Mark Waldman – Words Can Change Your Brain
Omtimes: You have written that “God can change your brain”, very strong words indeed. How did you become interested in these issues? Are you religious?
Mark Waldman: I’m not a religious man, but with my colleague Andrew Newberg, University of Pennsylvania, we did brain scan studies of nuns, Buddhists or people doing yoga and found two things. First, a positive spiritual practice is very healthy for the brain, because it can make more consistent the neocortex, which is the most important part of the human brain and can reduce some of the fear of your brain, the amygdala body, with enough practice.
The other thing we discovered is that we believe that every human being, whether religious or not, whether Buddhist, Muslim, Christian or Jew, has a spiritual circuit in your brain. We define as “spiritual” that set of values that has a deeper meaning for an individual.
We use the following exercise to train students, business people and professionals on how to stay more focused and less stressed during the day. We ask the person to take a moment to have a deep breath. We also ask yawning a little, to move and stretch; and take 60 seconds to relax the body and to be in the present. When we train an individual, we often carry a bell, touch and ask the person to listen with the greatest possible care. With the noise of the bell, you have to spend more and more effort to hear. So you start to hear the sounds in the room or you could start to hear your own breathing, this is a form of what is called mindfulness meditation. In this state, you do not think a thing of the past, nor do you care about the future activities, you’re here in the present moment. The person begins to feel more alive and, for many, this is a spiritual or mystical experience. Then ask the following question: What is your deepest value? We ask the person to literally meditate on that word. If we had a room full of people and some were atheists and others were fundamentalist Christians, or Muslims, these people might say “Compassion”, “Honesty”, “Hope”, “Peace”, “Love”, “and Kindness”. When we have covered the entire room, it is very easy to say “look, we are all members of the same church.”
