -- rules that basically made it impossible for any of the children to win the game unless they cheated.
The children in the study were divided into three groups. The first group was left alone and told to play the game as best they could. The second were told the same, with one difference -- the children in the second group were told that there was someone special who was going to watch them. The experimenters showed the kids a picture of a very pretty woman -- a character that Bering had made up whose name was Princess Alice.
Princess Alice, the kids were told, had a magical power: Alice could make herself invisible. Then the children were shown a chair and were told that Alice was sitting in the chair and that Alice would watch them play the game after the researcher left. The third group of kids was told to play the game, but the researcher sat with them and simply never left the room at all.
The question that Bering sought to answer was this: Which group of children was least likely to cheat?
The children in the first group -- the completely unsupervised kids -- by far cheated the most. But what was surprising was the behavior of the second group.
The children who were under the impression that Princess Alice was in the room with them were just as likely to refrain from cheating as those children who were actually in the room with a physical real-life human being. A similar study Bering did with adults showed the same thing -- that they were dramatically less likely to cheat when they thought they were being observed by a supernatural presence.
A Change In Behavior
Bering has a credo, a truth he says he's learned after years of studying this stuff.
"I've always said that I don't believe in God, but I don't really believe in atheists either," Bering says. "Everybody experiences the illusion that God -- or some type of supernatural agent -- is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives."
These supernatural agents, Bering adds, might have very different names. What some call God, others call Karma. There are literally thousands of names, but according to Bering they all have the same effect.
"Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected," he says.
In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother's death.
"They experience it but they reject it," Bering says. "Sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that's not to say that they don't experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way."
Why would the human brain have evolved to work in that way?
For Bering, and some of his friends, the answer to that question has everything to do with what he discovered in his lab -- the way the kids and adults stopped cheating as soon as they thought a supernatural being might be watching them. Through the lens of evolution then, a belief in God serves a very important purpose: Religious belief set us on the path to modern life by stopping cheaters and promoting the social good.
God And Social Cooperation
Dominic Johnson is a professor at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and another one of the leaders in this field. And to Johnson, before you can understand the role religion and the supernatural might have played in making us the people we are today, you really have to appreciate just how improbable our modern lives are.
Today we live in a world where perfect strangers are incredibly nice to each other on a regular basis. All day long, strangers open doors for each other, repair each other's bodies and cars and washing machines. They swap money for food and food for money. In short: they cooperate.
This cooperation makes all kinds of things possible, of course. Because we can cooperate, we can build sophisticated machines and create whole cities -- communities that require huge amounts of coordination. We can do things that no individual or small group could do.
The question is: How did we get to be so cooperative? For academics like Johnson, this is a profound puzzle.
"Explaining cooperation is a huge cottage industry," Johnson says. "It dominates the pages of top journals in science and economics and psychology. You would think that it was very simple, but in fact from a scientific academic point of view, it just often doesn't make sense."
It doesn't make sense because there's often tension between the interests of the group and the interests of the individual. Johnson gives an example. Recently he was on the subway in New York and as he was going through the turnstile a little child ran in with him and got through the barrier. He got onto the subway without ever paying.
"Now we only have the Metro if everyone pays," Johnson says. "But there's an advantage for everyone if they don't have to pay themselves."
And what's true of the subway is true of everything.
Why fight in a war, risk your own death, if someone else will fight it for you? Why pay taxes? Why reduce your carbon footprint?
These all have clear costs, and from an individual perspective, you and your offspring are much more likely to thrive if you don't get killed in a war or pay your taxes -- if you behave like the child in the subway.
The problem is that even a relatively small number of people who choose to behave like the child can affect the functioning of the whole.
"Even a few cheats undermine cooperation," Johnson says, because once people realize that they are paying for the same thing others are enjoying free, they become less willing to cooperate.
Punishment And Deterrents: Enforcing God's Law
Today, if you cheat -- if you decide to pass on paying Uncle Sam or if you steal a car -- there are systems in place that will track you down and punish you. And this threat of punishment keeps you on the straight and narrow. But imagine if you lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.
"We know that punishment is very effective at promoting cooperation," Johnson says. "The problem is: Who punished in the past before we had police and courts and law and government? There wasn't anyone formally to carry out the punishment"
In those early human communities when someone did something wrong, someone else in the small human group would have to punish them. But as Johnson points out, punishing itself is often dangerous because the person being punished probably won't like it.
"That person has a family; that person has a memory and is going to develop a grudge," Johnson says. "So there are going to be potentially quite disruptive consequences of people taking the law into their own hands."
On the other hand, Johnson says, if there are Gods or a God who must be obeyed, these strains are reduced. After all, the punisher isn't a vigilante; he's simply enforcing God's law.
"You have a very nice situation," Johnson says. "There are no reprisals against punishers. And the other nice thing about supernatural agents is that they are often omniscient and omnipresent."
If God is everywhere and sees everything, people curb their selfish impulses even when there's no one around. Because with God, there is no escape. "God knows what you did," Johnson says, "and God is going to punish you for it and that's an incredibly powerful deterrent. If you do it again, he's going to know and he is going to tally up your good deals and bad deeds and you will suffer the consequences for it either in this life or in an afterlife."
Differing Views
So the argument goes that as our human ancestors spread around the world in bands, keeping together for food and protection, groups with a religious belief system survived better because they worked better together.
We are their descendants. And Johnson says their belief in the supernatural is still very much with us.
"Everywhere you look around the world, you find examples of people altering their behavior because of concerns for supernatural consequences of their actions. They don't do things that they consider bad because they think they'll be punished for it."
Of course there are plenty of criticisms of these ideas. For example one premise of this argument is that religious belief is beneficial because it helped us to cooperate. But a small group of academics argue that religious beliefs have ultimately been more harmful than helpful, because those religious beliefs inspire people to go to war.
And then there are the people who say that cooperation doesn't come from God -- that cooperation evolved from our need to take care of family or show potential mates that we were a good choice. The theories are endless.
Unfortunately it's not possible now to rewind the movie, so to speak, and see what actually happened. So these speculations will remain just that: speculations.
As unknowable -- ultimately -- as God himself.
LISTEN
Monday, 08/30/10 9:00pm - All Things Considered
Alix Spiegel
Jesse Bering's mother died of cancer on a Sunday, in her own bed, at 9 o'clock at night. Bering and his siblings closed her door and went downstairs, hoping they might somehow get some sleep.
It was a long, hard night, but around 7 a.m., something happened: The wind chimes outside his mother's window started to chime.
Bering remembers waking to the tinkle of these bells, a small but distinct sound in an otherwise silent house. And he remembers thinking that those bells carried a very specific message.
"It seemed to me ... that she was somehow telling us that she had made it to the other side. You know, cleared customs in heaven," Bering says.
The thought surprised him. Bering was a confirmed atheist. He did not believe in any kind of supernatural anything. He prided himself on being a scientist, a psychologist who believed only in the measurable material world. But, he says, he simply couldn't help himself.
"My mind went there. It leapt there," Bering says. "And from a psychological perspective, this was really interesting to me. Because I didn't believe it on the one hand, but on the other hand I experienced it."
Why is it, Bering wondered, that even a determined skeptic could not stop himself from perceiving the supernatural? It really bothered him.
It was a very good question, he decided, to take up in his lab.
God, Through The Lens Of Evolution
For decades, the intellectual descendants of Darwin have pored over ancient bones and bits of fossils, trying to piece together how fish evolved into man, theorizing about the evolutionary advantage conferred by each physical change. And over the past 10 years, a small group of academics have begun to look at religion in the same way: they've started to look at God and the supernatural through the lens of evolution.
In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And when a human behavior is so universal, scientists often argue that it must be an evolutionary adaptation along the lines of standing upright. That is, something so helpful that the people who had it thrived, and the people who didn't slowly died out until we were all left with the trait. But what could be the evolutionary advantage of believing in God?
Bering is one of the academics who are trying to figure that out. In the years since his mother's death, Bering has done experiments in his lab at Queens University, Belfast, in an attempt to understand how belief in the supernatural might have conferred some advantage and made us into the species we are today.
In one experiment, children between the ages of 5 and 9 were shown to a room and told to throw a Velcro ball at a Velcro dartboard. They were told that if they were able to hit the bull's-eye, they'd get a special prize. But this particular game had an unusual set of rules: The children were told that they had to throw from behind, they weren't allowed to throw the ball while facing the dartboard, and they had to use their nondominant hand -- rules that basically made it impossible for any of the children to win the game unless they cheated.
The children in the study were divided into three groups. The first group was left alone and told to play the game as best they could. The second were told the same, with one difference -- the children in the second group were told that there was someone special who was going to watch them. The experimenters showed the kids a picture of a very pretty woman -- a character that Bering had made up whose name was Princess Alice.
Princess Alice, the kids were told, had a magical power: Alice could make herself invisible. Then the children were shown a chair and were told that Alice was sitting in the chair and that Alice would watch them play the game after the researcher left. The third group of kids was told to play the game, but the researcher sat with them and simply never left the room at all.
The question that Bering sought to answer was this: Which group of children was least likely to cheat?
The children in the first group -- the completely unsupervised kids -- by far cheated the most. But what was surprising was the behavior of the second group.
The children who were under the impression that Princess Alice was in the room with them were just as likely to refrain from cheating as those children who were actually in the room with a physical real-life human being. A similar study Bering did with adults showed the same thing -- that they were dramatically less likely to cheat when they thought they were being observed by a supernatural presence.
A Change In Behavior
Bering has a credo, a truth he says he's learned after years of studying this stuff.
"I've always said that I don't believe in God, but I don't really believe in atheists either," Bering says. "Everybody experiences the illusion that God -- or some type of supernatural agent -- is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives."
These supernatural agents, Bering adds, might have very different names. What some call God, others call Karma. There are literally thousands of names, but according to Bering they all have the same effect.
"Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected," he says.
In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother's death.
"They experience it but they reject it," Bering says. "Sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that's not to say that they don't experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way."
Why would the human brain have evolved to work in that way?
For Bering, and some of his friends, the answer to that question has everything to do with what he discovered in his lab -- the way the kids and adults stopped cheating as soon as they thought a supernatural being might be watching them. Through the lens of evolution then, a belief in God serves a very important purpose: Religious belief set us on the path to modern life by stopping cheaters and promoting the social good.
God And Social Cooperation
Dominic Johnson is a professor at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and another one of the leaders in this field. And to Johnson, before you can understand the role religion and the supernatural might have played in making us the people we are today, you really have to appreciate just how improbable our modern lives are.
Today we live in a world where perfect strangers are incredibly nice to each other on a regular basis. All day long, strangers open doors for each other, repair each other's bodies and cars and washing machines. They swap money for food and food for money. In short: they cooperate.
This cooperation makes all kinds of things possible, of course. Because we can cooperate, we can build sophisticated machines and create whole cities -- communities that require huge amounts of coordination. We can do things that no individual or small group could do.
The question is: How did we get to be so cooperative? For academics like Johnson, this is a profound puzzle.
"Explaining cooperation is a huge cottage industry," Johnson says. "It dominates the pages of top journals in science and economics and psychology. You would think that it was very simple, but in fact from a scientific academic point of view, it just often doesn't make sense."
It doesn't make sense because there's often tension between the interests of the group and the interests of the individual. Johnson gives an example. Recently he was on the subway in New York and as he was going through the turnstile a little child ran in with him and got through the barrier. He got onto the subway without ever paying.
"Now we only have the Metro if everyone pays," Johnson says. "But there's an advantage for everyone if they don't have to pay themselves."
And what's true of the subway is true of everything.
Why fight in a war, risk your own death, if someone else will fight it for you? Why pay taxes? Why reduce your carbon footprint?
These all have clear costs, and from an individual perspective, you and your offspring are much more likely to thrive if you don't get killed in a war or pay your taxes -- if you behave like the child in the subway.
The problem is that even a relatively small number of people who choose to behave like the child can affect the functioning of the whole.
"Even a few cheats undermine cooperation," Johnson says, because once people realize that they are paying for the same thing others are enjoying free, they become less willing to cooperate.
Punishment And Deterrents: Enforcing God's Law
Today, if you cheat -- if you decide to pass on paying Uncle Sam or if you steal a car -- there are systems in place that will track you down and punish you. And this threat of punishment keeps you on the straight and narrow. But imagine if you lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.
"We know that punishment is very effective at promoting cooperation," Johnson says. "The problem is: Who punished in the past before we had police and courts and law and government? There wasn't anyone formally to carry out the punishment"
In those early human communities when someone did something wrong, someone else in the small human group would have to punish them. But as Johnson points out, punishing itself is often dangerous because the person being punished probably won't like it.
"That person has a family; that person has a memory and is going to develop a grudge," Johnson says. "So there are going to be potentially quite disruptive consequences of people taking the law into their own hands."
On the other hand, Johnson says, if there are Gods or a God who must be obeyed, these strains are reduced. After all, the punisher isn't a vigilante; he's simply enforcing God's law.
"You have a very nice situation," Johnson says. "There are no reprisals against punishers. And the other nice thing about supernatural agents is that they are often omniscient and omnipresent."
If God is everywhere and sees everything, people curb their selfish impulses even when there's no one around. Because with God, there is no escape. "God knows what you did," Johnson says, "and God is going to punish you for it and that's an incredibly powerful deterrent. If you do it again, he's going to know and he is going to tally up your good deals and bad deeds and you will suffer the consequences for it either in this life or in an afterlife."
Differing Views
So the argument goes that as our human ancestors spread around the world in bands, keeping together for food and protection, groups with a religious belief system survived better because they worked better together.
We are their descendants. And Johnson says their belief in the supernatural is still very much with us.
"Everywhere you look around the world, you find examples of people altering their behavior because of concerns for supernatural consequences of their actions. They don't do things that they consider bad because they think they'll be punished for it."
Of course there are plenty of criticisms of these ideas. For example one premise of this argument is that religious belief is beneficial because it helped us to cooperate. But a small group of academics argue that religious beliefs have ultimately been more harmful than helpful, because those religious beliefs inspire people to go to war.
And then there are the people who say that cooperation doesn't come from God -- that cooperation evolved from our need to take care of family or show potential mates that we were a good choice. The theories are endless.
Unfortunately it's not possible now to rewind the movie, so to speak, and see what actually happened. So these speculations will remain just that: speculations.
As unknowable -- ultimately -- as God himself.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
U.S. army adopts mindfulness meditation NARAYAN LAKSHMAN SHARE · PRINT · T+ In an unusual departure from traditional prescriptions for coping
U.S. army adopts mindfulness meditation
NARAYAN LAKSHMAN
SHARE · PRINT · T+
In an unusual departure from traditional prescriptions for coping with high stress the United States army is recommending something more eclectic to its soldiers in Iraq – mindfulness mediation.
According to Army Major Victor Won, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, mindfulness is a simple but ancient approach to living that Western medicine has begun to recognise as a powerful tool for dealing with stress, illness and other medical or psychological conditions, and it could help soldiers in any circumstance.
Quoting the definition of the term used in the book ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are,’ by popular mediation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, he added, “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way or maintaining the awareness on purpose, in the present moment.”
Major Won said it would be more effective for soldiers to learn and train mindfulness prior to deployment as the practice will offer soldiers a means to cope with their mental stress before getting into a high-stress environment.
University of Pennsylvania researchers, with Army support, were said to be examining the effects of meditation as a means to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. Major Won said, “Many psychotherapists around the world have applied mindfulness, treating various psychological diagnoses such as PTSD, depression and even personality disorders,” adding that it was “through finding peace within and clarity that you see that you are not the thoughts or the emotions that bind you and take you away into suffering.”
Keywords: U.S. army, meditation, stress
NARAYAN LAKSHMAN
SHARE · PRINT · T+
In an unusual departure from traditional prescriptions for coping with high stress the United States army is recommending something more eclectic to its soldiers in Iraq – mindfulness mediation.
According to Army Major Victor Won, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, mindfulness is a simple but ancient approach to living that Western medicine has begun to recognise as a powerful tool for dealing with stress, illness and other medical or psychological conditions, and it could help soldiers in any circumstance.
Quoting the definition of the term used in the book ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are,’ by popular mediation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, he added, “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way or maintaining the awareness on purpose, in the present moment.”
Major Won said it would be more effective for soldiers to learn and train mindfulness prior to deployment as the practice will offer soldiers a means to cope with their mental stress before getting into a high-stress environment.
University of Pennsylvania researchers, with Army support, were said to be examining the effects of meditation as a means to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. Major Won said, “Many psychotherapists around the world have applied mindfulness, treating various psychological diagnoses such as PTSD, depression and even personality disorders,” adding that it was “through finding peace within and clarity that you see that you are not the thoughts or the emotions that bind you and take you away into suffering.”
Keywords: U.S. army, meditation, stress
Monday, July 19, 2010
New Study Show Buddhist Meditation Improves Concentration 7/19/2010 10:04 AM ET (RTTNews) - A new study published in the current edition of Psychol
New Study Show Buddhist Meditation Improves Concentration
7/19/2010 10:04 AM ET
(RTTNews) - A new study published in the current edition of Psychological Science suggests that Buddhist meditation techniques could help improve concentration and relaxation.
According to lead researcher Katherine A. MacLean, the practice is challenging even for those experienced in meditation, but often improves performance in computer tasks.
For the study, MacLean and her team followed 60 experienced meditators as they underwent 30-day meditation studies. For short period of time each day, the subjects were asked to identify lines of varying lengths on a computer screen.
She found that those practicing Buddhist style meditation were often most accurate in identifying which lines were slightly shorter or longer than normal.
"People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation and you get to be at peace with yourself," MacLean said in a statement. "That's what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted."
She added, "Because the task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it's kind of a perfect index of meditation training."
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com
7/19/2010 10:04 AM ET
(RTTNews) - A new study published in the current edition of Psychological Science suggests that Buddhist meditation techniques could help improve concentration and relaxation.
According to lead researcher Katherine A. MacLean, the practice is challenging even for those experienced in meditation, but often improves performance in computer tasks.
For the study, MacLean and her team followed 60 experienced meditators as they underwent 30-day meditation studies. For short period of time each day, the subjects were asked to identify lines of varying lengths on a computer screen.
She found that those practicing Buddhist style meditation were often most accurate in identifying which lines were slightly shorter or longer than normal.
"People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation and you get to be at peace with yourself," MacLean said in a statement. "That's what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted."
She added, "Because the task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it's kind of a perfect index of meditation training."
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Meditation Boosts Attention Span
Meditation Boosts Attention Span
By LiveScience Staff
posted: 14 July 2010 02:39 pm ET
Buzz up!
Comments (1) | Recommend (0)
The life of a Buddhist monk may seem far-removed from the busy, gadget-packed daily buzz most of us experience. But new research suggests daily meditation can give us a piece of the peaceful life, as the focused practice boosts attention spans.
"You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that [Buddhist monks] express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training, or if they were just very special people to begin with," said Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California – Davis. [10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp]
By LiveScience Staff
posted: 14 July 2010 02:39 pm ET
Buzz up!
Comments (1) | Recommend (0)
The life of a Buddhist monk may seem far-removed from the busy, gadget-packed daily buzz most of us experience. But new research suggests daily meditation can give us a piece of the peaceful life, as the focused practice boosts attention spans.
"You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that [Buddhist monks] express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training, or if they were just very special people to begin with," said Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California – Davis. [10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp]
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