Science & Spirituality

Seeking enlightenment or being spiritual can be a hard concept to grasp if you’re a cerebral person, or strictly facts-driven, and results-orientated by nature.  Not that there is anything wrong with these personality traits; being skeptical of new ideas is just plain smart. Believing in a God, being religious and praying is not related to meditation or spirituality.  According to Wikipedia, “meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit.”

It’s this “benefit” of meditation that everyone should be trying to incorporate in their lives.  Meditation can reduce stress, change your metabolism, lower blood pressure and build neurons, to name a few.  Science and years of research have the facts to back this statement.  What are neurons, you ask?  Neurons are nerve cells in the brain – the basic building blocks of the nervous system that transmit information.  Why are they important?  Gray matter of the brain is mostly comprised of neurons.  This part of the brain is in charge of your senses:  seeing, hearing, speaking, memory and emotions.  The volume and depth of your gray matter changes as you age.  So, the more neurons you build, the better your brain and your senses.

For you true science geeks and skeptics out there – check out this article:  http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2008/buddha_brain_IEEE.pdf

Thank you Dr. Paula for sending this link my way!

Book Review:

Buddha’s Brain – the practical neuroscience of happiness, love, & wisdom, by Rick Hanson, PH.D and Richard Mendius, MD:

I found a book that perfectly blends the concepts of Buddhism with psychology and neurology.  “Like science, Buddhism encourages people to take nothing on faith alone and does not require a belief in God.”  With God out of the equation, what Buddhist methods and perspectives can foster well-being, happiness and peace-of-mind?  “When we consider the mind as an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information, we come to realize that we can actually use the mind to change the brain”. It’s a simple enough concept; whatever thoughts flow through your mind sculpts your brain (gray matter, neurons).  So, if you can take as little as five minutes a day to meditate or go on an all-out transcendental experience, you are awakening your brain and achieving a healthier life.  Ommmmmmmmm……

Solar Eclipse: May 20, 2012.  View as the sun was setting amid cloud-coverage at Pacific Beach, San Diego, California.