[GJM] Training the Brain/Mind

[mary rose]

I want to refer everyone to the website of Dr. John J. Harper, author of Transformers, Shamans of the 21st Century. http://www.johnjayharper.com  The forward to Dr. Harper's book is written by Dr. Bruce H. Lipton, and takes us into another level of understanding of the "Who of I Am," with research solidly based in scientific discovery. 

Here is an excerpt from the website which is pertinent to past dialogue on the effectiveness of meditation to increase learning ability.   mary rose       

http://www.johnjayharper.com/meditation.htm

Meditation Gives Brain a Charge       
by Mark Kaufman 

Excerpts from Washington Post Staff Writer  January 3, 2005 

 

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.

Those transformed states have traditionally been understood in transcendent terms, as something outside the world of physical measurement and objective evaluation. But over the past few years, researchers at the University of Wisconsin working with Tibetan monks have been able to translate those mental experiences into the scientific language of high-frequency gamma waves and brain synchrony, or coordination. And they have pinpointed the left prefrontal cortex, an area just behind the left forehead, as the place where brain activity associated with meditation is especially intense.

What we found is that the longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before," said Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the university's new $10 million W. M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior. "Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance." It demonstrates, he said, that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine.

What we found is that the trained mind, or brain, is physically different from the untrained one," he said. In time, "we'll be able to better understand the potential importance of this kind of mental training and increase the likelihood that it will be taken seriously." 
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