Meditation, mental health and brain science 10 Minutes 49 Seconds
Meditation, mental health and brain science YouTube link
Author
SFJane
Created
June 5, 2007
Updated
December 1, 2008
Length
10 Minutes 49 Seconds
Rating
4.64
Views
10,928
Description
In this video I talk about fascinating findings of modern research into meditation.
In the 1960s the western world was exposed to eastern meditation through the Beatles association with Maharesh Yogi and his transcendental meditation.
In the 1970s Harvard M.D Herbert Benson wrote of the scientific findings into meditation in a book called 'The Relaxation Response'.
Since the 70s a great many Westerners drawn by the promise of enlightenment through self mastery have visited India , Asia and Japan in search of meditation training. These meditation missionaries came back to Europe and the U.S. to teach. Now, numerous meditation traditions are practiced all over the world.
Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4613759.stm
Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you perform better -- and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have found.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8317
Brain research is beginning to produce concrete evidence for something that Buddhist practitioners of meditation have maintained for centuries: Mental discipline and meditative practice can change the workings of the brain and allow people to achieve different levels of awareness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43006-2005Jan2.html
"Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being," says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School
http://www.physorg.com/news10312.html
New imaging technology makes it possible for scientists to document the brain activity of Buddhist monks. Dalai Lama visits MIT
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13453&ch=biztech
In recent years, a group of neuroscientists are exploring the hypothesis that meditation can actually change the way the brain works.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4770779
scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison used new scanning techniques to examine brain activity in a group of Buddhists.
Their tests revealed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners.
This area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament.
Their tests showed this area of the Buddhists' brains are constantly lit up and not just when they are meditating.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm
Medical effects of meditation.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web2/Benner.html
A great social movement against traditional psychiatry has been growing for years. There are several different schools of thought about mental health problems around.
Regardless about how I might feel about the negative effects of labeling, stereotyping, and psychiatry, modern mental health taxonomy is not going away over night. That means in order to have rational discourse between meditators/mental health and brain science researchers we need to have some common ground. I don't recommend people embrace or indentify themselves by their labels. We do need a common convention to talk about negative symptoms and deviation.
Before you cut and paste some pharmaganda about chemical imbalances in the brain as a comment to this video, or tell me that 'since Bipolar can not be cured, ergo, you must not have had it", ask your psychiatrist what the scientific cause of Bipolar Disorder is. Ask for him or her for the medical test used to determine you have any chemical imbalances. Ask for the hard data.
There is more scientific proof that meditation is having specific positive mental health effects in the brain than for the chemical imbalance 'theory'.
I spent a good portion of my 20s, ten years, practicing meditation fulltime in retreat and seclusion. I continue to practice every day.
If you are a meditator, clinical psychologist, research psychiatrist, brain or neuro scientist. Feel free to contact me. We have much to talk about.
Related Tags
meditation brain science depression research psychology
psychiatry mindfulness neuroplasticity
psychiatry mindfulness neuroplasticity