Centre for Inspired Living

Here is an interesting article for you to enjoy.

Change Your
Brain with God

Barbara Stahura

Decades ago, Ernest Holmes created the Science of Mind based on the metaphysical belief that changing our thoughts changed our reality.  Today, neuroscience is proving that he was absolutely right.

God Can Change Your Brain

No matter your spiritual or religious belief system, and even if you’re an atheist, thinking about whatever you perceive God to be (or what others believe God to be) can permanently change the neural density and complexity of your brain.  Contemplate positive attributes of God-or positive words such as compassion, peace, and love-and your brain can structure itself to improve memory, cognitive functioning, and even physical health.  Think about negative qualities that some also attribute to God, such as anger, punishment, and authoritarianism, and you brain can rewire itself in socially destructive says.

These are the conclusions to a fascinating series of neuroscience studies conducted by Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman in recent years.  They reveal their findings in their new book, How God Changes Your Brain:  Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (Ballantine Books).  Participants in these studies ranged across the spiritual and religious spectrum, from fundamentalist to atheist, Christian to Buddhist.  They included nearly two hundred members of New Thought Churches, including the United Centers for Spiritual Living (formerly the United Church of Religious Science), whose members Waldman characterizes as some of the most positive people he’s ever met.  He is a therapist and often sends his “most anxious, negative, and depressed clients” to their local Center for Spiritual Living, saying, “They come back feeling better about themselves and their future.”

How God Changes Your Brain is part of the researchers’ ongoing study of spirituality and neuroscience.  The two have coauthored two other books, Born to Believe and Why We Believe What We Believe; Newberg is also the author of Why God Won’t Go Away and The Mystical Mind.  Both of them are associated with the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, Newberg as founder and director, Waldman as associate fellow.

In response to those who don’t understand why scientists would study the brain in regards to religion and spirituality, Waldman offers one answer.  “Neuroscience and spirituality can enhance each other,” he says, “in that spiritual practices strengthen important parts of the brain.”  What’s more, he adds, “It’s like the core element of Science of Mind teachings.  If you believe actively that what you’re doing will help you, it will help you, physiologically and psychologically.”

As a leading researcher in the field, Newberg is frequently called upon to answer questions about what neuroscience can tell us about God.  “Most specifically, it’s how human being experience God,” he says.  “It may or may not shed light on the ultimate question: does God exist?”

Our thoughts
Change our Brains

The human brain is a wondrous, mysterious organ, truly awe-inspiring in its fantastic capabilities. Its secrets are only now being revealed, thanks in large part to the various technologies that allow researchers like Newberg and Waldman to peer deep inside, as it were.  A major finding of recent years is the adaptability of the brain to changes in its environment.  This neuroplasticity is good news not only for people with brain injury, who once were told that recovery, if any, was possible only within the first couple of post-injury years (instead, recovery can continue over a lifetime).  The news is also good for all of us.  Since we literally create our own internal environment with our thoughts and emotions, we can play an active role in many of the changes our brain undergoes by paying attention to what we think and feel, and making changes when necessary.  We can actively enhance the neural structures that make us calmer and more compassionate, improve memory and cognitive skills, and more.  Yet there’s a flip side to that same coin.

“Be careful what you choose to think about,” warns Waldman.  “If you ruminate on negative thoughts, you can damage important areas in your brain that regulate emotions and memory.”

He cites a fascinating study that used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to watch what was happening inside the brains of people who were shown simple list of positive and negative words.  Merely reading the positive list lowered anxiety and depression, while reading the negative list increased them.

Furthermore, since our ancestors survived by being every-alert to danger, the most ancient part of our brain, called the limbic or “reptile” brain, evolved to be constantly on the lookout for things that could harm us.  So negative words, emotions, and actions-which the limbic brain perceives as dangerous-have a stronger effect on us than positive ones do.  Even seeing the word “no” for one second raises the level of the stress chemical called cortisol, says Waldman.  But replacing negativity takes a lot of effort because positive feelings and thoughts are not as easily embedded in our memory circuits, which are primarily designed to record incidents that could be threatening to our survival.

On top of this, our brains make no distinction between inner and outer reality.  So, while the newest parts of the brain, the frontal lobes, are “constantly dreaming up positive and negative thoughts, like, ‘I am happy and successful’ or, ‘The world will end tomorrow,’ the moment you make these conscious, [another part of the brain called] the thalamus reacts as if it’s really happening out in the world,” he continues.  “If you wake up and say, ‘I’m getting sick,’ the body takes aversive action, but if you say, “This is going to be a great day,’ your body produces only a mild relaxing reaction.  So we constantly have to repeat our positive thoughts and values.

Brain Function
Mirrors New Thought

So what do these fundamental elements of brain function have to do with spirituality?  As Newberg and Waldman outline them, they actually come very close to some of the major beliefs of New Thought, including Science of Mind:

Thoughts clearly affect the neurological functioning of the body.

Optimism is essential for maintaining a healthy brain.

Positive thoughts neurologically suppress negative thoughts.

Change the way you think, and you begin to change your outward circumstances.

Consciousness, reality, your mind, and spiritual beliefs are profoundly interconnected and inseparable from the functioning of the brain.

Clearly, as individuals, we can affect our brain function by changing our behavior.  Yet, the evolutionary structure of our brains means that our behavior-positive and negative-also affects those around us.  It’s a survival mechanism.  “Our brain is designed to be able to understand and reflect back to others,” says Newberg.  “If we’re around anger, we have a tendency to become angry.  But if we’re calm and talk to people in a calm tone and people get engaged in that behavior, that behavior can become the norm.”

This kind of reflection also applies to people’s beliefs about God, since anger in any form is harmful to our health and brain function.  People, who participate in fear-based religions that stress God’s anger and punitive nature, say Newberg and Waldman, may damage the anterior cingulate, the part of the brain that allows us to experience love and compassion, and overly stimulate the amygdale, the part of the limbic brain that creates fear and anxiety.  Over time, excessive fear can permanently disrupt many structures in the body and brain.  These disruptions can harm memory storage and cognitive accuracy, which in turn cause harm to our ability to evaluate social situations.  The process feeds on itself, causing people to become ever more punitive, blameful, and pessimistic.  Damage to the anterior cingulate can cause people to lose their empathy and intuition, and cause them to act aggressively against others.  In fact, say the two researchers, fear-based religions may even create symptoms that resemble post-traumatic stress disorder.

On the other hand, concentrating on a God that expresses joy, love, optimism, and compassion helps to strengthen the anterior cingulate and thus strengthen those behaviors.  In the same kind of circular process, frequently activating the anterior cingulate seems to lessen perceptions of God as a critical or authoritarian force.

Newberg and Waldman stress that it’s not necessary to be religious or spiritual to achieve the healthful benefits of strengthening the anterior cingulate.  It can be done by concentrating on feelings of kindness, compassion, and love.  Consciously interrupting pessimistic thoughts and feelings with optimism will stimulate the anterior cingulate.  The optimism need not be based on reality, either: remember, the thalamus cannot distinguish between what is real and what is fantasy.  Training yourself over time to be more positive will lead only to more of the same.

Fortunately, practicing easy techniques for a minimum of twelve minutes a day can alter the overall neurological functioning of the brain.  Results can be seen in just under two months.  Adding more time increases the benefits.

Exercising Your Brain

How God Changes Your Brain describes eight easy ways to exercise your brain in a positive way.  Based on neuroscientific evidence, none are based on any religious orientation, although they can be integrated into any spiritual tradition.  Some of them may surprise you.  In addition to having a positive effect on the brain, they reduce stress-the number one killer in the United States because of the damage it causes throughout the body-and can transform your inner reality.

In ascending order, these eight ways are:

8. Smile.  Repetitively and often.  Even if you don’t feel like it, smiling stimulates brain circuits that enhance social interaction, empathy, and mood.  Even seeing a picture of a smiling face will make you feel happier and more secure.

7.  Stay intellectually active.  Like your muscles, your brain maintains better function when you use it. 

6.  Consciously relax.  Scan your body and deliberately reduce muscle tension.  This kind of relaxation interrupts the brain’s release of neurochemicals that stimulate stress.

5.  Yawn.  Yes, yawn.  Newberg and Waldman call yawning “one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience” for both relaxation and heightened cognitive awareness.  It helps you stay focused, as well as more introspective and self-aware.  Waldman says that studies of deliberate yawning at Moorpark College are producing surprising results.  Students who yawned on purpose for four minutes before taking tests raised their grade point averages; Cs moved up to Bs, and Bs to As.  He also asks his “profoundly anxious” therapy clients to yawn and has found that it reduces their anxiety by a significant amount.

4.  Mediate.  This can be spiritual or not, and it can include visualization, guided imagery, and self-hypnosis.

3.  Aerobic exercise.  Create a personalized program for yourself.  you can include yoga and yawning, running and smiling.  Vigorous exercise has many benefits: it improves cognition, protects against the damage caused by stress, protects against Alzheimer’s disease, enhances brain plasticity and immune function, reduces anxiety and is just as effective as antidepressants, slows the age-related loss of brain tissue, and reduces vulnerability to chronic illness.

2.  Dialogue with others.  This exercises language skills, which helps to keep parts of the brain well-connected with other neural structures, and requires social interaction, which helps to slow decline of cognitive abilities.

1.  Faith.  This can be a religious or spiritual faith or faith and trust in a positive future.  Newberg and Waldman say that even if faith in an optimistic future is a placebo, remember that placebos can cure an average of 30 percent of most physical and emotional diseases.  They say that highly optimistic people have greater activation of the same part of their anterior cingulate that is stimulated by meditation.  Optimistic individuals have increased longevity when compared to pessimistic folks.  The daily exercise of optimism is ourselves and in humanity, even when there is no concrete, evidence to support it, is critical.

Newberg and Waldman know that many more questions regarding spirituality and the brain remain to be answered, and to that end, they are continuing their research.  “We’re trying to tie together the concepts of God and physiology,” says Newberg.  “Maybe we can use this in a positive way to turn people from being angry and antagonistic to calmer and kinder.”    

The Most Powerful
Word in the World

Meditation can change the brain’s structure and functioning by as much as 25 percent.  What is the “secret” of meditation?  There’s no single answer to this neurological phenomenon, but there are many strategies you can use to enhance your brains and enrich your life.

 Think of the power of a single word-one that can take you into the core of your spirituality, transforming the way you think and behave.  Can you guess what word it is?  It’s the word that represents your deepest values and beliefs.  When you meditate on this word, you come alive, sharing the underlying values of nearly every religion in the world.  And it doesn’t even matter if you believe or disbelieve in God. 

As a meditation, it’s easy to do.  It’s a great exercise to try when you’re talking with a group-especially if you’re arguing, because it rapidly brings everyone into a peaceful, compassionate state.  Just tell everyone to stop talking for a moment, and ask them to close their eyes as they relax, breathe deeply, and yawn.  Next, ask them to focus on their deepest value, staying relaxed, and to find a single word that captures that intrinsic quality.  Ask them to intently focus on the word for a minute and notice the feeling it evokes.  Then ask each person to share their “sacred” word.

Recently, at a conference, an argument erupted among a group of Catholics, atheists, and New Agers concerning the lack of evidence supporting intercessory prayer.  Amidst the rising angst, Mark interrupted the debate and guided them through the exercise.  The values that emerged were: compassion, respect, love, truth, gratitude, hope, kindness, and peace.

Mark then asked, “Aren’t we all members of the same religion?”  Everyone agreed and smiled.  If you take a few minutes each day to contemplate your deepest values, you’ll neurologically bring more peace into your life and, hopefully, the world.