MetaFilter posts tagged with brain and Meditation

DOWNTIME for the BRAIN

2or3whiskeysodas — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 06:04:01 -0800

"Having felt what it’s like to have all the backlog of experiences cleared out of my head, I’m intolerant of letting it build up a backlog again. It feels too good when it’s all clean and clear. Another way of talking about this is to say that the frantic, amped up feeling of too much seeking clears away. When we are seeking all the time, we are intaking new material constantly without ever actually dealing with it."

Change Your Mind Change Your Brain

MetaMonkey — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:45:55 -0800

Change your mind, change your brain - Matthieu Ricard talks about creating the inner conditions for authentic happiness, and the effects of meditation on the brain. A little more in-depth meditation science: Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation. Want to learn how? Get started right now with a workshop by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Use the classic text, Mindfulness in Plain English. Or maybe learn from Alan Watts.

MettaFilter

homunculus — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:12:50 -0800

"Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation" (PDF). A recent article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences on the neuroscience of meditation, focusing on how meditation alters and sharpens the brain's attention systems. The research is being done at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior (previously), who have also recently published research on the "Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation" (PDF), which describes how meditation can cultivate compassion by physically affecting brain regions that play a role in empathy. They shared this research with the Dalai Lama at the recent Seeds of Compassion forum.

Neuroscience and Mysticism

homunculus — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:14:43 -0800

Searching for God in the Brain. "Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith." [Via MindHacks, which points out a few niggling omissions in the article.]

Ken Wilber stops his brain waves!

skepticX — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 02:31:08 -0800

Ken Wilber can stop his brain waves on demand. This (WMV) is the famous EEG machine recording where Ken Wilber enters various meditative states, one of which is a type of "thoughtless," "image-less," or "formless" state, whose correlate is that his brainwaves come to an almost complete stop, as clearly recorded on this portable electroencephalograph (EEG) machine. Seeing somebody's brainwaves flatline in about 4 seconds is a sight not easily forgotten! Also on YouTube.

Meditators have bigger brains

homunculus — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:24:36 -0800

Meditation found to increase brain size (maybe) according to research led by Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar. Meanwhile, Atheist Manifesto author Sam Harris recently went on a meditation retreat and seemed to find it pleasant enough.